Question / Help Good CPU for streaming?

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jacobblockman

New Member
Right now i have an AMD FX-6300 6-core, its bad for streaming, so i was wondering what cpu to get for streaming, here is my current build:

PC SPEC'S
Graphics card: Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon R9 280X 3GB
Cpu: AMD FX 6300 - 6 core
Mobo: Asus m5a97 r2.0
Ram: Corsair Vengeance 16gb ( 8x2)
Psu: Cooler Master Gm 550wat
HDD: 2tb for Games/Software & 260gb SSD
Case Coolermaster HAF
Cpu Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

Alot of people where saying the AMD FX-8350 is really good, so i was wondering if i should get that. If possible i would like to get a AM3+ cpu so i dont have to buy another Mobo as well, although i will if i have to, i would like to be able to stream at at least 720p 30fps.
 
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Ian Bachelor

New Member
I don't think its fair to say that AMD can't stream. In general, if you use the CPU encoder, single thread performance is king. As a result, the higher the clock, the better it'll do. In the new FX series, the chips clocking 3.5GHZ or higher will work well, and the older thuban based 1090T hexacore works great as well.

Going from there though, you always do have the option of hardware encoding. Nvenc and Quicksync are supported in OBS legacy, and there is a fork with VCE support as well, which I personally have had good experiences with. Additionally, all of them are supported under windows 10 in OBS Studio. With your current setup, you could test out something with VCE to see how that works for you; you may not need new hardware yet.
 
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Bamse

Member
x264 performs very very VERY well with multiple cores and personally I'd go with more cores over high single thread freq. any day of the week for streaming.
 
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VooDoo

Member
Ian Bachelor said:
I don't think its fair to say that AMD can't stream. In general, if you use the CPU encoder, single thread performance is king. As a result, the higher the clock, the better it'll do. In the new FX series, the chips clocking 3.5GHZ or higher will work well, and the older thuban based 1090T hexacore works great as well.

Going from there though, you always do have the option of hardware encoding. Nvenc and Quicksync are supported in OBS legacy, and there is a fork with VCE support as well, which I personally have had good experiences with. Additionally, all of them are supported under windows 10 in OBS Studio. With your current setup, you could test out something with VCE to see how that works for you; you may not need new hardware yet.
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Tbh clock speed is great, but it means nothing in reality. A 3.5Ghz i5-2500k is not equal to a 3.5Ghz i5-6600k sorry to break that to you, but clock speed isn't a relevant way to tell how fast a cpu is compared to another, it is a great way to establish speed/performance of identical cpu's clocked differently. However my old 3.6Ghz Wolfdale e8500 won't even begin to stream when even the i3 has a bitch of a time producing a quality stream.

Further more, the FX-6300 can handle stream quite easily, but it won't handle gaming and streaming at the same time very well. In all fairness, if you're not using at least the Fx-8350 w/ a decent overclock or a newer i7 you won't have an enjoyable experience gaming and streaming on any game with decent level graphics. Hell even CS:GO takes a hit thats just not fun to play.

Side note, the Fx 4300, 6300, and 8300 were pretty bad CPU's to begin w/ the updated variants perform quite a bit better.

TL:DR i7-6700k, i7 - 4790k, Fx-9590, i5-6600k, Fx-8350, i5-4690k, Fx-8320. That would be the list order of current NON enthusiast level CPU's from best to worst for streaming.
 
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Cryonic

Member
Well the i7 5820k should be mentioned. Its only slightly more expensive than 6700k, but 2 extra cores give at least 20% more power with multithreaded programms and the x264 encoder (h264) works really well with extra cores. Once overclocked to 4,5GHz or higher (it is possible, but not easy), this CPU will play soccer with every quadcore (and yes, AMD FX CPUs are quadcores, just a bit different from the Intel architecture.
So the best CPU list world start with crazy Xeon CPUs (way out of reach for normal people and too slow for games), followed by 5960x, 5930k, 5820k and only then the 6700k can join the party :-)
 
Boildown

Boildown

Active Member
Almost all gaming requires fast single-core speed. All software x264 encoding is best done with many cores, regardless of speed (within reason). The best CPU for gaming and encoding on the same computer is one with the best combination of single core speed and many cores. The best combination of these factors is somewhere in the Intel i5 range up to the Extreme series i7 hexacores. Past hexacore, you're giving up too much clockspeed and sacrificing your game framerates. Before i5 you're not able to encode well enough due to lack of cores.

If you run a dual-PC setup, you could get an i3 or Pentium series to run the games (fast few cores) and an encode PC with many slower cores (server class Xeon, 8 core AMD, etc) and in combination they'd do a great job and save you money.

If you don't want to add the complexity of a 2 PC setup, I would definitely recommend an i7 over an 8350 or anything from AMD at all. From the log files that are posted here daily, for gaming and software encoding on the same PC, AMD doesn't work well.

As for hardware encoding, you mostly don't want to stream with it. If you crank up the bitrate, those solutions do a file job of saving to your hard drive, but with the bitrate restrictions you should adhere to for streaming purposes, they're not good.
 
