[SOLVED] Can my PC stream and play?

[hharris13]

I'm wondering if my pc is capable of playing modern games at high settings while also streaming. I was streaming last night playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and noticed my stream was lagging. I was not lagging but the stream was so here are my specs:

GeForce GTX 1070
Intel Core i5 6600K
16 GB RAM
250 GB SSD
512 GB SSD
1TB HD

Upload Speeds of 10mb/s

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

Short answer it can, but not with a great result. Even an I7 7700k has issues with dropped frames (your lagging) at 1080p.

Ideally you would want to consider a min of a 6c/12t CPU like an I7 8700/k Ryzen 1600x/2600x/3600.

Most streamers wanting to have really good gaming experience and high quality output streams go for 8c/16t CPU's.

For 1080p streaming though, the 6c/12t CPU's above are sufficient, and give great gaming and high quality streams with practically no dropped frames.

You can try and dial down setting and output fps, but then for those watching the stream, it's not a good experience.

 

[tennis2]

Depends on the resolution and quality settings you're doing your stream at.

The 4C/4T i5-6600K isn't going to be great at streaming, even with GPU hardware acceleration.

 

[Phaaze88]

1080p high is certainly playable(60fps+). Are you also trying to stream at 1080p? That's going to be a little much with your current hardware - try 720p 30fps.

Oh, others beat me to it - whoops!

 

[hharris13]

Hey there,

Short answer it can, but not with a great result. Even an I7 7700k has issues with dropped frames (your lagging) at 1080p.

Ideally you would want to consider a min of a 6c/12t CPU like an I7 8700/k Ryzen 1600x/2600x/3600.

Most streamers wanting to have really good gaming experience and high quality output streams go for 8c/16t CPU's.

For 1080p streaming though, the 6c/12t CPU's above are sufficient, and give great gaming and high quality streams with practically no dropped frames.

You can try and dial down setting and output fps, but then for those watching the stream, it's not a good experience.

Okay thanks, so basically need to upgrade my CPU to something with at least 6c/12t

 

[tennis2]

Depends on your desired streaming settings.

 

[Dcopymope]

Okay thanks, so basically need to upgrade my CPU to something with at least 6c/12t

Six core CPU's have existed for years. If you buy one, don't just go by the cores but also by the architecture the chip is based on. If you go with AMD for instance, don't buy anything older than a zen 2 processor, 3rd generation, also referred to as the 3000 series. In other words, you shouldn't settle for anything less than a Ryzen 5 3600, preferably the Ryzen 5 3600X.

 

[tennis2]

I need to interject before we get too far down the rabbit hole. Since it seems your system seems to perform fine WITHOUT streaming, before you go spending this money on a complete system overhaul, please ask yourself this tough truth:
Does anyone care to watch you play games? If not, you're wasting your money for vanity.

Depending on your cash flow, upgrading the system may actually be a trivial endavor. And in that case, no biggie. Just keep it real.

 

[TerryLaze]

Depends on the resolution and quality settings you're doing your stream at.

The 4C/4T i5-6600K isn't going to be great at streaming, even with GPU hardware acceleration.

You can make a potato into a perfect gaming/streaming system with GPU hardware acceleration,all you have to do is to find the thread that does the actual streaming and put it into at least high priority,real-time priority is the best and you can do it without issues since the CPU usage of a GPU hardware accelerated stream is going to be next to zero.

 

[TerryLaze]

Hey there,

Short answer it can, but not with a great result. Even an I7 7700k has issues with dropped frames (your lagging) at 1080p.

Ideally you would want to consider a min of a 6c/12t CPU like an I7 8700/k Ryzen 1600x/2600x/3600.

Most streamers wanting to have really good gaming experience and high quality output streams go for 8c/16t CPU's.

For 1080p streaming though, the 6c/12t CPU's above are sufficient, and give great gaming and high quality streams with practically no dropped frames.

You can try and dial down setting and output fps, but then for those watching the stream, it's not a good experience.

This is completely fake news...
Most games can use 8 threads + and streaming can most definitely use up to 16 threads so you will still have a conflict for resources going on even before looking at mem and I/O in general.
You will still have to fidge around with quality settings, FPS limits and all that stuff.
Your info is good only if the OP is only after streaming minecraft or some other very single threaded game where all the rest of the CPU would be running the streaming unhindered.

 

[logainofhades]

For the money, a Ryzen 7 2700/2700x is a great choice, for streaming. If you can afford the 3700x, go for it, though.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

This is completely fake news...
Most games can use 8 threads + and streaming can most definitely use up to 16 threads so you will still have a conflict for resources going on even before looking at mem and I/O in general.
You will still have to fidge around with quality settings, FPS limits and all that stuff.
Your info is good only if the OP is only after streaming minecraft or some other very single threaded game where all the rest of the CPU would be running the streaming unhindered.

I'm genuinely not sure what point you are trying to make, but this is exactly what I mean:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-streaming-encoding-coffee-lake-ryzen,5326-6.html

A pretty comprehensive article on Tom's site which explains a great deal for those not in the know. And it particularly shows the i7 7700k dropping frames, and not keeping up with higher core/threaded CPU's.

As I mentioned, a decent 6c/12t CPU is sufficient for decent in game settings (which allows the player to enjoy the game while playing at 60fps) and along with a good enough GPU, will provide a good quality stream at 60fps at 1080p output. There is zero amount of settings you could change in OBS or Tiwtch or whatever streaming device that can make up for the 6600k lacking cores and threads. The game play and the stream would be just really poor.

 

[Phaaze88]

I'm genuinely not sure what point you are trying to make, but this is exactly what I mean:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-streaming-encoding-coffee-lake-ryzen,5326-6.html

A pretty comprehensive article on Tom's site which explains a great deal for those not in the know. And it particularly shows the i7 7700k dropping frames, and not keeping up with higher core/threaded CPU's.

As I mentioned, a decent 6c/12t CPU is sufficient for decent in game settings (which allows the player to enjoy the game while playing at 60fps) and along with a good enough GPU, will provide a good quality stream at 60fps at 1080p output. There is zero amount of settings you could change in OBS or Tiwtch or whatever streaming device that can make up for the 6600k lacking cores and threads. The game play and the stream would be just really poor.

I knew the stream quality wouldn't be great, I just didn't know to what extent.
720p 30, and streaming off the gpu would be the best the OP could do with their current hardware - it would still be crap though.