The_Wanderer
New Member
Hey guys and gals, so I am looking into purchasing a capture card. I'm currently leaning heavily towards the Elgato HD60 Pro, but I'm open to suggestions.
First, let me go over what I'm currently doing
Earlier this year I purchased a second PC to encode my video and send out the stream. The purpose was to reduce the load on my gaming PC. This is a very simple refurbished business PC. i7-4770K, 8 GB RAM, mechanical HDD. It has multiple PCIe X16 and PCIe X1 slots.
The method that I initially used to send my game video / audio and my mic audio to to this streaming PC was the NDI plugin. If you aren't aware, this plugin allows you to send out uncompressed video and audio via OBS from your gaming PC, to a secondary PC that then handles streaming and encoding. The dedicated "streaming PC" then does the encoding with the x.264 preset. It's only real purpose is to receive uncompressed video via the NDI plugin in OBS, add in chat / donation / subscriber overlays etc., compress it all down to a reasonable bitrate, and send out the stream to YouTube or Twitch.
This worked quite well, and has been a significant performance increase for my gaming computer. I'm able to sustain 720p60 quite nicely on the streaming PC, and almost 1080p60.
The Problem with NDI
The issue that I run into with NDI, is that although it is certainly less CPU overhead than playing / encoding on a single PC, it still has about 10-15% CPU use on the gaming PC with OBS actively capturing / sending the uncompressed video to the second computer.
Sometimes that's OK, but when streaming Fallout 4 for example, the game almost always seems to randomly need 90%+ of the CPU. It's just a poorly optimized game, and nothing that I've tried - lowering graphics, changing resolutions, removing / adding mods, etc., seems to change that. But that's what I need to stream. This leads to huge frame rate drops / stutters and makes for an unenjoyable play and stream experience. Note that I also get these drops and performance hits when capturing video with OBS NVENC. I don't know how NVENC works with OBS, but it has always been a much bigger performance hit than just using Shadowplay. The only way I've been able to capture Fallout 4 in smooth 1080p60 (and even 1440p60 with lots of mods) and not get frame drops is by using Nvidia Shadowplay. Unfortunately, there's no way to capture video and send it to a second encoding PC with Shadowplay that i know of.
So here I am, with two options:
Option 1: Buy an overpriced 1080 ti for $1,000+ that I'll regret because the new line of GPUs will be out later this year, as well as an i9 CPU for $900+, along with a new motherboard. I'd much rather wait to do those upgrades until the new lines are out and get my money's worth.
Option 2: Buy a capture card as a stopgap until the new line of GPUs / CPU is released. The goal here is to send out video on my 980 ti to a secondary HDMI port. I will be duplicating my 1080p main display. This HDMI port will send the duplicated display to the capture card on my streaming PC. The streaming PC will then add in all the other stuff - USB microphone, stream overlays (chat, donations, etc.), encode it all to 720p60, and send it out to YouTube.
Stuff I'm worried about:
First, let me go over what I'm currently doing
Earlier this year I purchased a second PC to encode my video and send out the stream. The purpose was to reduce the load on my gaming PC. This is a very simple refurbished business PC. i7-4770K, 8 GB RAM, mechanical HDD. It has multiple PCIe X16 and PCIe X1 slots.
The method that I initially used to send my game video / audio and my mic audio to to this streaming PC was the NDI plugin. If you aren't aware, this plugin allows you to send out uncompressed video and audio via OBS from your gaming PC, to a secondary PC that then handles streaming and encoding. The dedicated "streaming PC" then does the encoding with the x.264 preset. It's only real purpose is to receive uncompressed video via the NDI plugin in OBS, add in chat / donation / subscriber overlays etc., compress it all down to a reasonable bitrate, and send out the stream to YouTube or Twitch.
This worked quite well, and has been a significant performance increase for my gaming computer. I'm able to sustain 720p60 quite nicely on the streaming PC, and almost 1080p60.
The Problem with NDI
The issue that I run into with NDI, is that although it is certainly less CPU overhead than playing / encoding on a single PC, it still has about 10-15% CPU use on the gaming PC with OBS actively capturing / sending the uncompressed video to the second computer.
Sometimes that's OK, but when streaming Fallout 4 for example, the game almost always seems to randomly need 90%+ of the CPU. It's just a poorly optimized game, and nothing that I've tried - lowering graphics, changing resolutions, removing / adding mods, etc., seems to change that. But that's what I need to stream. This leads to huge frame rate drops / stutters and makes for an unenjoyable play and stream experience. Note that I also get these drops and performance hits when capturing video with OBS NVENC. I don't know how NVENC works with OBS, but it has always been a much bigger performance hit than just using Shadowplay. The only way I've been able to capture Fallout 4 in smooth 1080p60 (and even 1440p60 with lots of mods) and not get frame drops is by using Nvidia Shadowplay. Unfortunately, there's no way to capture video and send it to a second encoding PC with Shadowplay that i know of.
So here I am, with two options:
Option 1: Buy an overpriced 1080 ti for $1,000+ that I'll regret because the new line of GPUs will be out later this year, as well as an i9 CPU for $900+, along with a new motherboard. I'd much rather wait to do those upgrades until the new lines are out and get my money's worth.
Option 2: Buy a capture card as a stopgap until the new line of GPUs / CPU is released. The goal here is to send out video on my 980 ti to a secondary HDMI port. I will be duplicating my 1080p main display. This HDMI port will send the duplicated display to the capture card on my streaming PC. The streaming PC will then add in all the other stuff - USB microphone, stream overlays (chat, donations, etc.), encode it all to 720p60, and send it out to YouTube.
Stuff I'm worried about:
- Is it really a performance gain? I've heard that as long as I'm only sending 1080p60 video by duplicating my monitor output, there should be no noticeable performance loss compared to regular gaming without recording. That is what I want. I want my gaming PC to be able to do it's thing, so I can play in buttery smooth 1080p60 with zero drops / stutters, which is how it normally is when I'm not using OBS to send NDI video. The second I run OBS on the gaming PC to capture with NVENC and send out NDI, I notice occasional FPS drops / stutters. This is what I am trying to eliminate. Will not running OBS on the gaming PC and simply using monitor duplication with a capture card on the streaming PC accomplish this?
- Audio Desync. I've heard all kinds of nightmares about audio desync with capture cards. The cards I'm looking at claim to be "ultra low latency". The main thing I'm worried about is my commentary being desynced from my game video / audio, if the capture card takes a second or two to process the video. I'm planning to purchase the Elgato HD 60 Pro. Will this card avoid such audio desync problems? I'd love to hear from someone who has used the Elgato HD 60 Pro and has experience with it in this kind of setup.
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