2nd video card for hardware encoding?

[ASIMO]

Is it possible to install a second video card and use it only for hardware encoding on steam link? I haven't seen anyone talk about this and I use the remote play 90% of the time, so it would be worth it for me to purchase a second card just for this purpose. I don't think it would need to be a very powerful video card, I could probably pick up a used one pretty cheap. Encoding seems to drop my framerate by a significant amount, and offloading it to a separate card makes the most sense to me. If this is not possible, where do I put in a feature request?

Thanks!

[Xjph]

I've done it, but the results were middling at best. The overhead of transferring the framebuffer/captured video from one card to the other appears to outweigh any gain, at least for me.

That said, in my testing I was concerned with latency, not load. Hardware encoding shouldn't impact framerate in any meaningful way. It's handled by a separate ASIC, not the GPU proper. You're not losing any of the GPU's render power by encoding.

[ASIMO]

Thanks for the reply! My results don't agree with yours, I get massive cuts in performance from remote play even when set to balanced. Rise of the tomb raider built in benchmark gives the following:
without remote play 84.22 fps
with remote play software 44.69 fps
with remote play hardware 45.24 fps
The software encoding looks better IMO. I don't care about latency at all, if I was going to play a competitive fps, I wouldn't do it remotely. I have a ryzen 7 2700x and an rx 580 8gb.
So you have tried this with 2 gpus? Worth they connected in SLI or crossfire? I wouldn't connect them in crossfire/sli, and if possible I would prefer to try this with an old quadro card. This seems like a fun thing to do but I have a feeling it won't work at all. Can you give me some details on the specific setup you used, maybe it will help me pick hardware to try. Thanks!

[Xjph]

Two unconnected GPUs. Mixed brands even, same as you. Wanted to try nvidia's NVENC encoder to see if it would offer any advantage over AMD's VCE.

I made sure nvidia was checked and amd unchecked in the host settings and Steam used the NVENC encoder no problem.

That much of a hit using remote play is strange though. Even with software, a Ryzen 7 2700x should be more than up to the task. Have you tried other games? Do you have Rise of the Tomb Raider in DX12 mode or DX11? Remote play does not get along well with DX12 at all, regardless of what settings you use.

[ASIMO]

It was set to dx12, I tried AC odyssey and it gave the same fps with and without remote play. Maybe it's dx12 that is the issue? I also tried timespy which is dx12 and it was cut by about 30% when remote play was enabled.
Well if it is dx12, then the questions is: will steam fix it? is it fixable? If I add another card maybe I can circumvent the issue and maintain performance regardless of api. I mean, it's not like dx12 is going away anytime soon, so maybe I can just work around it.

What do you think about something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-Quadro-P400-2GB-GDDR5-Graphic-Card-CN-0F2NVH-Brand-New-Pull-Dell/143572648263?hash=item216d98c147:g:8CAAAOSwsiBehmRp
it's an quadro p400.

Thanks for all your help!

[Xjph]

Originally posted by ASIMO:

Well if it is dx12, then the questions is: will steam fix it? is it fixable? If I add another card maybe I can circumvent the issue and maintain performance regardless of api. I mean, it's not like dx12 is going away anytime soon, so maybe I can just work around it.

It's been a long standing issue. I wouldn't hold my breath on it being fixed any time soon.

I also wouldn't expect changing the encoding to make much, if any, difference. It's a capture issue, not a problem caused by the processing load from having to encode the video.

That said, the GPU you linked should work fine if you're set on trying it. I'd be interested to hear your results if you do.

[_I_]

if its a decent gpu the encoding load is minimal impact on it
if its weakish, using an igpu will help some

hardware encoding does not take much work to do

[ASIMO]

Originally posted by Xjph:

Originally posted by ASIMO:

Well if it is dx12, then the questions is: will steam fix it? is it fixable? If I add another card maybe I can circumvent the issue and maintain performance regardless of api. I mean, it's not like dx12 is going away anytime soon, so maybe I can just work around it.

It's been a long standing issue. I wouldn't hold my breath on it being fixed any time soon.

I also wouldn't expect changing the encoding to make much, if any, difference. It's a capture issue, not a problem caused by the processing load from having to encode the video.

That said, the GPU you linked should work fine if you're set on trying it. I'd be interested to hear your results if you do.

Well, I gave it a try. I used the cheapest quadro that fully supports h.264, the K620 (it was ~$30 on ebay). It didn't have any effect in the built in benchmark using dx12 in rise of the tomb raider, it still about half the fps when using remote play. It is definetly using the quadro for encoding though because I monitored the utilization and core clocks while turning it on and off. It wasn't a total loss however I get much better performance in handbrake, the AMD encoder gives 400fps in a particular video file, the same file and settings give 600fps with NVENC. I tried to enable NVFBC in the steam settings but it didn't have any effect, I think this might have an effect if the game was being rendered by the same GPU that is doing the encoding. I don't have a dx12 nvidia card to try this however, if anyone has a dx12 nvidia card and uses this feature I wonder what the dx12 rise of the tomb raider benchmark would give. Thanks for the help.

[Xjph]

Originally posted by ASIMO:

Originally posted by Xjph:

It's been a long standing issue. I wouldn't hold my breath on it being fixed any time soon.

I also wouldn't expect changing the encoding to make much, if any, difference. It's a capture issue, not a problem caused by the processing load from having to encode the video.

That said, the GPU you linked should work fine if you're set on trying it. I'd be interested to hear your results if you do.

Well, I gave it a try. I used the cheapest quadro that fully supports h.264, the K620 (it was ~$30 on ebay). It didn't have any effect in the built in benchmark using dx12 in rise of the tomb raider, it still about half the fps when using remote play. It is definetly using the quadro for encoding though because I monitored the utilization and core clocks while turning it on and off. It wasn't a total loss however I get much better performance in handbrake, the AMD encoder gives 400fps in a particular video file, the same file and settings give 600fps with NVENC. I tried to enable NVFBC in the steam settings but it didn't have any effect, I think this might have an effect if the game was being rendered by the same GPU that is doing the encoding. I don't have a dx12 nvidia card to try this however, if anyone has a dx12 nvidia card and uses this feature I wonder what the dx12 rise of the tomb raider benchmark would give. Thanks for the help.

I just tested using NVFBC capture and my GTX 1080. It resolves the DX12 performance issue, but NVFBC with Steam Remote Play has its own problems at the moment ( https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/2260186248410805265/ ) on top of not being completely reliable (I had to reboot before it would enable properly for remote play).

[ASIMO]

That's interesting because I did some testing and there is still a significant loss in performance in dx11 depending on the title. I will make another topic. Thanks for trying that out!