Question / Help i2600k as a dedicated streaming PC?

[Atraeh]

Hey all!

I've been playing with the idea of streaming for a while now and decided I'd like to give it a try in the very near future, but have a question about the possibilty of using my current gaming rig as a dedicated streaming PC.

Anyhow, the current build is quite old (most of it anyway) and it is as follows:

i7 2600k @ 4,2 ghz
16gb 1866 DDR3
1070 Ti

Now, I'm quite peculiar about my FPS; I hate FPS drops and I am hell bent on having 120 FPS in games to match my monitor's refresh rate, as most games I play are very aim-heavy etc. This rig unfortunately can't stream and give me the desired in-game FPS at decent settings, but I'm about to upgrade the whole gaming rig and I thought of using this old one as a dedicated streaming PC.

The new gaming rig would consist of;

Ryzen 2700 (OCd to 4,1 ghz if capable of it)
32 gb 3200 DDR4
1070 Ti (I am just going to keep using it, as it still packs more than enough punch for the games I play).

To keep the to-be streaming PC running, I would have to buy: a PSU, as well as a GPU (I'm assuming at least that getting a used 1050 / 1060 would be beneficial instead of relying on the HD2000 in the 2600k?). All in all, I think it'd be around a 200 USD investment to keep it going. I was thinking of getting a capture card too, but I read they have all sorts of issues if you're trying to capture 60 hz +, so I just figured I'd try the NDI route, as both the computers would be hard-wired to a gigabit router anyway.

But I'm wondering, is going this route even worth it? Would I see any real benefits (if any at all) using the 2600k as a dedicated streaming PC compared to just gaming and streaming on a Ryzen 2700 with the 1070 Ti? Barring in mind that I don't tolerate input lag and FPS drops well. That said, is the 2600k even powerful enough to just encode etc., for a 720p60fps / 1080p30fps stream?

I'm sorry for the long post and I hope the question's clear enough! Thanks for any advice in advance ^^!

 

[koala]

To completely relieve your gaming pc from the stress of capturing, encoding and sending data, use a capture card.
It's seen as a monitor from your PC, or it is patched in between your PC and your monitor. However, I don't know the details that are important to you: you have to get a capture card that can handle 120 fps hdmi data. Although it is not required to capture at 120 fps, it is required by you that it is able to pass through 120 fps to your monitor while it is actually capturing 30 or 60 fps. May be someone else knows which capture cards are able to do this.

 

[Boildown]

At 1080p120, the Datapath VisionSC-DP2 and VisionDVI-DL can do it. I'm not familiar with other brands', I have the DVI-DL. They're expensive as hell, check Ebay regularly until you find a good deal, that's how I got mine. Datapath has some new HDMI cards that look like they are powerful enough, too, but unless they're HDMI 1.4 (I can't tell from the spec sheets) the HDMI spec won't allow 1080p120. Other than these, the other Datapath cards you can find cheap on ebay are limited by the DVI single link spec and won't achieve 1080p120.

The plan to try NDI first is a good one, because it might just work which will save you a lot of money on a high-end capture card. You will need a GTX (or RTX) quality GPU (as opposed to "GT" without the X), as OBS uses the GPU to accelerate video compositing or something technical like that. The i7-2600k is decent, I used that exact CPU in a streaming PC for a long time. If you downscale to 720p60 you should be able to do Fast preset in most games. If you want to stream 1080p120, it will struggle, but it can probably record it given enough bitrate (I never tried though).

Capping your framerate so you can stream will introduce input lag no matter how you do it. Capping at 120 obviously lessens this compared to 60, assuming you can maintain 120fps. Encoding and playing on the same CPU is going to be harder to maintain 120 fps than using a streaming PC, but the Ryzen has a lot of cores, so it might be fine. I think your best bet is to build the Ryzen first, don't buy anything for the streaming PC, and see how it works. If it doesn't work well enough, get the extra parts to build the 2600k back up and try NDI. If that doesn't work, then get a capture card. But be aware that if you can't find a good deal on Ebay, 120Hz capable capture cards will be pricey.