What laptop to choose?

[joelmellin]

Hi!

I want to stream LIVE to FB and YouTube 1920x1080 (not play games) and I have a headache to know which laptop to choose from. I called different stores and they tell me different things. The first one told me NOT to buy a gaming computer, while the other one told me to buy a gaming computer because the graphics card is so much better and I would probably need that.
The first person told me to buy ASUS-Zenbook-S-UX393EA-PURE2-13-9-3300x2200-Touch-i7-1165G7-16GB-1TB-Intel-Iris-Plus with:

• Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7-processor
• 3:2 IPS-s´creen
• 16 GB LPDDR4 RAM, 1 TB SSD
  while the other one told me to buy Acer Predator Triton with:
• AMD™ Ryzen™ 7 5800H processor
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 grafics
• 16 GB DDR4 RAM, 1000 GB SSD

the price is about the same. But which one is best for the streaming that I want to do? Maybe it would be sufficient with an even less advanced laptop than those mentioned above?

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Personally, I much prefer AMD CPUs at the moment, but with Intel's latest 11th gen laptop CPUs, they are closing the gap. But in a toss-up, I'd go with AMD. But just a personal preference. With latest Intel 11th gen, I might be tempted to stick with Intel laptop if it had Thunderbolt 4 for quick data transfers. As for CPU comparison, single-threaded is near pointless in this decade or last (or than poorly written games), and when it comes to overall power, the 5800H is about 2X as powerful as the 1165G7. A more comparable CPU would be the Intel Core i7-11800H

A system longevity (which most people don't care about, but I do), having the RTX GPU should provide a nice GPU encode offload choice which probably won't make much difference today, but in 3 years when you want to upgrade 4K?
This forum and EposVox YT videos explain just how badly AMD has messed up when it come to H.264 encoding for livestreaming. Will current efforts fix that? only time will tell. If you prefer a solid bet, vs a long-shot, an AMD Turing or Ampere NVENC would be the recommendation. And based on using GPU encode offload is why some will recommend a gaming laptop, as that is where you will find a lower price for such capability.

That said, any laptop is going to be much less capable than an equivalent desktop (less electricity = less horsepower for both CPU and GPU). If you don't need maximum capability and do need portability/flexibility, then a laptop can be fine. If you want long-term value, a business class laptop can easily last 5 years. I avoided consumer class gear more than coronavirus as they tend to be penny-wise, pound-foolish. So, first I wouldn't get either of those consumer laptops. But if I were given either of those 2, I'd try to sell the i7-1165G7 as new unopened, but I'd play with the Ryzen 5800H

My recent laptops have been engineering class laptop with dual M.2 drive slots and 4 DIMM slots. Lots to consider

 

[qhobbes]

You don't need a GeForce RTX #### to stream 1080p to FB and YT. That's a bunch of BS. That's like saying you need a Ferrari to go 100 MPH.
My 9 year old laptop is sufficient for 1080p 30 FPS streaming video from an input. If you wanted 60 FPS, you would need something newer, but not much. I do need more RAM now but only because of plugin which uses ~2.3 GB RAM.

Is your source just a video camera or other video capture device?

 

[joelmellin]

You don't need a GeForce RTX #### to stream 1080p to FB and YT. That's a bunch of BS. That's like saying you need a Ferrari to go 100 MPH.
My 9 year old laptop is sufficient for 1080p 30 FPS streaming video from an input. If you wanted 60 FPS, you would need something newer, but not much. I do need more RAM now but only because of plugin which uses ~2.3 GB RAM.

Is your source just a video camera or other video capture device?

Thanks for your comments!

As source I will use a Panasonic Lumix camera and another camera, so two cameras at the same time. Sometimes I also add a video clip as a source or a power point via the NDI plugin. What I basically do is recording different programs in front of a greenscreen using cameras, microphone and then either stream LIVE or record or sometimes both stream and record at the same time. I also want to be able to stream to both YouTube and FB at the same time. With the laptop I have now the video is lagging, and sometimes the audio and video gets out of sync when I play a video clip that goes into the stream. But this Lenovo V570 laptop that I have now is almost 10 years old, 6 GB RAM only so no wonder!

I also found this one, do you think that would work for what I want to accomplish?:

Lenovo Gaming 3 - 15,6" | Ryzen 5 4600H | 16GB | 512GB | GTX 1650Ti | 120Hz

Lenovo Gaming 3 - 15,6" | Ryzen 5 | 16GB | 512GB | GTX 1650Ti | 120Hz

Lenovo Gaming 3 - 15,6" | Ryzen 5 | 16GB | 512GB | GTX 1650Ti | 120Hz finns hos Inet! Sveriges bästa datorbutik med det senaste för gaming- & teknikentusiaster.

www.inet.se

Price for that one is around 1100$

Next step would be this one:
Lenovo Legion 5 - 17,3" | Ryzen 5 5600H | 16GB | 512GB | RTX 3060 | 144Hz

Lenovo Legion 5 - 17,3" | Ryzen 5 | 16GB | 512GB | RTX 3060 | 144Hz

Lenovo Legion 5 - 17,3" | Ryzen 5 | 16GB | 512GB | RTX 3060 | 144Hz finns hos Inet! Sveriges bästa datorbutik med det senaste för gaming- & teknikentusiaster.

www.inet.se

Price around 1400$

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

I never said one needs an RTX to stream 1080p
Notice I specifically was referring to system longevity, and said an RTX most likely wouldn't make a difference now at 1080p but might in the future if one wanted to upgrade to 4k. So what of what I actually said about the GPU is BS?

