Hi Michlfitz,
you mentioned your viewers are seeing frames (known as pixelation), this can be of the bitrate. A bitrate of 1080p with 4500 kbps can be in-action really blurry or pixaleted. Sadly platforms like Twitch are capping the limit, for non-partners, at 6,000 kbps for video encoding, and maximum 320 kbps for audio encoding, total of 6,320 kbps, theoretical more possible, but can lead to issues on platforms like Twitch.
YouTube's limit cap is at this moment 51,000 kbps, which makes great video quality in maximum 2K possible. 4K gaming must require even 100 mbps for good encoding of 4K30p gaming content. So mostly if you have the required hardware it is the fault of the compression of the platforms showing your streams. At this moment I see you use an intel i5 9400F with 2.9 Ghz 6c/6t. This causes bottleneck in will end up in the mean of time with performance issues since OS like Windows, Steam etc. corporate this much together that soon even Windows 8, and lower will not be supported by Steam.
For example Counter-Strike: 2 now uses the DirectX 11 instead of OpenGL which decreased the performance-experience of many users, but made the game more authentic, and realistic! This is how "free"-2-play/use works, updates, for updates, and performance decreases with the newer patches. Logically. Same with Android, iOS, MacOS, etc.., if you want an good phone, just buy an "Ready-for-Android 14" phone, and you will have an great performance. Same for GPU's. If they promise you ready for DirectX 13, then you will not have a bad experience with free-2-play content, or newer AAA+/VR titles if these use the DirectX 13.
DirectX etc. offers better shaders, and better physics than all other shaders like OpenGL, Vulkan, etc.
Some full-AMD-rig users who enjoy for example linux distributions, and special OS like ChimeraOS much more FPS, but the recognization of the small components of shaders, and physics where excluded too, but still an really great alternate shader.
On the other side I can tell that to the GTX 1660 a great mate would be the i5-13400F. Combine this please with the ASUS Prime B660-M-K D4 Gaming Mainboard with Intel LGA 1700 Socket (Good starter mainboard for expense-friendly budgets), and try to get as much ASUS as possible. This is the budget option, consider that if you want more that you could spend more on an for the i5-13400F suitable mainboard.
My specs are:
ASUS RX6600 8GB
ASUS B450 Plus
ASUS DRW-24D5MT
AMD Ryzen 9 3900x
Be quiet! pure rock 2
1 TB Toshiba HDD HDWD110
256 GB SSD Kingston SUV400S37240G
500 Wattage PSU
16 GB RAM
Additionally:
NVIDIA GTX 930 (Only for OBS encoding/decoding tasks)
Not the cheapest, but also not an over-average expense-eater. We deserve all the best, but still I am only satisfied with enough performance for my interactions in-game.
Still the same case-rig I had when there was an AMD-FX combined with my past GTX 1050 ti. I regretted the swap from 1050 ti to RX 570 8GB. Now I am much happier. Saved every month a spare till I get the single components.
I recently swapped my 60 hz white ASUS gaming monitor against an ASUS, tracefree, 165 hz, freesync, and I have to say I preffered from all manufacturers ASUS till today most. The previous display is fully functional till today, and works over an whole decade now!
For me it was like tuning a car's single components over time for me rofl.
I don't want to spend infinite money on my budget, as long as I can play my games on minimum high/epic to ultra with more fps than my refresh rate 165 hz, I am doing fine. Still said before, the higher your clock rates, and setup, the better the frame-timing, etc., still to remove the bottleneck with my RX6600 it was an good solution to get the Ryzen 9 3900x. Still in some situation a single GPU or CPU could be too good for the counter-part. Aim to have a lower bottleneck than 5% if you want to save additional money. Best is 0% Bottleneck.
Your CPU aims way to high, this causes even sometimes OBS to crash while streaming since of encoding issues. Happened with my Ryzen 5 2600 as I was multiple using VirtualTube-Cam, StreamAvatars, Diablo 4 + high settings in OBS, it crashed sometimes in the middle of an session, I promised my self to get a CPU which fits in my AM4 socket, and luckily my mainboard even supported Ryzen 9 3900x which meant 0% bottleneck for an RX 6600. Since yesterday I am overall happy. I got the new CPU yesterday.
My dude always keep in my that the kbps are important. If you are on platforms like Twitch, they limit the capabilities of non-partnered streamers on video-encoding to 6,000 kbps, and audio-encoding 320 kbps, which can cause in most fast (high fps games with fast-motion) to pixelation, what could help is keeping the same resolution, and lower the frames per seconds output in OBS to have the same amount of data-encoding on less frames per second.
Small example: 60 fps on 6,000 kbps video-encoding would mean that exactly 60 pictures of the streamed second would gather 6,000 kbps data-encoding, it is exactly like giving your 60 frames per second 0,75 MB. This means each second video material without the 320 kbps audio is 0.75 MB. This means it is for an 1080p60fps picture which is for example a fast shooter automatically way to low MB for showing the audience the wished quality.
What could help is lower the fps, and keeping the same resolution, and the same bitrate, e.g: 1080p50 (PAL); 1080p48 ; 1080p30; 1080p25 (PAL); 1080p24 (NTSC); 1080p20 till minimum 1080p17/18, since lower than this frames per second could lead to non-smooth experience for the viewership. According to scientific data the human eye see's anything above 17 frames per second as an smooth video. Some people find this minimum FPS of 17 to choppy while others find it smooth, most agree between 24, and 30 is a excellent smooth experience, 60 FPS is extra smoothness at the cost of quality, if the bitrate is too low.
Please refer to the platforms you upload, stream to since they have limitations, and/or let your videos get compressed uploaded if the bitrate of the video (video-size) is to high for it's length.
4,500 kbps are good enough for webcam streaming IRL-chat with your viewers, but for most modern games it will end up in pixelation, and blurrines or other side-effects for the viewership. Please keep in mind that this is absolute Twitch's fault to offer such a low bitrate on AVC-encoding. Twitch limit is: video 6,000 kbps/audio 320 kbps, and for partners 10,000 kbps/300 kbps while other platforms like YouTube offers already 51,000 kbps which encodes good gaming videos even on 4K30p, soon they will even increase the kbps to 6K/8K footages. I think since Twitch has such an nice interactive viewerbase that it is already time for increasing the kbps limits so we can also stream with 20,000 kbps on Twitch. Most modern ISP offers already glas-fiber, so the excuse with connection-issues won't work while a 4K60p IRL-chat-stream on YouTube works fluently.
Please keep on mind that it always causes issues if one component reaches the 100% throttle, and that you could save money hardware if you buy only this was it necessary to avoid the bottleneck. For me my upgrade to Ryzen 9 3900x trough eBay auctions as used tray was way much expense-friendly than buying it retail, and new. Please read descriptions on auctions, and about your rights.
If you have further questions always feel free to reach out to me privately, for example Steam Chat, or something similar, or the forum here, or similar, to achieve the assistance for your level up's which you deserve. It is important to see life as an co-operative instead an competitive, aid your mates up in hard-skills, and soft-skills. It was a pleasure to show you a bit of my experience.
Lovely Greetings,
Lahdo Gorieh, Lahdo
LinkedIn.com/in/Lahdo/
+49 1573 9648799
SteamCommunity.com/id/Lahdo/
youtube.com/c/Lahdo/
twitch.tv/Lahdo7/
