Question / Help Single PC Streaming on X264 Medium - 9900K - Does RAM Speed Matter?

[Carto]

Hey peeps o/

I stream off a single PC, so we're on the same page, specs below (pic attached, I'm a proud builder and overclocker lol) :

9900K @ 5ghz
32GB DDR4 @ 3200
MSI Z390 mobo
MSI RTX 2080
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD



I've had extremely good results so far using this setup with the X264 medium preset at 900P 60FPS (I run this for mobile users), but have been considering moving to 1080P 60FPS as I'm partnered and peeps can select the res they'd like so I think mobile users would be alright. I was curious however, if there is any additional quality/performance to be had out of upgrading to faster RAM. My current motherboard will handle up to 4500mhz RAM and I was looking at some 4266mhz sticks (8GB X4) to replace my current 3200mhz sticks.

I'm just unsure how much the speed of your memory impacts the encoder. I've seen some threads on here with people mentioning how it really helps with Ryzen but I didn't find anything about extreme RAM speeds and Intel.

Again, so far the stream is running amazing while gaming on a single PC but I'm always on the hunt for anything else I can do to squeeze more out of it.

Thanks in advance,

Carto

 

[carlmmii]

On the intel side, nope. Above a certain threshold, you're not going to see any improvement, and you're already way above that threshold.

Ryzen benefits from better performance just because of how the infinity fabric works, since the RAM is much more integral to inter-core communication. Intel is much more segmented in that regard, with RAM not really factoring in at all for on-die performance.

 

[NordicBattalion]

Carto,
Your games will definitely have usage of faster ram and especially if you decide to play a game that is cpu bound. I doubt you will be able to stream with medium x264 in a cpu bound game and keep a healthy fps in game.

 

[Agamemnus]

Hey mate,

With an RTX 2080, you can just stream using NVENC and it will be better than any x264 settings that you can find. The Turing cards are spectacular at this.

Proof is in this link:
https://unrealaussies.com/tech/nvenc-x264-quicksync-qsv-vp9-av1/

It's long, but on page 9 (NVENC Part 2) you can see that it beats the crap out of x264 Medium and Slow presets. You will struggle to do 1080p60 Slow preset with x264.

With Version 23 of OBS, RAM will no longer even matter for NVENC. Currently, with version 22, even slow RAM will still cope just fine with 1080p60 using the Turing NVENC. There IS however, currently some frame drops if you do 1440p60 with OBS version 22 on Turing in a visually stunning game like Apex Legends when it has no ability to frame cap in-game. If you aren't in this situation, you'll be totally fine. RAM is not even a concern for you.

 

[Carto]

Hey mate,

With an RTX 2080, you can just stream using NVENC and it will be better than any x264 settings that you can find. The Turing cards are spectacular at this.

Proof is in this link:
https://unrealaussies.com/tech/nvenc-x264-quicksync-qsv-vp9-av1/

It's long, but on page 9 (NVENC Part 2) you can see that it beats the crap out of x264 Medium and Slow presets. You will struggle to do 1080p60 Slow preset with x264.

With Version 23 of OBS, RAM will no longer even matter for NVENC. Currently, with version 22, even slow RAM will still cope just fine with 1080p60 using the Turing NVENC. There IS however, currently some frame drops if you do 1440p60 with OBS version 22 on Turing in a visually stunning game like Apex Legends when it has no ability to frame cap in-game. If you aren't in this situation, you'll be totally fine. RAM is not even a concern for you.

Wow, that is a TON of info, thanks so much for sharing :) I'll do a deep dive into it and see if I can further optimize my NVENC encoder. Once I switched from NVENC (I've only been doing X264 Medium for about a week) I did notice a lot of people saying the stream quality was much higher vs when I was running NVENC, but it could have been a setting on my end for sure. I'll dive in and see what that article has for findings, thanks again :)

 

[Agamemnus]

Yeah man, I heard a lot about the RTX 20 series NVENC encoder and had to check for myself. That's Overwatch footage, VMAF scores for Apex coming soon. Might do 1080p instead of 1440p too.

