Question / Help Should I run my games at 120fps instead of 144fps for smoother streaming?

O

Overstrand

New Member
I have a 144hz 2k monitor. I'm honestly interested if streaming while playing my game at 120fps is smoother than running my game at 144fps?

I've heard a few people explain to me that 120fps is better for the encoder because it's a multiple of 60. Is this true? Is the difference noticeable?
 
120 fps is better, if you intend to stream with 60 fps. To downsample to 60, OBS just drops every other frame. This will appear as smooth stream. If you play with 144 fps and tell OBS to downsample to 60 fps, OBS needs to drop every other frame and additionally some odd number more, and this will appear as slight stutter. The stream will not appear as smooth as it will appear with 120 fps.
 
True that. You would have less jitter. You can run the game at 120 Hz with G-Sync (or FreeSync) with vsync, so that it's still butter smooth for your gameplay, and thanks to the vsync the GPU will not be used 100%, leaving some margin for more demanding scenes or just for OBS to run smoothly. With a 2 PC setup, you set your OBS on the gaming PC just to capture the game at 60 fps and send to the HDMI, and you capture that 60 Hz from the HDMI for the stream : no tearing anywhere (no tearing on your <upto> 120 fps game and no tearing on the stream). And no jitter = it's smooth.
 
koala said:
120 fps is better, if you intend to stream with 60 fps. To downsample to 60, OBS just drops every other frame. This will appear as smooth stream. If you play with 144 fps and tell OBS to downsample to 60 fps, OBS needs to drop every other frame and additionally some odd number more, and this will appear as slight stutter. The stream will not appear as smooth as it will appear with 120 fps.
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Thanks fam
 
zetmor said:
True that. You would have less jitter. You can run the game at 120 Hz with G-Sync (or FreeSync) with vsync, so that it's still butter smooth for your gameplay, and thanks to the vsync the GPU will not be used 100%, leaving some margin for more demanding scenes or just for OBS to run smoothly. With a 2 PC setup, you set your OBS on the gaming PC just to capture the game at 60 fps and send to the HDMI, and you capture that 60 Hz from the HDMI for the stream : no tearing anywhere (no tearing on your <upto> 120 fps game and no tearing on the stream). And no jitter = it's smooth.
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How do people like Shroud manage this then? I'm pretty sure he doesn't cap his FPS ever. Same for practically any FPS esports title too. I myself am having this problem where I'm encountering my own stream to be not so smooth but there's no render or graphical lag or dropped frames. Is it purely 100% cos a capture card only takes 60fps from your video output and passes that on? Is it really that simple? Would that not mean that a 2 PC setup is ALWAYS going to be better regardless of that 1 PC setup's processing power?
 
A 2 PC setup is *almost always* better, yes.

The way I always describe this is by saying that the best use you can put a 2nd strong GPU to is to put it in another PC, preferably connected with a good capture device.

Right now I'd say the sweet spot for 1 PC setups is a machine driven by a 20xx series Nvidia card; because it has visual features like RTX that other cards don't, and the Turing NVENC encoder. So unless the 2nd PC has one as well, the two PC setup would be a little worse than the single PC setup-- either you'd lose the Turing encoder, or you'd lose the RTX features.
 
Shroud is a Counter-Strike player, and he *needs* the lower latency possible on the display. So it doesn't cap the FPS and has vsync off. That way the latency is kept minimum. However that means he DOES have screen tearing, and the stream HAS screen tearing. That's a tradeoff. Shroud is more targetting to be the best at the game than having a fancy stream ; like sprEEEzy was playing PUBG in Low settings, so spot enemies more easily. Not everyone are as good as those guys. Myself I'm very bad at those games, so I just play in Ultra settings, with vsync, so that at least the stream is nice to watch. :D
 
Other benefits of the 2 PC setup:
- you can switch games (like between DX12 and Vulkan games), or reboot your gaming pc without stopping the stream.
- the devices used on the stream PC aren't powered up when not streaming, when only using your gaming PC: like the Elgato Stream Deck or your fancy Camera or webcam, it's off and you don't have to worry about it when not streaming.
- you can use it to render the video edits.
- you can do more stuff on the stream, like having live capture of multiple web pages (chat, Skype or Zoom video calls, etc...), have video playbacks or fancy transitions, multiple webcams etc ... without worrying the added CPU that would use.
- and you have 2 PCs ... that's a good backup in case of you have a problem on your main PC. And the day you want to upgrade or change your main PC, you can sell it (whole or parts) anytime, just use the stream PC as a backup in the meantime. ;)

On my stream PC I've installed a GTX 1660 Ti : it has the Turing nvenc, and it's good enough for a 1080p gaming rig... making it easier to resell the whole PC later on.
 
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