Question / Help Streaming PC setup advice.

[Maelas]

Hey guys -

Ive been through the forum and have received some useful info however I am still left with some questions.
Some context:

Gaming PC -
CPU: I7 3770K
Motherboard: Asus Maximus V Formula
RAM: 16GB Crucial Ballistix Elite
Water Cooling: Corsair H100i
PSU: Antec 750W
GPU: Radeon HD 7970 3GB

Possible Streaming PC -
Originall Xbox gutted and made into PC with and Intel i3 540


Im seeing tutorials using nginx which is linux i believe however Id like my streaming PC to use windows.

Also in this setup from what I am seeing, there are 2 syncs going on. One from my gaming pc to the streaming pc and from the streaming PC to twitch. My gaming PC apparently has to be set to use quicksync. But It has a GPU so im wondering why the gaming pc has to use quicksync here.

So far thats all I have at the moment. Any advice would be appreciated!

Maelas

 

[H4ndy]

Is there a specific reason you don't just use your gaming PC for streaming?
Your i3-540 won't be able to encode a quality stream since it's a pretty old Dual Core CPU already so direct streaming would be your best shot at the moment.

 

[Maelas]

aww really? I had a feeling. Well I am considering the dual pc setup as I dont like the hit my 3770k takes when streaming/recording/playing. I thought a dualcore streaming pc would be all i need. However if it isnt enough then I will consider upgrading it.

Though I still need to know why would my gaming pc need to use quicksync if it has a gpu? Is this just to take the load off the gaming PC CPU and then the streaming PC does the real work and encodes it again for twitch?

Thanks!

 

[Maelas]

So no matter how I look at it, whether I want to use a Capture Card or not, Im going to need a beefier streaming PC setup?

 

[Cryonic]

Your i7 3770K is more than enough for 720p 60FPS or 1080p 30FPS+ streaming, only a few really demanding games will force you down to a faster preset or 720p 30FPS.

And with your AIO watercooler you can push your CPU a bit if you want, i mean its an open multi and the hardware is good enough to run ~4,5GHz or even more.

You dont need to upgrade your rig and dont buy a capture card if you dont need an HDMI input (camera/console streaming). CPU encoding is more that enough.
With that CPU you dont need Quicksync, its fast enough. But you can use it, and AMD encoding is still beta.

 

[Maelas]

Ok I appreciate that. This was more for my 2nd pc running the i3 - 540 processor. Was hoping there was a way to get all streaming load off my gaming PC.

Now I did lower the CPU preset in OBS to faster instead of just fast and the CPU load dropped quite a bit. Now from what Im reading this CPU preset depending on the setting chosen makes the CPU assist in encoding? for some reason I thought it was my GPU doing the encoding until i saw that.

As far as pushing my CPU - I am using the overclocked software that came included and as far as i can tell, the CPU is running at 4GHz. Now it doesn't stay at 4GHz, it will get up there then dip and go back up. Im assuming it does this when the CPU is being taxed.

I have used quicksync as a test and it works, but yea the quality suffers a bit but it was still pretty good.

 

[Jack0r]

Ya the i3 wont make you happy at all. You would have to lower the preset dramatically to get it working, and might even have to lower the resolution. CPU encoding (using x264) is currently the best method to get a good quality. And cpu encoding is the default used in OBS, only if you have QuickSync or a NVenc, you can switch that, but you will loose quality as you noticed.
Default preset is veryfast btw, so for a demanding game, you could use that instead of faster/fast to free up even more resources on your i7.

 

[GodlessGeek]

Though I still need to know why would my gaming pc need to use quicksync if it has a gpu? Is this just to take the load off the gaming PC CPU and then the streaming PC does the real work and encodes it again for twitch?

Yes, that's it exactly. QuickSync is also supplied by a GPU - the one built into your processor, sometimes refered to as an iGPU.

QuickSync quality is pretty good if you use it at a high bit rate, which you can do if you're recording with it or sending it to your own rtmp server. I use it to send the stream to the rtmp server on my second PC. On the second PC, the ffmpeg program encodes it using the x264 codec, then sends it to the Twitch server.