Upgrading I5 2500K for streaming+gaming

[Zvi8875]

Hey there,
I'm looking forward to upgrade my CPU in order to improve my stream quality and performance in global,currently streaming while playing high end games is the task.
Sadly my upload isn't solid in my country (max 3mbit) so i'd like to improve my gear.
here's my current PC spec for the topic:

I5 2500K OC'd to 4.3Ghz with Scythe Mugen 2 cooling

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3 for 1155

Seasonic SS-750AT 750W Active PFC 4X PCI-E 62A/12V Single Rail

16gb RAM

GPU 970GTX

So my question is, what's the current upgrade you guys would suggest me to go for?
Budget is limited and i'm looking for something that will provide something that the 2500K did for 5years .
and for the off-topic,do you think i can pull out more of the OC on the 2500K with my current cooling?smile.gif

Thanks in advance !

 

[InvalidError]

If you want to use software-based GPU video capture, you could upgrade to an i7-2700k/3770k.

Otherwise, you could get a video capture card with hardware video compression to take video encoding off of the CPU and possibly run the video streaming software on a separate PC.

 

[Zvi8875]

If you want to use software-based GPU video capture, you could upgrade to an i7-2700k/3770k.

Otherwise, you could get a video capture card with hardware video compression to take video encoding off of the CPU and possibly run the video streaming software on a separate PC.

There's not doubt that i'd go for upgrading my own PC other than paying for another computer just for streaming + buying capture card... i prefer to throw the money on upgrading my own CPU.
What's the difference between the 2 CPU's you mentioned? or it does not really matter as long as it is I7 series with K for OC'ing

 

[InvalidError]

If you use software for video encoding on your PC, your CPU will be spending 30-50% of its time on video capture and compression and this can cause severe stuttering in your games. With a video capture card and hardware encoding, most of that CPU usage can be eliminated.

As for the difference between the Sandy and Ivy i7, the 3770 will be about 8% faster clock-for-clock due to architectural improvements and uses less power. On the other hand, Ivy CPUs do not overclock as well, which will cancel out part of the IPC improvement. As a bonus, the 3xxx i5/i7 also support PCIe 3.0, which may improve GPU performance by another 1-3%.

 

[Zvi8875]

If you use software for video encoding on your PC, your CPU will be spending 30-50% of its time on video capture and compression and this can cause severe stuttering in your games. With a video capture card and hardware encoding, most of that CPU usage can be eliminated.

As for the difference between the Sandy and Ivy i7, the 3770 will be about 8% faster clock-for-clock due to architectural improvements and uses less power. On the other hand, Ivy CPUs do not overclock as well, which will cancel out part of the IPC improvement. As a bonus, the 3xxx i5/i7 also support PCIe 3.0, which may improve GPU performance by another 1-3%.

The question is if the loss with Ivy CPU OC'ing is big enough to notice to compare to Sandy series since i can profit the PCIe 3.0 performance...how hard can i push OC'ing with my current cooling ?
so my to summer this up what would you got for if you would be in my situation with current gear and lets say average budget ? how about Haswell series ? doesn't worth it at the moment?

 

[InvalidError]

OCs are luck-of-the-draw. Some chips overclock better than others, some not at all. On average, Ivy overclocks 200-300MHz less than Sandy but Ivy's ~8% better IPC brings it back on par for overall performance. Going from i5 to i7 however adds hyperthreading which should help with software-based video stream encoding.

Here's the thing though: video capture cards and USB boxes with hardware compression cost $100-150, it eliminates most of the compatibility and performance impact from software-based video capture (no need to worry about the GPU and its drivers playing nice with frame grabbers) and would likely allow you to keep using your 2500k for another 3-5 years while spending $600 to upgrade to a 6700k+z170+DDR4 might still not be fast enough to handle software encoding without impacting in-game performance, especially if those 'high-end' games of yours include the few actually capable of leveraging four or more cores. CPU performance simply has not improved all that much since Sandy Bridge.

What would I do? I would investigate which hardware capture solutions are compatible with the streaming service(s) I want to use and get one of those.

 

[Zvi8875]

OCs are luck-of-the-draw. Some chips overclock better than others, some not at all. On average, Ivy overclocks 200-300MHz less than Sandy but Ivy's ~8% better IPC brings it back on par for overall performance. Going from i5 to i7 however adds hyperthreading which should help with software-based video stream encoding.

Here's the thing though: video capture cards and USB boxes with hardware compression cost $100-150, it eliminates most of the compatibility and performance impact from software-based video capture (no need to worry about the GPU and its drivers playing nice with frame grabbers) and would likely allow you to keep using your 2500k for another 3-5 years while spending $600 to upgrade to a 6700k+z170+DDR4 might still not be fast enough to handle software encoding without impacting in-game performance, especially if those 'high-end' games of yours include the few actually capable of leveraging four or more cores. CPU performance simply has not improved all that much since Sandy Bridge.

What would I do? I would investigate which hardware capture solutions are compatible with the streaming service(s) I want to use and get one of those.

I have old computer with E6600 CPU oc'd to 3.2ghz stable or i can use my laptop with the i5 4210U...any of this CPU's might do the job if i'll go for the capture card in your opinion ?

 

[InvalidError]

I have old computer with E6600 CPU oc'd to 3.2ghz stable or i can use my laptop with the i5 4210U...any of this CPU's might do the job if i'll go for the capture card in your opinion ?

With a capture card/box that does h264 in hardware, the computer does little more than package the video/audio stream for storage or streaming, so just about anything should work.

 

[Zvi8875]

I have old computer with E6600 CPU oc'd to 3.2ghz stable or i can use my laptop with the i5 4210U...any of this CPU's might do the job if i'll go for the capture card in your opinion ?

With a capture card/box that does h264 in hardware, the computer does little more than package the video/audio stream for storage or streaming, so just about anything should work.

Any recommended capture card/box you can suggest ?
Thanks

 

[InvalidError]

Any recommended capture card/box you can suggest ?

If it is for streaming services like Twitch, you are going to have to check their respective forums and FAQs to see which ones people have had the best results with.

Whichever you choose, expect to spend $120-150.

 

[InvalidError]

Since you are overlaying webcam input on top of the video capture, the capture software is grabbing YUV2 output instead of requesting h264 to spare itself having to decompress h264 before it can put your webcam overlay in. If you remove the webcam and any other video mixing you might be doing which requires raw video, it should be able to pass straight h264 from the capture card.

 

[Zvi8875]

Since you are overlaying webcam input on top of the video capture, the capture software is grabbing YUV2 output instead of requesting h264 to spare itself having to decompress h264 before it can put your webcam overlay in. If you remove the webcam and any other video mixing you might be doing which requires raw video, it should be able to pass straight h264 from the capture card.

So i can't stream with webcam on?since moving the webcam down below the video capture card it won't be visible.

 

[InvalidError]

So i can't stream with webcam on?since moving the webcam down below the video capture card it won't be visible.

Check the software's log, you will most likely see that it is still fetching YUV2 from the capture card and I420 from the webcam. As long as the software (thinks it) needs to do any post-processing and video mixing, it will continue using YUV2 since pulling h264 from the capture card would force it to decode the video before mixing and re-encoding it.

The only way to avoid the software (re-)encode is to remove the webcam's video from the software's inputs so the software can pass straight h264 from the capture card as the video stream. If you want the webcam's output, you could use an always-on-top window on your screen to embed the webcam's output in the video stream entering the capture card. This way, you get video on top for almost free if you do not mind the blind spot on your game screen.