Question / Help Xeon E5450 and x264?

KawaiiDesuNe

KawaiiDesuNe

New Member
Hello hello.
Trying to setup 2nd PC for encoding/decoding stream.
My main question is : will Xeon E5450 at my 2nd streaming PC encode in x264 (OBS Studio) 1080p60 if i play at my 1st PC (gaming).

Xeon E5450:
  • 3.0 GHz
  • 4 cores
  • x64 OS bit support
  • Cache L2 : 12 МБ
  • 1333 MHz
Thank you!
 
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sam686

Member
Graphics card? A motherboard with PCI-E x16 is needed with compatible graphics card, DirectX 10.1 or better.
Outdated motherboard may only have outdated incompatible on-board Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).

Using Capture card? Which one? Motherboard with 2 or more PCI-E slots might help.

With only 4 cores and no hyper-threading, it will have some problems with 1080p60. Using SuperFast might help with CPU usage.

With a compatible motherboard + dual identical CPU + windows 7/8/10 "Pro" or Linux, this can double to 8 cores (2x E5450) which may help 1080p60.

Edit: to add, a single E5450 isn't looking good, compared to dual E5450.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-E5450-vs-1st-CPU--Intel-Xeon-E5450/m5890vsm6719
 
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KawaiiDesuNe

KawaiiDesuNe

New Member
sam686 said:
Graphics card? A motherboard with PCI-E x16 is needed with compatible graphics card, DirectX 10.1 or better.
Outdated motherboard may only have outdated incompatible on-board Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).

Using Capture card? Which one? Motherboard with 2 or more PCI-E slots might help.

With only 4 cores and no hyper-threading, it will have some problems with 1080p60. Using SuperFast might help with CPU usage.

With a compatible motherboard + dual identical CPU + windows 7/8/10 "Pro" or Linux, this can double to 8 cores (2x E5450) which may help 1080p60.

Edit: to add, a single E5450 isn't looking good, compared to dual E5450.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Xeon-E5450-vs-1st-CPU--Intel-Xeon-E5450/m5890vsm6719
Click to expand...

Gote some old graphics card (radeon). should be compatible with DirectX 10.1.

Without any capture card. Saw OBS Ndi plugin. Looks really good. Already tried it PC - laptop.

But just in case is it seems fine? All the low cost setup and my idea. And how about we gonna change Xeon E5450 to Xeon E5540? or Xeon x3440? Many people like that one (Xeon x3440)
 
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Harold

Harold

Active Member
Those systems are too old to be suitable for use with OBS. I have a dual X5660 system that struggles mainly because of video card limitations, but single-CPU xeon setups from the era you're looking at WILL NOT be suitable as streaming machines.
 
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sam686

Member
For dual computer streaming, it is best to use a capture card, to free up everything from streaming PC (capture, encoding, GPU usage, network), and some games (including Destiny 2 beta PC) are not compatible with game capture.

Another thing to keep in mind, very old CPU from many years ago use a lot of power (watts) and generates a lot more heat then today's CPU with similar speed, like AMD Ryzen 3.
 
KawaiiDesuNe

KawaiiDesuNe

New Member
sam686 said:
For dual computer streaming, it is best to use a capture card, to free up everything from streaming PC (capture, encoding, GPU usage, network), and some games (including Destiny 2 beta PC) are not compatible with game capture.

Another thing to keep in mind, very old CPU from many years ago use a lot of power (watts) and generates a lot more heat then today's CPU with similar speed, like AMD Ryzen 3.
Click to expand...

basically i have capture card. it installed to my gaming PC. it's elgato HD60 Pro. but it's not gonna encode desktop video.

So in conclusion. Internet full of videos about gaming on Xeon and streaming on it. But we all here together think that it is ridiculous to use Xeon Core PC for just encode the capture and go straight to Twitch / YouTube.?
 
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sam686

Member
KawaiiDesuNe said:
Internet full of videos about gaming on Xeon and streaming on it. But we all here together think that it is ridiculous to use Xeon Core PC for just encode the capture and go straight to Twitch / YouTube.?
Click to expand...
intel have used "Xeon" on too many models. So far, all the models you suggested is 45nm, which may be too outdated and slow.