Older NVENC implementations do OK if you have HEAPS of bandwidth to spare. Like, 1080p60 at least 6Mbps. If your bandwidth is tight, x264 Medium is better.

But Turing NVENC beats it all for H.264 video which is what Twtich uses. High bandwidth, low bandwidth, doesn't matter to Turing. If you didn't have a Turing card, then you could optimise your CPU and maybe RAM, but since you have one, trust me, you're good with that. Forget about RAM and buy yourself a sweet mic or greenscreen or something.

 

[NordicBattalion]

I have still yet to see any Nvenc recording looking better than a software x264 given the same resolution, fps and bitrate for streaming purposes. I have made my own tests, but i am too biased towards x264 to be honest, but my tests shows that i need upwards of 30k bitrate for Nvenc to look identical to x264 medium. Nobody will stream at 30k anytime soon. And my tests are with Turing.

 

[Agamemnus]

I have hundreds of screenshots that are in my opinion much better for the Turing version than x264 Medium and Slow, at the exact same bitrate. The problem with opinion is that it's just that, I shared bias towards x264 for ages, throughout Pascal and the current QuickSync, I didn't want to believe anything about Turing until I saw it.

So, instead of using opinion, I did the tests in the above link using VMAF, which is the what Netflix uses to determine whether or not they can get more quality for the bandwidth. If you are willing to trust Netflix has their own bandwidth costs in mind as well as their customer satisfaction, then VMAF is how they work it out. Turing beats x264 in VMAF tests, consistently and conclusively, at the same bitrate.

I assume when you say 30k, you actually mean 30M right? Cause 30k is frigging tiny.

 

[NordicBattalion]

Yes, sorry for the confusion. "k" have been the lay man terms as of late, a bit too much to be honest and therefore miss communicated. My bad. I just made a couple of uploads with the same game, same mission, same lightning etc. These are just ripped straight from Twitch and uploaded to Youtube. Description is in the upload. Turing card used. Thank you for the reply and your tests.

https://youtu.be/ELAsJYvQc4A (Nvenc)
https://youtu.be/I1YKIZjmj1I (x264)

 

[Agamemnus]

The k is common yeah. I looked at your videos and I must admit, I do think the x264 one does look marginally better. I don't think it's a big difference though. They're both at 6? Maybe I need to test some other games, I've only done Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm and Apex since I got my GPU.

 

[Carto]

I have still yet to see any Nvenc recording looking better than a software x264 given the same resolution, fps and bitrate for streaming purposes. I have made my own tests, but i am too biased towards x264 to be honest, but my tests shows that i need upwards of 30k bitrate for Nvenc to look identical to x264 medium. Nobody will stream at 30k anytime soon. And my tests are with Turing.

I'll get some clips uploaded here tonight. I ran some tests last night with the new nvenc encoder, it was better than X264 on medium and I had some settings scuffed on the nvenc encoder. Here is the first time I ran around in apex for a few minutes with nvenc encoding enabled, I was pretty blown away at the quality.

https://clips.twitch.tv/WrongEasyPterodactylBigBrother

 

[Agamemnus]

I'll get some clips uploaded here tonight. I ran some tests last night with the new nvenc encoder, it was better than X264 on medium and I had some settings scuffed on the nvenc encoder. Here is the first time I ran around in apex for a few minutes with nvenc encoding enabled, I was pretty blown away at the quality.

https://clips.twitch.tv/WrongEasyPterodactylBigBrother

Glad you like it. The encoder part of that card, the NVENC chipset, will quite happily do 1440p in it's quality mode, you can go up to 2160p if you change the preset to "fast" or "High Performance" and then you start to reach it's limits.

Apex Legends is notorious for not being able to manually frame cap, so it will gladly use 100% of a graphics card if you're not careful. Some people really struggle to solve this with Apex, you lucked out. Maybe just cause you have a 2080, maybe you've got V-Sync on, I dunno. OBS just needs a few % of your GPU free for the RENDER operation of putting your webcam and notifications over the gameplay, the ENCODE part is all contained within NVENC and is what competes with x264.

I threw you a follow, I'll come say hi sometime and watch you get a chicken dinner. Username is UnrealAussies or Agamemnus.