[SOLVED] Watching multiple streams and DLive stickers

[QuietIce]

The problem:
I've been watching a lot of Twitch and DLive the past 6 months and I keep having video hangs. On Twitch, when I start watching a stream, everything is fine until the first time I click the emote panel. Without fail the main video then freezes, which I reset by quickly clicking the low-latency advanced video option twice. Then I have the emotes and the video un-freezes. After that, on occasion, the video will just freeze - sometimes for just a couple of secs, sometimes it'll need that quick reset again. Pretty frustrating. Video freeze is also a problem when I have more than one tab open 'watching' more than one stream, which I sometimes do. (I run the browser at full screen so only one stream is showing at a time.)

On DLive, if chat fills up with stickers I sometimes get a freeze - I'm assuming because of all the small video stickers + the main stream - taxing my GPU.

NOTE: I am not watching games on Twitch and DLive, I'm watching musicians - so not a lot of resource heavy video involved.


Current System:
2 yo mid-range (back then) running Win10 x64. AMD A88X chipset x4 860K w/ 2x4Gb of good RAM. I've monitored both CPU and Mem usage and both seem adequate. Video card is a GT 730 (4Gb) - plenty at the time since I hardly ever play fast games or anything else that's video intensive. Until I started watching Twitch/DLive I had no problems whatsoever.


----> I'm assuming my GPU just can't keep up with what I'm trying to watch. I don't foresee any fast games in my future so I really don't care about frame rates in a game - my strategy games really don't care. What I need is something that won't break the bank but will still provide the video processing I need to watch those concurrent videos, whether multiple Twitch streams or DLive + a chat full of stickers.

As a side question, I have an SSD for Win10 and programs but the others are HDDs and my pagefile is on an HDD. If someone thinks it would REALLY help I could add a SATA PCIe card (all x8 MB SATA slots are full) to add another, small SSD for page and working files when I'm editing. (What I would actually do is use my existing 250Gb 860EVO as the extra and get a 500Gb 860EVO for the OS drive.)


Usually I'd rely on reviews & benchmarks and make my own choice (been building since 1991 and even water-cooled for several years back when there were no kits except those weak Zalman things) but today everyone is so fixated on games and in-game FpS that I just can't rely on those for this application. I need some expert advice on watching video, not creating it in a game. I haven't really looked at GPUs since I bought my GTX 7900's way back when, so I really have no idea what's out there or how it relates to what I'm trying to do - beyond the gaming FpS thing that anyone can read about.

Any suggestions are more than welcome - and I'm not above explanation and conjecture, either. Thanks in advance for your time ...!->

 

[WaltzWorker]

Excellent! You too move the page file lol Here is "17 Essential Twitch Tips" Quora says 3200 kb/sec for download speed... My guess has to do with system clean up, browser cache, temp files, disk space... Or you could disable the chat - but that kind of defeats the purpose sometimes I'd guess... Then there's This Guide that says Intel Core i5-4670 processor (or its AMD equivalent), 8GB of RAM and Windows 7... Although that I-5 was release in 2013 lol I would also say that mostly it all has to do with connection speed. Although I would think that a gpu would help.

 

[QuietIce]

Excellent! You too move the page file lol Here is "17 Essential Twitch Tips" Quora says 3200 kb/sec for download speed... My guess has to do with system clean up, browser cache, temp files, disk space... Or you could disable the chat - but that kind of defeats the purpose sometimes I'd guess... Then there's This Guide that says Intel Core i5-4670 processor (or its AMD equivalent), 8GB of RAM and Windows 7... Although that I-5 was release in 2013 lol I would also say that mostly it all has to do with connection speed. Although I would think that a gpu would help.

Thanks for the reply.

I take it from your comments you don't think the GPU is the problem. OK.

Connection speed - at least on my end - is good. All hardwired with 200+mbps down, 10mbps up according to Speedtest.

The CPU does not appear taxed regardless of recommendations. Replacing the CPU pretty much equals a new rig (~$300) - not going to happen.

I can try using the existing SSD, short-term, for the page file. At least that will give me an idea of whether or not it's worth the $120 plus the hassle of transferring the OS and programs to a new drive.

 

[WaltzWorker]

Thanks for the reply.

I take it from your comments you don't think the GPU is the problem. OK.

Connection speed - at least on my end - is good. All hardwired with 200+mbps down, 10mbps up according to Speedtest.

The CPU does not appear taxed regardless of recommendations. Replacing the CPU pretty much equals a new rig (~$300) - not going to happen.

I can try using the existing SSD, short-term, for the page file. At least that will give me an idea of whether or not it's worth the $120 plus the hassle of transferring the OS and programs to a new drive.

If it doesn't cost, do it! Oh? Have you cleaned your system? Temp files, etc? Do you use the twitch app? Or just a browser?