PC specs for streaming games

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brianx96

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Apr 25, 2015
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Hey guys, I'm starting to record gameplay, live stream, etc. I need to know if I have a proper set up for it or do I need an upgrade. So right now my set up is

MB- Asus M4N68T M V2
Processor- AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250 3.00 GHz
Memory- (currently)- 4.00GB (2.94GB usable) but i'm getting two 4gb sticks so it'll be a total of 8gb.
System type- 32 bit OS, x64- Based processor
Graphics Card- ViewMax NVIDIA GeForce GT 620 2GB GDDR3 PCI Express (PCIe) DVI Video Card HDMI & HDCP Support * COMMANDER EDITION *
Also eventually I will be getting a HDD- 1 TB.

I'm not sure if this will do it or if I need to completely upgrade everything.
 
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Minecraft, relies on single-core performance. Something that Intel is strong in, and AMD is slightly weak in. I can guarantee you that a Core 2 Duo, will outperform a AMD Phenom, in terms of single core performance. Since your streaming get a i5, this is how it would be, 1 core would be busy processing Minecraft, while the other 3 take care of the streaming smoothly.
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That's a pretty old system that was mid-range at best when new. The graphics card is not a gaming card.

Sorry to say it, but you're going to seriously struggle trying to stream on that system. Maybe LOL or CS:Go might work, maybe, but at least you'd want a graphics card upgrade and try something like shadowplay to offload the streaming workload from your CPU, which I don't think will be up to streaming and gaming simultaneously in any games.
 
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You will need to upgrade to 8gb ram, a faster probably quadcore cpu, and a new gpu wouldn't hurt. I recommend for starters to upgrade to an athlon x860k, new ram, and a r9 270x. But a completely new system probably would work better as that is some older hardware.
 
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I want to record at least 720p gameplay. I don't have much of a budget right now. If possible I need to work with what I got, but if it wont work then I need to start saving ha
 
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If you wanted the cheapest option, you could try a GTX 750ti and see use Shadowplay. Shadowplay uses hardware in the graphics card to do the bulk of the streaming or recording tasks for you. Because it has dedicated hardware (specifically designed units within the GPU), it has a much lower impact on

It *might* work. It's a capable entry level card.

The plus with that option is that you could try it and see if it's enough. If it's not, then you could do a full build and the 750ti will still be a good fit.

I haven't mucked around with this myself so I can't be 100% sure that it will or won't work. But given you're looking at a new build anyway, starting with a try-and-see approach with a 750ti might not be a bad option.

$108: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/zotac-video-card-zt7060510m
 
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thanks rhysiam, and that's fine Kevern_11 thanks you guys for your help. I'm also doing my research but of course I'm having difficulties. I know what to get to run minecraft well but I also need to add in there that I'm going to be streaming and I don't really know the specs for streaming. Like I said I'm only really going to be playing minecraft on pc and the rest on my console.
 
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That's why I'm suggesting you give Shadowplay a try. It supports both streaming to Twitch and recording with minimal impact on your system. I haven't used it myself so if others come along with more experience it would be worth listening to them, but from what I understand it is a little more limited in functionality than some of the other software based solutions available. But your system will not handle software based streaming, and $600 is tight for a streaming/recording rig. There's a pretty good chance a small investment on the GPU will get you what you what you want. And if it doesn't hold up, you can spend the rest of your budget on the upgrade and keep the GPU.
 
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You need a powerful quad core CPU, preferably a i7 due to its hyper-threading multitasking features and 2 hard drives. As the first one will have the OS and the streaming software while the second hard drive will have the game.

It is basically like if your recording a video. If you only have one hard drive and you want to record/stream your asking the computer to play a game from the HDD and stream using the same HDD (recording is even harder as its recording the video onto the HDD as well as playing retrieving game data)...that's a lot of data moving and one will have to wait sometimes to let the over past and in so frame-rate drop, lag, stutter, crashes and a lot of bad things can happen.

This is why is use 2 HDD's when I record or stream:
- 1st HDD for game
- 2nd HDD for software

Also you will need to have a very fast internet speed which is hard wired into your computer via a LAN cable, don't use WIFI if your streaming...

Regards
 
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... its not hard.

You have your computer with one hard drive plugged into the SATA 1 header, some motherboards will have a SATA 0 number header as the first one, when it is plugged in and has the OS on it the computer will boot from that drive making it the 'master drive'.

When you get the second HDD plug that into the 2nd SATA port (or 1 if your master header is 0) then install the game on the second HDD.

Put your streaming software on the master drive and run it from there. Load up your game from the second drive and tell the streaming device you want to stream that game or however you do it with your selected software.

But if your looking to do streaming on a serious basis you will need 2 SSD's instead as streaming requires a constant high data flow which a SSD can keep up with.

Regards
 
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