Question / Help Looking for settings specific to my build/setup.

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ZENiiTH

New Member
I currently run my (main) monitor at a resolution of 1600x1200 (awkward, I know) and I'm wanting to stream to Twitch in acceptable 720p quality. I don't mean uncompressed, pixel-perfect quality, either. My game is in windowed mode at 720p. As it stands, I'm running out of options. I've found a thread here from someone with the exact same specs as me, and they seem to be able to stream at pretty good quality. However, the settings they were advised to use (Quality "7" encoding, 3000 kbps, opencl=true, lowering in-game graphics quality, etc.,) doesn't seem to help me much. The only way I can stream and NOT lag in the game is to downscale about 2.50x. As you can see, that's unacceptable quality, especially for 720p content. Yet I still occasionally stutter in-game. I've ran a program called ShaperProbe which shows no issues. My DL/UL speed is roughly 45Mbps/12Mbps. So now I come to you guys for assistance. I greatly appreciate any and all help I receive.

My specs:

CPU - AMD Phenom II x4 965 (3.4 Ghz)
GPU - GeForce GTX 550 TI
RAM - 8GB




P.S. - Not sure if it's relevant, but I also have an active second monitor at 1280x1024. Is this monitor going to be an issue?
 
C

Cryonic

Member
The second monitor is not an issue.
I have the same CPU, but as Black Edition (open multi) and overclocked to 4GHz.
It still has problems, if i try to stream some CPU heavy games it will drop the FPS below 30 ingame.

Gonna upgrade my CPU soon.

My settings are right now:
x264 encoder, 2800bitrate, CBR enabled, 2800 buffer.
native resolution 1080p, downscale 1,5 to 720p 30FPS.
CPU priority "higher", x264 preset - superfast (yeah it looks bad, but its the only way to free up the CPU enough to actually be able to stream), encoding profile - main.
CFR on, network - low latency mode enabled.
Anything else is still on default.

OBS use up to 25% of the CPU load with this settings on the Phenom X4 965BE @4GHz. So dont expect better performance with your CPU which is not overclocked.

What you can do is increase the bandwith and lower the preset, this will put less load on your CPU, but people who are watching you will need a higher bandwith and not everyone has it. It can produce some lags & buffering depends on the server & site you are streaming to.

The best way to avoid this problem is: upgrade to a newer Intel CPU (with iGPU so quicksync is avaliable) or use a second rig for encoding (with a capture card). I have a laptop with an i5 Ivy Bridge dualcore and Intel HD4000 GPU (with quicksync) and with a capture card i can stream anything without having lags on my gaming rig (but i was just testing it, capture card was not mine) and i would upgrade to an i7 4770K and keep it simple :-)
 
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ZENiiTH

New Member
Hey, Cryonic. I actually have the Black Edition as well (not overclocked though). What do you mean by "open multi"? Also, I'll try these settings and let you know what happens,
 
C

Cryonic

Member
Yep. Open multiplicator, Black Edition was the unlocked version of AMD Phenom series. The same with Intel "K" right now.

I just got the i7 4770K with a Gigabyte z87-hd3 board and even without OC the CPU is a monster.. OBS with QuickSync turned on and on the best quality preset @ 1080p 30FPS is using only 5-6% of the CPU.
So if you are really interested in high quality streaming while keeping your newer games smooth, think about a new Intel CPU (i5, i7 or Xeon with iGPU). The i7 4770K is expensive (284,90€) but its worth it.
Specially QuickSync makes it so good with OBS. Now i can stream even with my laptop i5 3230M (Ivy Bridge dualcore with hyperthreading) - a whole new world, be able to stream from the same laptop that i use for DJing (without getting audio latency spikes or high cpu load) is just amazing.

The 965BE will be the limit for streaming with new heavy games, even if you can get it to 4,2GHz - its still an old CPU, it was great - before Intel just steamrolled AMD with Sandy & Ivy bridge + Haswell :-) 720p 30FPS is possible, but not with all games. You can increase the bandwith to 3500 or even higher and use a faster preset, but this will not the best for people with low bandwith.
 
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