Question / Help What upgrade path to take???

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duganator9

Member
Hey guys, I'm currently running two pc's in my house. The first pc is my gaming pc which is a 5960x with a 1070 and I'm fairly happy with the performance of that. The second pc is my streaming computer which also doubles as my plex and rendering machine. The streaming box has an e5 2670 v2 10 core and I'm not super happy with the performance. I can only stream at 720p/60 fps medium/slow and I'd really like to stream at 1080p so I'm wondering what direction I should take? I can buy an e5 1680v2 8 core for around 400 and have a drop in upgrade which would be nice, but I realize I'd be buying into a dead platform. Second option would be buying a threadripper cpu and selling all the stuff from the current streaming box. The last option would be to have one pc for everything and buy one of the higher core count i9 cpus. What do you guys think would be best? Sorry for the long rant.
 
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awolive

Member
if you stream at 720p60 you should effectively be able to stream at 1080p30. but seriously just had this talk with someone else. Xeon processors aren't efficient x264 encoders because they tend to cap out on CPU utilization around 50-70%. 1080p60 requires 3.6-4.0ghz and around 10-16 threads from my testing @ medium preset.

I can't recommend the 1950x Threadripper as I run into the same issue of not being able to hit 100% CPU usage for a dedicated streaming PC but as a gaming/streaming PC its perfect because you don't want to use all of your CPU encoding you need room for the game. Best solution for dedicated streaming PC would be Ryzen 7 8 core or a i7-8700k as the Threadripper will suffer from parked cores/threads
 
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duganator9

Member
awolive said:
if you stream at 720p60 you should effectively be able to stream at 1080p30. but seriously just had this talk with someone else. Xeon processors aren't efficient x264 encoders because they tend to cap out on CPU utilization around 50-70%. 1080p60 requires 3.6-4.0ghz and around 10-16 threads from my testing @ medium preset.

I can't recommend the 1950x Threadripper as I run into the same issue of not being able to hit 100% CPU usage for a dedicated streaming PC but as a gaming/streaming PC its perfect because you don't want to use all of your CPU encoding you need room for the game. Best solution would be Ryzen 7 8 core or a i7-8700k.
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I've thought about the ryzen/8700k path for the stream pc, but I'd honestly rather use an unlocked 8 core xeon since it's drops right into my current hardware. The cost for the cpu is around $400 and all my existing hardware will support it. If I went ryzen or 8700k I'd have to completely change everything about that computer.
 
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awolive

Member
maybe try to get a high clock speed Xeon (would need a high base clock speed close to 3.6ghz) from a seller with a return policy. if it works you saved yourself the money on a new build if not return and consider your options from there. You don't really need a ton of cores/threads for OBS you get diminishing returns on encoding after 16 threads from my testings and above 24 the quality gets worst. I generally like 12-16 threads for 1080p60 @ medium. So the ideal processor for dedicated streaming would be 6-8 core highest clock speed you can afford.
 
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duganator9

Member
awolive said:
maybe try to get a high clock speed Xeon (would need a high base clock speed close to 3.6ghz) from a seller with a return policy. if it works you saved yourself the money on a new build if not return and consider your options from there. You don't really need a ton of cores/threads for OBS you get diminishing returns on encoding after 16 threads from my testings and above 24 the quality gets worst. I generally like 12-16 threads for 1080p60 @ medium. So the ideal processor for dedicated streaming would be 6-8 core highest clock speed you can afford.
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the e5 1680 v2 is a fully unlocked 8 core ivy bridge xeon. Most reports say they get into the mid 4s
 
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awolive

Member
check the return policy and if they allow 15-30 days returned opened then try it out. it would save you money
 
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awolive

Member
yes! i would try that before buying anything else. just overclock it to 4.5 if its stable should do the trick.
 
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