Question / Help i9-7980XE/GTX 1080Ti/32GB RAM Stream & Recording Stuttering Problem

[DEDRICK]

Oh, there's also lookahead_threads. x264 opens 1 lookahead_thread per 4 x264 Threads, so your CPU isn't entirely wasted at Threads=27, it opens 6 lookahead_threads, put you at 33 total, leaving some for the OS

I saw some older posts comparing threads and lookahead_threads counts, increasing lookahead_threads above what x264 opened increased their encoding FPS aka decreased their encoding time.

 

[JorPorCor]

I’ll test that out to. Again, thanks a ton for the detailed info. I saw a lot of these terms elsewhere but no explanations. Hard to know what you’re doing when someone just says “do this.” I’ll be able to do some testing tonight so we will see where I get. I’m pretty content with 1080p60 at slow. It looks pretty damn good for 6000 bitrate. Would be even better if Twitch upped their bitrate to 10k.

 

[JorPorCor]

So I ended up sticking with the slow preset. It provided the best quality without overloading under rigorous testing. I settled for the slow preset with “threads=27”. I messed around with slower and veryslow and got both of them running with various settings changed. Primarily the “ref” setting. I wasn’t happy with the quality difference. I couldn’t really tell that it was any better, and personally thought it looked worse. So I settled on slow. I may or may not run slow preset with “threads=27 trellis=2” as it seems to be a little better quality, but it’s really difficult to tell when comparing side by side so I left it at default “trellis=1”. These are the settings I settled on:

Dedicated Stream PC
Processor: i9-7980XE 18-core overclocked @ 4.0GHz (all cores)
Graphics Card: MSI GTX 1080Ti stock clock speed
Memory: 32GB (8x4) G.Skill Trident Z 3200MHz
SSD: 512GB Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSD

*My processor and graphics card are water cooled with a custom loop, resovoir, and 360mm radiator so everything has proper cooling.

OBS Settings
Video Settings:
Base Canvas Resolution: 1920x1080
Output Scaled Resolution: 1920x1080
Downscale Filter: Lanczos (Sharpened scaling, 32 samples)
Common FPS Values: 60

Output Settings:
Mode: Advanced
Encoder: x264
Enforce streaming service encoder settings: Enabled
Rescale Output: Disabled
Bitrate: 6000
Use Custom Buffer Size: Disabled
Keyframe Interval: 2
Use CBR: Enabled
CPU Usage Preset: slow
Profile: high
Tune: film
x264 Options: threads=27

These settings work great and the video is surprisingly amazing, even with the bitrate limit on Twitch of 6000. The average CPU usage is around 40-50%, and it can spike up to around 75% when fast motion is happening. I stuck with these settings, because I don’t want to worry about hitting overload somehow and it also gives me some headroom for other system processes. I want everything to run as smooth as possible and use as much resources as possible without running into any issues.

I thought it’d be good to throw together my rig and settings in one post for others that are looking to obtain these results or similar. Thanks again for all of the help on this forum. Glad I posted. Happy streaming and recording everyone!

 

[BornDownUnder]

A note on the tune presets, they manually alter some of the x264 settings, post #3 of the below link gives a very basic overview, have to sift through a lot of more detailed info on individual x264 settings to get the whole picture:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/344451-the-meaning-of-various-tunings-in-x264
You could also try out the animation tune preset, I have found it can assist in retaining more detail, though can be hit and miss.

Also, given your rig is a dedicated streaming pc you don't actually need such a powerful video card in it (A R7 260 or similar would more than suffice) If it is better than the one in your main rig I would switch it.

 

[JorPorCor]

Yea I went all out on this rig. I was only going to go for a GTX 1060, but opted to spend the extra and go with the water cooled GTX 1080Ti. Future proof the rig. I also did some more research on the tune option and it sounds like, multiple sources, that tune should be "none" when streaming. It just adds encoding time and very minimal differences on a live-stream. So I have switched it to "none."

 

[BornDownUnder]

For the tune options, I think it really is a personal taste and really dependent on content that you are recording/streaming. Most of the tune parameters are tweaks to individual options in x264 encoder settings, using medium or slower presets you might not even see that much detail change, especially for recordings which are run at much higher than streaming bitrates.

In regards to your rig, it is definitely future-proof, you could also use it as a main gaming rig whilst streaming, though you may have to use medium instead of slow for CPU intensive games.

Have you thought about making the switch to YouTube or simultaneous broadcasting? It would increase your potential viewer base.
You could probably simultaneous broadcast at medium preset, if your bandwidth connection allows for it and the quality difference between medium and slow is almost negligible in most cases with some tweaks to custom x264 settings such as me, subme, ref, trellis, b-frames, qcomp, qpmin/max (Again, dependent on content you are streaming - All can dramatically increase encoding time, especially b-frames)

 

[JorPorCor]

Yea, see I have a gaming rig and its so nice to just capture that PC and game on it without having to worry about window capture or game capture or any of that stuff. Also I do not plan on streaming on YouTube as I have to stream exclusively on Twitch per their agreement to have a sub button. I can upload videos to YouTube, but I cannot stream simultaneously. I also feel like YouTube is screwing over content creators. So I refuse to dabble in that. Maybe one day I will start making videos and uploading them, but not YouTube Gaming.

 

[BornDownUnder]

I have not bothered delving into content creation via YouTube, though I would not be at all surprised if Google were to gouge in some manner. They do allow for greater upload speeds when streaming though, which would allow for much better output quality at higher resolution as well.

I just know that the 6k bitrate limitation via Twitch really hinders quality output if you intend doing 1080p and above, in games that have a lot of foliage/grass/smoke, etc even 6k bitrate at 720p can result in poor output quality, though that also depends on what one personally perceives as quality being acceptable in this day and age.

 

[Gajbotron]

Hello guys! I`m lookin for this kind of settings for so long... :) I have i9 7290x 12core all on 4.4ghz and gskill 32gb ram (2x16gb).... Now, I want to set OBS to use my CPU while games use my GPU, thats why I switched from intel i7 4 core to this rig...
I`m not sure what value to use @ x264 option since I have 12 cores/24 threads.... I`m streaming fast paced FPS games and I`m searching for the ultimate quality on my youtube channel. Also, I`m using 14000 bitrate while streaming.

Any tips? Tnx! :)

 

[Cinder]

@JorPorCor Have you disabled Hyper Threading on your 7980xe? If not, you'll probably get better performance in OBS with HT disabled. x264 doesn't really like hyper threads and works better with physical threads.

I'd be curious to know if you can run the slower preset with HT disabled. If I were you I'd probably also delid the CPU, get a second radiator and OC the CPU to 4.5GHz at least :)

 

[Lachiu]

Talking about a high end gpu... I used to have a gt610 in my streaming rig. It was hitting 90°C and 80% usage while using x.264. So I swapped it out with a GTX 1050. Partly the same story, so I've settled on a GTX 1070 dirt cheap for the gaming rig and took the GTX 1060 and put that in the streaming pc. Now I'm able to put it on medium preset with barely any dropped frames.

Streaming pc:
● Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe
● CPU's: 2x E5-2670
● Mobo: Lenovo Thinkstation D30 motherboard
● CPU Cooler: 2x Cooler Master H411R
● RAM: 16GB DDR3 ECC RAM
● GPU: Asus Strix GTX 1060 OC 6G
● Capture card: AVerMedia HD Lite
● SSD: Kingston A400 120GB
● PSU: SeaSonic Focus Plus 850w platinum