Question / Help GTX 1070 vs RTX 2060, but not for games

[Arsenic]

Hey, guys!

I have some questions / concerns about choosing the right system configuration for my project.

I do video recordings in a studio with 2 X NDI PTZ OPTICS cameras (maybe I will buy the third camera in the future). For the moment, I do only local recordings, but I want to do streaming also in the future (recording + streaming).
I record fitness programs / trainings. I have nothing to do with game recordings or stuff like this.

Now I use my old 2013 27 iMac with the base CPU, I5 3,2 GHZ, 32GB RAM, GeForce GT755. This system struggles with higher quality settings. I use 1920x1080 output, x264, CPU preset: Very Fast, FPS: 25, CRF: 23, VBR / CBR 40000KB. I played a lot with the settings and I found that these are the best settings, quality wise, without frames dropping.

Besides the iMac‘s monitor, I have 2 more external monitors attached to the system.

I use in the same time the following apps: OBS in studio mode with 2/3 output windows on my external displays, Word, some timer app, Microsoft teams / zoom / skype (not in the same time).

The CPU stays at 40% - 50% when recording, 0 skipped frames, 2-5% lagged frames due to render lag, about 32ms average time for render frame. When I share my output obs screen in a video conference with Microsoft teams and recording in the same time, the CPU goes to 90% - 100%.
So this is what I’ve done in couple of weeks, this is my whole experience in ‘streaming’ / recording / obs / NDI.

The problem is that I’m not in love with the video quality. If I kick those settings, I will have skipped frames. The recordings are poor in details, soft, laggy....

I’m thinking about upgrading my old iMac. A new apple computer for this project is too expensive, so I decided to go with a windows computer. I don’t want to build a machine from ground up, so I was looking for the following options (the order is random):

1. Intel NUC Hades Canyon - NUC8i7HNK2 (16 GB RAM, 512 SSD)

PROs:
- 900 EUR
- It has many ports (HDMIs, USBs, DisplayPorts, etc)
- Form factor

CONs:
- ATI RADEON RX VEGA M GL - I watched some benchmarks and it doesn’t look very...sturdy.
- Lack of ‘good’ hardware encoder in OBS. I read some threads about hardware encoder and everybody is talking about NVENC from NVIDIA and very few are talking about ATI encoder. So, I think is safe to go with an NVIDIA card.
- Not very upgradable

2. Lenovo Legion c530-19ICB (i7-9700 Coffee Lake, 16GB RAM, 512 SSD, 1TB HDD, NVIDIA RTX 2060 6GB)

PROs:
- powerful graphic card
- powerful CPU
- upgradable in the future
- nice form factor

CONs:
- price - 1250 EUR (discounted, they say)

3. Lenovo Cube Y720 second hand (i7-7700, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 1070, SSD 250GB, HDD 2TB)

PROs:
- price - 730 eur

MIDDLEs:
- CPU not as good as second option
- GPU not as good as second option

CONs:
- it’s second hand

Questions:

1. What system do you recommend for what I do? (Recording, recording + streaming video content from NDI sources). I’m open to other suggestions.
2. The second option is overkill for what I do?
3. Now, I’m considering the third option. Is it powerful enough to obtain a great quality with it?
4. Is the first option...an option?

I read many threads / articles on the web but 99% of people are talking about game streaming / recording. Im not sure that I can compare an NDI video signal with a modern game but I also don’t want to risk buying a less powerful PC and upgrade it in couple of days.

I was considering the second option but I don’t want to buy an overkill system for what I need and yes, I’m looking at the budget too.

Thanks in advance!

 

[FerretBomb]

If you are only using local recording, DON'T use CBR. Use CQP or CRF, which are quality-target based encoding methods. They only use as much or little bitrate as is needed to maintain a consistent image quality level. Lower CQP/CRF numbers mean higher quality, normally people use between 16-22 (and NEVER use 0, that means uncompressed video which is enormous).
The render delay issue is normally due to GPU overload, but on the Mac side I can't really speak... Apple does some unfortunate things with their OS that can cause all kinds of problems. It *is* an older and fairly low-end GPU though.

If you're only recording locally and use CQP/CRF, you can afford to drop the x264 preset to Ultrafast to reduce the CPU load, if you're getting encoder overload. It'll use up more bitrate, but you can re-encode it later for archiving purposes. Really though, when using software encoding I tend to shoot for around 80% CPU utilization, leaving a margin for spikes.

If you want to swap to GPU-based encoding, you should STILL use CQP/CRF to maintain image quality... it'll just bring down the filesizes a bit. You want an nVidia Turing-based GPU... you don't need a 2060 for that, if you aren't gaming. You can grab a 1660, or a 1650 Super (NOT the normal or Ti, they use an older revision of NVENC that isn't as good). Should work fine.
VERY STRONGLY advise AGAINST AMD. Their AMF hardware encoder is absolute garbage, especially compared to the giant strides NVENC has been making.


The third option is perfectly serviceable. The 1070 in it has the Pascal NVENC core, which is quite serviceable. Pascal is roughly equivalent to x264 Fast or Faster, while Turing is roughly x264 Medium or Slow (slower is better quality compression). You can always swap the card later. Pre-owned isn't a bad thing, and being around half the price means you can bump the GPU with the cost delta if you still aren't happy with it.
Don't get the NUC.

 

[Arsenic]

Thank you for your detailed reply!

I understood the encode difference between the 1070 and the 2060. So, in the future, I need to aim for a ‘turning’ card.

What about the CPU? I7-7700 is it enough? I think I cannot upgrade it with a newer generation in the future on this particular setup.

Thanks again!