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Eon_Melodic

New Member
I currently have an AMD Athlon II x4 630 quad core cpu as it was given to me inside a case I was given to use for parts or to fix up. I'm looking to get into streaming ps4 games only. I wouldn't be gaming on PC and streaming at the same time. Would this cpu keep up or would it bottleneck? My internet speed is 6mbps up and 28mbps down. I'm trying to decide if I should upgrade around the processor or just build a new PC. Any advice would be appreciated
 
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Cryonic

Member
The Athlon is really slow. It could handle 720p 30FPS or 25FPS with the superfast preset, but i`m not sure about that. You can also overclock that thing a bit.
But forget great quality on stream. Will not happen, you need at least a decent i5 to stream ps4 games with high quality.
 
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raindeeers

Member
My FX-8320 handles streaming like a boss. 8 core goodness, plenty of power. I can only imagine the FX-8350 will be performing even better with it's 4ghz base clock compared to the 3.5ghz on the 8320.
 
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raindeeers

Member
Cryonic said:
The Athlon is really slow. It could handle 720p 30FPS or 25FPS with the superfast preset, but i`m not sure about that. You can also overclock that thing a bit.
But forget great quality on stream. Will not happen, you need at least a decent i5 to stream ps4 games with high quality.
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My Athlon II X4 640 could stream just fine 720/30 veryfast preset - However they are indeed a bottleneck IF gaming and streaming at the same time. They can easily handle the encode from the PS4.
 
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Eon_Melodic

New Member
Okay I was just wondering because I'm a first time builder and I really want a decent streaming PC for my twitch channel. I can basically use the case and power supply and build around that then? It's a extreme gear 600w Power supply so what would I be looking at as far as specs for components built around that? Good CPUs, graphics cards, RAM, cooling unit, motherboard, etc. again appreciate all the input!
 
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Eon_Melodic

New Member
Buy links would also be appreciated! I know that my motherboard and cpu and all that have to be compatible, I would prefer ATX I have a fairly large case to build inside. So Would I want to build the entire PC after I chose a processor?
 
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jacobblockman

New Member
okay so in the long run it probably wouldnt be smart to stick with FX chips since the socket type is dead, and AM3+ isnt being made very shorty here, but i was thinking of switching to intel (i dont have alot of knowledge with intel cpus) but i was thinking of going with a i5-4690k until i can save up for an i7, my dad has the 4690k and he says its really good (he also came from the fx-6300) do you guys think that would be good to START streaming?

TL;DR: should i go with the i5-4690k to start?
 
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raindeeers

Member
jacobblockman said:
okay so in the long run it probably wouldnt be smart to stick with FX chips since the socket type is dead, and AM3+ isnt being made very shorty here, but i was thinking of switching to intel (i dont have alot of knowledge with intel cpus) but i was thinking of going with a i5-4690k until i can save up for an i7, my dad has the 4690k and he says its really good (he also came from the fx-6300) do you guys think that would be good to START streaming?

TL;DR: should i go with the i5-4690k to start?
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Surely you can find an FX-8320 / FX-8350? They are still being made and they are in fact excellent when it comes to streaming. You don't have to upgrade your whole platform either if going that route. Or you could wait for the Zen processor which comes out later this year. Brand new platform (AM4) with DDR4 support, m2 support, PCIE 3.0 and general improvements.

You could also overclock your FX-6300 to 4ghz for starters without ever touching the voltage. Just set it to 4ghz and you have an FX-6350 for free. On some motherboards you can also unlock the disabled cores and end up with a 7 or 8 core processor, however they are disabled for a reason and might just bsod on you.
 
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Cryonic

Member
Depends on what you want. Intel has Skylake out there for a while now. So they will not bring mainstream CPUs in the next months. That will set you back a decent amount of money, DDR4 is still heavily priced (compared to DDR3 with the same speccs) and Z170 Boards with i5 6600k or i7 6700k will also hit you hard + you need a cooler since they dont even come with a stock heatsink anymore :P
Going with Haswell is an option.
Waiting for Zen, the new AMD CPU, is also an option, but this will happen somewhere this year - nobody can tell when.

And DONT make the mistake of grabbing an i5 now and switching for the i7 later. Save the cash now, wait for the 6700k to drop (it is not really avaliable, so the prices are high as skyscrapers - but its getting better).
And believe me, you want that i7. It offers a lot more power for the streamer, even if you do console games - better preset, more headroom for other tools in the background etc.
 
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jacobblockman

New Member
I think im gonna OC my cpu right now (wish me luck xD) and then im gonna save up for an i7, i can stream with my cpu as it is right now at 720p 30fps decently so i guess i will have to deal with that for a while
 
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raindeeers

Member
You could also use GPU encoding which frees up the CPU for the game you're playing. Then you can easily do 720/60 without using the CPU much at all.
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-branch-with-amd-vce-support.13996/

The quality will suffer a little bit however. While GPU encoding is fantastic, the quality on GCN 1.0 (which you have) is sort of a mixed bag. It all depends on the game you're playing however.

This is me using the FX-8320, with no oc. Performs fantastic. In-game is smooth as butter and so is the stream/recording.
 
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