CPU with 32nm or smaller is about as far back as i would go.

Wikipedia have a list of them. (hint: use web browser search, ctrl+F)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors


There have been a 4 year old post about a more recent dual xeon X5650 and OBS classic, should also work for OBS-studio.
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/streaming-with-xeon.4279/
 
KawaiiDesuNe

KawaiiDesuNe

New Member
sam686 said:
intel have used "Xeon" on too many models. So far, all the models you suggested is 45nm, which may be too outdated and slow.

CPU with 32nm or smaller is about as far back as i would go.

Wikipedia have a list of them. (hint: use web browser search, ctrl+F)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors


There have been a 4 year old post about a more recent dual xeon X5650 and OBS classic, should also work for OBS-studio.
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/streaming-with-xeon.4279/
Click to expand...

Probably our discussion can help many people. Trying to reach good quality and comfortable streaming setup. So i thought that Intel Xeon can help with encoding in x264 encoder.

You helped me a lot. For now on i'm thinking about:
  • to build normal PC (not budget) and use it as encoding system.
  • or to look forward and look at Intel core i7 920 at 1366 socket....
What would you suggest?

p.s. after our discussions i will save all this messages to help other people.
 
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tristanwc

New Member
I'm also using the NDI plugin. My streaming pc has: i5 3450(non-k) & AMD 7950

It seems to have encoding overloading problems if I put the cpu preset below veryfast which causes the stream to drop a ton of frames. Veryfast seems to be the sweet spot for my cpu. Planning on upgrading it if I decide to stream more often and quality becomes an issue.

Heres a vod with the dual pc setup running PUBG if anybody is interested:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/183777810?t=02h24m18s

I'm also kinda looking at the Xeon chips or older i7s.
 
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KawaiiDesuNe

KawaiiDesuNe

New Member
sam686 said:
i7-920-950 is 4 cores and is going back to inefficient and kindof slow 45-nm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_microprocessors

The recording/streaming computer can have a budget or cheap graphics card, Directx 10.1 or newer.
Click to expand...

Sure i don't need good quality graphic card, that is obvious :) .
But the interesting thing is.. back in a days i've been playing dota2 (high quality options) and been streaming at 480p at the same time at Intel "Core 2 Duo" (and back in a days i never tried to boost/overclock my cpu.). Worked kinda fine.
That is the other reason why i'm trying to get consultation or advice from well knowledged (could't find any other word) people.
 
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sam686

Member
For 1920x1080 60fps, you will need about 13.5 times more CPU power compared to what is needed for 640x480 30fps. If you only need 1080p30 or 720p60, the CPU like you mentioned above will do.

Changing x264 preset to SuperFast or UltraFast might help reduce CPU requirements, at a cost of quality.

multiplying width, height, and frame rate:
640x480x30 = 9,216,000 (4:3 ratio)
1280x720x30 = 27,648,000 (16:9 ratio)
1920x1080x30 = 62,208,000
1920x1080x60=124,416,000

Hardware encoders: there is an option to use hardware GPU encoders, NVENC for NVidia graphics card, AMD VCE for recent AMD graphics card, QuickSync for recent intel CPU+GPU. They might work better then x264 UltraFast preset, expecially for 1080p bitrates higher then 8000 kbps. GPU encoders can be used on old dual core CPU, but it need to have PCI-E x16 (graphics card) and PCI-E x1 (capture card), with windows 7 or newer.

Edit: Often times, Windows 7 or free Linux can be installed on old computers, but on windows, have to deal with large number of manual driver installs and needing license key. On Linux, have to deal with trying to enable NVENC as well as to look for a capture card with Linux support.

Which NVidia have NVENC? this link may help.
https://help.elgato.com/customer/po...ia-graphic-cards-do-support-nvenc-technology-

There is an old post that compared x264 and some of hardware GPU encoders.
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/obs-benchmarking-1080p-60fps-cpu-vs-nvenc-vs-quick-sync.15963/
 
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