Question / Help What kind of specs would you need for a second pc dedicated to recording?

[Zapawaf]

Hey,

Bit of an off question. I have a Lenovo legion Y740 with a 2080 maxq and 16gb ram. I've been able to max settings in games like csgo and record 1080p 60fps but now with the new MW the game maxes my GPU and recordings are choppy. I lowered settings and capped fps and it records fine, but I get motion sick believe it or not.

I've read a few things about offloading the recording to another PC, but I was curious if I wanted to part together a cheap system just to record, what would be the minimum I would need for purely recording and zero gaming on it?

 

[Cdrolly]

Could install a cheap second gpu and use nvec on it to record. Not sure if it needs to be an rtx just aslong as it is an nvidia card. Should be good. Plenty of videos online showing how to do this

 

[Deleted member 121471]

Post a logfile of a recording attempt before spending money on a dedicated streaming setup.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/

In the vast majority of cases, a 2nd pc is not needed if all you want to do is record gameplay with hardware encoder.

As far as motion sickness goes, low ingame FPS, narrow field of view and poorly implemented motion blur effects are the biggest contributors.

If you're really hellbent in getting a dedicated system on the cheap, I wouldn't spend money on anything lower than a Ryzen 5 2600, B450 Motherboard, 16GB of system memory and a GTX 1660, due to the number of options these offer if you want to do more, in the long run.

 

[TryHD]

Could install a cheap second gpu and use nvec on it to record. Not sure if it needs to be an rtx just aslong as it is an nvidia card. Should be good. Plenty of videos online showing how to do this

That is just bad advice on so many levels.
First he uses a notebook so no second GPU possible to install, second every hardware encoder sucks for streaming beside the one build on some, not all new nvidia GPUs.

 

[Zapawaf]

Post a logfile of a recording attempt before spending money on a dedicated streaming setup.

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/

In the vast majority of cases, a 2nd pc is not needed if all you want to do is record gameplay with hardware encoder.

As far as motion sickness goes, low ingame FPS, narrow field of view and poorly implemented motion blur effects are the biggest contributors.

If you're really hellbent in getting a dedicated system on the cheap, I wouldn't spend money on anything lower than a Ryzen 5 2600, B450 Motherboard, 16GB of system memory and a GTX 1660, due to the number of options these offer if you want to do more, in the long run.

Sorry for the delayed response. Just got off work. I'll check that logger you mentioned in the morning and report back. Meanwhile, I'm relatively new to the PC space having been on xbox for quite some time. I tried limiting the fps to 100, then 90, then all the way down to 60 fps since at best console can do that. I've turned off motion blurr in 2 spots as well as lowed some other settings and never bothered enabling ray tracing. But I'll log the original settings and log with my lowered settings and come back to you.

 

[Cdrolly]

didnt realise he streaming on a laptop and no he clearly states its for recording not streaming.

 

[Zapawaf]

So, assuming I've done this right, here are 2 different logs. One is with some of the settings lowered, and the fps capped to 60, the other is how I typically run the game with no caps and mostly maxed settings.

 

[Zapawaf]

didnt realise he streaming on a laptop and no he clearly states its for recording not streaming.

Sorry for any confusion. I should've stated I'm running a "gaming laptop". I know the performance of a desktop 2080 is 20-30% better than the max-q laptop version, but it handles perfectly fine for gaming alone, but when I throw recording into the mix it gets real choppy (the video not the gameplay). When I run 60fps cap the video has a bit of jitter to it it's not nearly as bad.

 

[Deleted member 121471]

On your OBS logs, both of them show rendering and encoding lag, which means that you're still overloading your graphics card.

I'll try covering all bases and recommend changing the following settings first:

1) Update your windows installation to the most recent version;
2) Once you confirm it's Windows 10 v18362, turn on "game mode" in Windows 10 settings "Gaming" category;
3) Change Windows 10 power plan to "High performance";
4) Install latest NVIDIA drivers, if needed;
5) Disable GEFORCE experience overlay and automated game optimization;
6) Using NVIDIA control panel, switch Power Management Mode to "Max performance".

Once you're done, change the following settings on OBS:

1) Run OBS as administrator;
2) Change YUV colour range to "Partial", for compatibility reasons;
3) You have multiple capture sources on the same scene. Even if disabled, they still incur a performance hit. Use a single capture source per scene;
4) Use NVENC encoder, "Quality" preset, "CQP" rate Control set between 16-23 (lower value= higher quality and large filesize), "Lookahead" and "Psycho Visual Tuning" turned off;
5) Test 720p recording first.

As far as game settings are concerned, do not use Ray Tracing as it is borderline useless with current gen hardware, the performance hit is not worth the increase in image fidelity.

For now, cap ingame FPS to 60 or turn on VSYNC and try medium settings. If you can produce a clean log without rendering or encoding lag, start turning up settings.

Lastly, does your laptop have a GSYNC panel? Are you running more than 1 monitor?

 

[Zapawaf]

On your OBS logs, both of them show rendering and encoding lag, which means that you're still overloading your graphics card.

I'll try covering all bases and recommend changing the following settings first:

1) Update your windows installation to the most recent version;
2) Once you confirm it's Windows 10 v18362, turn on "game mode" in Windows 10 settings "Gaming" category;
3) Change Windows 10 power plan to "High performance";
4) Install latest NVIDIA drivers, if needed;
5) Disable GEFORCE experience overlay and automated game optimization;
6) Using NVIDIA control panel, switch Power Management Mode to "Max performance".

Once you're done, change the following settings on OBS:

1) Run OBS as administrator;
2) Change YUV colour range to "Partial", for compatibility reasons;
3) You have multiple capture sources on the same scene. Even if disabled, they still incur a performance hit. Use a single capture source per scene;
4) Use NVENC encoder, "Quality" preset, "CQP" rate Control set between 16-23 (lower value= higher quality and large filesize), "Lookahead" and "Psycho Visual Tuning" turned off;
5) Test 720p recording first.

As far as game settings are concerned, do not use Ray Tracing as it is borderline useless with current gen hardware, the performance hit is not worth the increase in image fidelity.

For now, cap ingame FPS to 60 or turn on VSYNC and try medium settings. If you can produce a clean log without rendering or encoding lag, start turning up settings.

Lastly, does your laptop have a GSYNC panel? Are you running more than 1 monitor?

Wow, thanks for the detailed recommendations. I'll give those settings a go and get back to you.

Yes, I have a gsync display. Just using the laptop's display, no monitor.

 

[Zapawaf]

So I followed your advice and updated windows, graphics drivers, game mode, once scene in obs and obs settings. I tried the game with the 60fps settings I was running before, and then again with everything lowered almost everything and still get stuttering.

 

[Deleted member 121471]

Use "Game capture", it's the most efficient way to capture game software. Also, is the drive you're writing to a SSD or HDD? Is it a local drive?

 

[Zapawaf]

Use "Game capture", it's the most efficient way to capture game software. Also, is the drive you're writing to a SSD or HDD? Is it a local drive?

I've used both. I was using an external HDD for csgo which handled fine, just scrubbing footage was painful. These tests were done with my SSD on the D: drive. My games are running off C: drive.