Question / Help What is my bottleneck? (Looking to upgrade)

[Jessthebear]

Hay guys, so I have a pretty bad PC for streaming, it can stream SOME things that are not very intensive, but here are my specs:

Intel core 2 quad q8400 2.66ghz
Nvidia Geforce 8800gtx 768mb direct x 10
8gb DDR3 Ram 1333MHZ
ASRock G41C-GS (motherboard)

I know the system isn't great (CPU MB and graphics card), but I am looking to upgrade. However, I can only afford to upgrade 1 thing at the moment, so would it be better than I upgraded my graphics card first, (and PSU) to a Nvidia Geforce GT 670 (or 660), or should I upgrade my MB and CPU to something like an i5 (I do not plan to over clock so any recommendations for a good CPU and MB for around £200 (maybe a little over) would be super). Just want to stream games at a least 720p, 60fps would be a huge bonus as well! Thanks for your help, if you need more info just ask!

Jess

Edit: I wouldn't mind swapping over to AMD though if it is suitable, I have heard it can be cheaper. Cheaper is good :P

 

[alpinlol]

your whole system :/ the only think you could keep is your ram

 

[Jessthebear]

your whole system :/ the only think you could keep is your ram

Yeah I know :P But I am curious to which is the bigger bottleneck, the graphics card, or the cpu? :) Can't really upgrade both at the moment so it has to be 1 of them, so curious to which is worse :P

 

[Floatingthru]

You should just wait until you can buy a whole new system. OBS needs both parts to be up to par to create a smooth stream. I guess if you could upgrade your gpu you could stream at like 360p on non cpu intensive games. Then if you were to upgrade your cpu then OBS would still run poorly due to having a really slow gpu that can't keep up with the encoding process. Having an unbalanced pc doesn't really help you out at all if one part can't keep up with the other. I would personally just wait until you had more money. Since upgrading one piece of your computer will not help you out in the way you think it would.

 

[alpinlol]

if you really have to save money i'd go with an complete amd system if id be you .... something like an fx 8320 and a amd radeon r9 270x from gigabyte + a decent cheap board with an 990x or 990fx chipset for like 80-120 going to be like 360-400 in total since you might save your hdd and if its really ddr3 ram you can also save the ram

 

[FerretBomb]

Yep, generally your bottleneck is 'everything'. It's a garden hose, not a bottleneck, not to be harsh.
My recommendation is to save up for a mobo+CPU combo (since you can get a discount) and go with an i7 (or Xeon). An i5 is decent for gaming alone, but in combination with streaming... well. It just doesn't hold up. Also, a decent aftermarket cooler (CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ or Evo are good choices, if you have the space) especially if you go for the i7 and plan to overclock it for more performance.
Personally, I wouldn't go with an AMD for a workstation system. Servers, sure. But I've found them to deliver less-consistent performance than the Intel side when under full-load, immediate-response situations. On a server, you tend to chuck a request at it and let it chew, where the varying response of the AMD stuff isn't going to be too noticeable.

I recommend this as it's *easy* to upgrade a GPU later. Plug and play. Not so much with a CPU/Mobo. Also, GPUs move a lot faster, and if you wait for the next-gen to come out, the prices on the last-gen drop like a rock. Also, streaming is EXTREMELY CPU dependent... less-so on the GPU.

Too much CPU? Go to a slower preset. Better image quality.
Too much GPU? Turn up the in-game options maybe? The stream will still look poor as your CPU is struggling to keep up with running the game, AND encoding all of those extra visual effects in the video stream.

So yeah. tl;dr- CPU+Mobo first.

 

[Jessthebear]

I know it is pretty crappy, but thank your very much for the advice everyone :) I will wait a bit, probs till after xmas and get a nice combo, probs a Haswell gen CPU and stuff :) Thanks a lot :D

 

[dodgepong]

I'll echo everyone else's suggestions to get a new PC, but if you had to upgrade only one thing, I would recommend upgrading the GPU. That GPU performs horribly with OBS, and while the CPU isn't great either, getting a better GPU will at least allow you to stream at a stead framerate, whereas that GPU won't allow you to stream steadily at all.