Question / Help Upgrading Dedicated Stream Box - 6700k to Xeon or Threadripper?

JohnnyOmaha

JohnnyOmaha

Member
I'm also looking to upgrade my stream machine, currently has a 6700k in there with 32gb ram, a 1080, and 4k60pro capture card taking 1440 video from game machine.

I stream a game called "Squad" which has a ton of foliage that just rips the encoding to shreds. My 6700k is choking on anything slower than the second CPU preset (superfast?)

Looking at these old Xeon servers popping up on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Hyperth...rd_wg=MJFGv&psc=1&refRID=FJGKWZNFNXSW3JWZT8CE

Or going for a Threadripper:
https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Threadri...=1513791538&sr=1-2&keywords=threadripper&th=1

Trying to get clean images for a fast moving spectator camera with a lot of foliage in frame - aka kobayashi maru - the no win scenario.

Would love feedback from anyone with experience with these chipsets or others that have been working for you. Thanks fellow OBS'ers! <3
 
Xaymar

Xaymar

Active Member
I have an AMD ThreadRipper 1950X with a GIGABYTE Designaire X399 board plus 64GB DDR4 and can only recommend this CPU. It's capable of x264 1080p60 veryslow, so it should have next to no issues with playing and encoding and even less with just encoding. For my streams and recordings I have x264 set to slow for console streams or to medium for PC streams and usually play rather CPU heavy games which it handles with next to no issues. It even handles coding and game development really well, if you're ever aiming to go into that area.

There is however some downsides: The performance of a single core of the CPU is mostly equivalent to an Intel Haswell core and the speed across physical cores is determined by RAM speed, so it pays off to have faster RAM. To give you an example, my setup is not capable of x264 medium at the default RAM speed of 2133 Mhz, barely capable of slower at 2400Mhz and almost fully capable of veryslow at 3200Mhz RAM speed.

Here's a YouTube upload of a stream i did a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpoOMemelB4 . This is a straight up upload of the original video streamed to twitch as I forgot to have recording encode separately.
 
M

masterac

New Member
Xaymar said:
I have an AMD ThreadRipper 1950X with a GIGABYTE Designaire X399 board plus 64GB DDR4 and can only recommend this CPU. It's capable of x264 1080p60 veryslow, so it should have next to no issues with playing and encoding and even less with just encoding. For my streams and recordings I have x264 set to slow for console streams or to medium for PC streams and usually play rather CPU heavy games which it handles with next to no issues. It even handles coding and game development really well, if you're ever aiming to go into that area.

There is however some downsides: The performance of a single core of the CPU is mostly equivalent to an Intel Haswell core and the speed across physical cores is determined by RAM speed, so it pays off to have faster RAM. To give you an example, my setup is not capable of x264 medium at the default RAM speed of 2133 Mhz, barely capable of slower at 2400Mhz and almost fully capable of veryslow at 3200Mhz RAM speed.

Here's a YouTube upload of a stream i did a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpoOMemelB4 . This is a straight up upload of the original video streamed to twitch as I forgot to have recording encode separately.
Click to expand...

i got a 1950x on a zenith with 64gb too, yet this ram can go to 3600mhz, but it can't start the pc if i go above the defaut of 2133, how did you do it ?
 
Xaymar

Xaymar

Active Member
You need RAM that is compatible with the motherboard and CPU. Ideally you need Samsung die based ram, like G.Skill. Also carefully choose which banks you install the memory to.
 
B

BornDownUnder

Member
With my R5 1600 and flareX 3200 kit, I had to increase the ProcODT to 48ohm, increase the memory voltage to 1.375v, increase the VDDR SOC to 1.175 otherwise it would be unstable as soon as I did anything remotely system intensive.
Make sure to read up on the voltage recommendations for your motherboard and memory kit first, every kit is different, every motherboard is different. You may have to use a little more voltage, you may get away with using less.

A good place for sourcing info on getting your hardware to work as intended:
http://www.overclock.net/forum/10-amd-cpus/
http://www.overclock.net/forum/11-amd-motherboards/
 
yanis31

yanis31

Member
Xaymar said:
I have an AMD It's capable of x264 1080p60 veryslow,

my setup is not capable of x264 medium at the default RAM speed of 2133 Mhz, barely capable of slower at 2400Mhz and almost fully capable of veryslow at 3200Mhz RAM speed.
Click to expand...

what are you saying? medium is very light compared to slow .. and not even talking about slower presets, i think you have it all mixed up. - i am interested in what the 1950x can pull off as a standalone encoder, any information would be useful...
 
B

BornDownUnder

Member
yanis31 said:
what are you saying? medium is very light compared to slow .. and not even talking about slower presets, i think you have it all mixed up. - i am interested in what the 1950x can pull off as a standalone encoder, any information would be useful...
Click to expand...
As a standalone encoding server, generally it is 2 presets slower than what you can run with playing a game (on the same system) that is CPU dependent, 1 preset slower for a game that is GPU dependent.
As Xaymar said, your CPU capability is very dependent upon your RAM speed in regards to the performance of all Ryzen based systems.
Anything above 3200Mhz would be the way to go, personally if creating a stand-alone encoding server, in quad-channel formation, 32-64GB.
B-die RAM is great for overclocking and is also most likely to hit its rated speed as default on Ryzen systems, motherboard bios has a big impact on what you can get the RAM speed to as well.

A general idea of a build (Courtesy of Gamers Nexus):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNrjCQhh2VI
 
yanis31

yanis31

Member
is there any reason for such a huge amount of ram? -i remember obs using a very limited amount of ram on a dedicated encoding machine that had 16gb in quad channel available (5820k)... a few hundred megabytes at most
EDIT + without doing extensive research i hear 3200mhz is actually the max frequency they can use so anything higher is apparently a waste...
my question was more regarding the approximate setting one can expect it to handle ... for instance my 5820k@4.5ghz was somewhere between medium and slow @864p60 .. could almost handle slow @ 720p60 but would get maxed once in a while ... the higher frequency vs xeon options and is what attracts me + if its true that you start to run into diminishing returns with more threads might just make it the sweet spot...
 
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BornDownUnder

Member
Quad channel is best for Threadripper, in terms of getting the peak performance out of the RAM you install. In general it is not so much the live encoding to broadcast that requires a lot of RAM, it will be the other applications you end up using the system for (Rendering, Encoding via HandBrake, Sony Vegas and more, etc)

I haven't read too much into overclocking RAM beyond 3200Mhz on Threadripper, mostly for the lack of having a chip myself, Ryzen loves high frequency RAM though. That being said there are diminishing returns after 3200Mhz, mostly due to the timings having to be quite loose for stability.

Could guarantee @Xaymar would have a far better idea of RAM usage in terms of what is optimal for a dedicated stream encoding PC, as well as what one could/should expect from the hardware setup.
 
Xaymar

Xaymar

Active Member
On my own System I am using 3200Mhz with CL14 memory (G.Skill RipJaws, not FlareX), which allows the use of the slower preset on 1080p60 in most cases, likely being restricted by Windows in this case. I found no difference from increasing the Frequency above 3200Mhz, most of the difference at those speeds came from Core overclocking and reducing memory latency. 'slow' is also somewhat possible, but I have not gotten a stable system with the settings for it.
 
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