And yes, qhobbes you have impressively optimized your setup, in a way that I congratulate you for, and for which most technically challenged folks couldn't pull off. I couldn't pull of a 720p stream on a 5yr old gaming laptop with my non-gaming requirements (with what I knew at the time).
And even now, my OBS knowledge doesn't approach yours. However, as you note, it depends on EXACTLY what one is doing in OBS (and how the OS is setup) as to the hardware resource demands one will create when doing real-time video encoding. To use your analogy, going 100mph is easy... going 100mph into a tight off-camber turn without slowing or crashing, now that takes some skill and a more capable setup. And to translate that silly analogy of mine, the challenge for some users is that they don't technically know whether their requirements are the equivalent of semi-truck, an 80s Yugo, a SCCA sports car or Formula 1. For example, oh, user heard one can do a true green screen? etc. And such users will typically want to get up and running vs focusing on educating themselves in the intricacies of optimizing both OS, OBS, and their network (maybe).

Note OP was taking about a new system. So an older Turing based NVENC doesn't make sense, and short of a budget deal on a prior year model, neither would a laptop based RTX 2xxx series card. So in a new laptop scenario that one wants to last, an RTX 3xxx (even just a 3050, i think..maybe) makes the most sense. Would a 10th or 11th gen Intel only system using QuickSync for video encode work for low-end needs ... sure. Would that handle 4K? Especially as a typical person's OBS usage would most likely mature/get more sophisticated over time and that could mean higher resource demands.

 

[TheAmericanWanderer]

this tread seems to be along the lines of my question below, if not let me know where it should be...

I have an Asus and hate the network chip/card of this laptop... nothing but problems... since I've had it...

I'm thinking of buying the following (not technical on this stuff)

• Intel® Core™ i7-1165G7 processor Quad-core 2.80 GHz
• Intel® Iris Xe Graphics shared memory
• 17.3" Full HD (1920 x 1080) 16:9
• 16 GB, DDR4 SDRAM
• 512 GB SSD

I don't ever plan to go to 4k video... I just do youtube vids...

will the intel Iris Xe chip be compatible and what would my settings be? Im using the Nvidea chip in
current computer

again, Im old, not technacal on all this stkuff

thanks...

JT

 

[qhobbes]

If the difference in price doesn't matter, get the Acer. I hope you're not using WiFi to stream, if so use wired connection. Post a log of your current setup with a stream session.

 

[joelmellin]

You don't need a GeForce RTX #### to stream 1080p to FB and YT. That's a bunch of BS. That's like saying you need a Ferrari to go 100 MPH.
My 9 year old laptop is sufficient for 1080p 30 FPS streaming video from an input. If you wanted 60 FPS, you would need something newer, but not much. I do need more RAM now but only because of plugin which uses ~2.3 GB RAM.

Is your source just a video camera or other video capture device?

Thanks for all of your comments!

As source I will use a Panasonic Lumix camera and another camera, so two cameras at the same time. Sometimes I also add a video clip as a source or a power point via the NDI plugin. What I basically do is recording different programs in front of a greenscreen using cameras, microphone and then either stream LIVE or record or sometimes both stream and record at the same time. I also want to be able to stream to both YouTube and FB at the same time. With the laptop I have now the video is lagging, and sometimes the audio and video gets out of sync when I play a video clip that goes into the stream. But this Lenovo V570 laptop that I have now is almost 10 years old, 6 GB RAM only so no wonder!

I also found this one, do you think that would work for what I want to accomplish?:

Lenovo Gaming 3 - 15,6" | Ryzen 5 4600H | 16GB | 512GB | GTX 1650Ti | 120Hz
Price for that one is around 1100$

Or next step in that series would be this one:
Lenovo Legion 5 - 17,3" | Ryzen 5 5600H | 16GB | 512GB | RTX 3060 | 144Hz
Price around 1400$

 

[qhobbes]

If $300 ain't going to break the bank, go with the Legion 5.
You have multiple options for streaming to multiple platforms. If you have the bandwidth you can use Multiple RTMP outputs plugin (simplest), a RTMP server such as NGINX or even the record function (those are both more technical). If you don't have the bandwidth, you can use a service such as restream.io