Steam link - insanely high display delay?

[Kangaxx.it]

Hello!
I am puzzled by the performances of the steam link functionality.
I just buyed a mini PC for the use in the living room. When I try to use Steam link, I have over 100ms of display delay. Encoding and deconding speeds are totally fine, but the display delay makes the experience nearly unplayable. Lowering the resolution only partially fixes the problem, even at 720p I have well over 60ms display delay.
Thinking that the culprit was the modest Intel UHD 600 integrated GPU of my mini PC, I tried another mini PC with a more robust integrated AMD R7. The results were better but still disappointing, encoding and decoding OK but over 80ms of display delay.
At this point, the Steam Link app from the smart TV itself works way better and this does not make any sense at all. And I can't use my wireless gamepads on the smart TV.
I'm sure there's something wrong in my settings, it may be a low end PC but it can't work worse than the integrated processor of my TV, anyone knows where I can look into?

[ReBoot]

The third delay in question (after decoding & encoding) is the network delay.
How's your Steam Link connected? For best performance, both it and the streaming server should be connected via wire. Classically you'd be using Ethernet, I'm having a good experience with PLC.

[Kangaxx.it]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

The third delay in question (after decoding & encoding) is the network delay.
How's your Steam Link connected? For best performance, both it and the streaming server should be connected via wire. Classically you'd be using Ethernet, I'm having a good experience with PLC.

Yes the client has an ethernet port and it's going at 1gbps. It's really all about display delay on the client, the rest is working as intended as I did not cheap out on network connectivity.
It's not even a TV delay problem, I always have 0% network package drops and more than 30% frame drops.
I know that the Intel UHD 600 is really low but it can't get beaten by the arm processor in the TV and besides, the integrated R7 only gave partially better results and never in the neightboorhood of 20ms people claim.

[ReBoot]

What do you mean by "display delay"? The performance monitor only got 3 last week NES. Encoding, network & decoding. Which of those spike?
Is that Intel UHD the one you're streaming from? Does it run the game fine without streaming?

[Joke]

Your TV might cause the delay by itself.
Many TV's have a "Game mode" to bypass advanced image processing the TV do on regular TV/Movies.

[Kangaxx.it]

https://imgur.com/HLSFRbu
Sorry, i tried to set it to english but it did not work.
I'll translate what it says:
Reduced velocity of decoding, screen (decoding is there only because PC was busy taking the screenshoot, it's not usually there)
Acquisition 3840x2160 at 50.57
Encoder: Game polled D3D11 NV12 + NVENC h264
Decoder: DXVA2 hadware decoding
Transmission latency: 1< 1ms input, 160,28 ms screen
Ping: 23.27ms (direct)
Input bitrate: 15666 kbit/s video: 15187 kbit/s
Output bitrate: 147 kbit/s
Packet loss: 0,00% (60.67% frame loss)
Press F8 to save screenshoot on remote PC

[Kangaxx.it]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

What do you mean by "display delay"? The performance monitor only got 3 last week NES. Encoding, network & decoding. Which of those spike?
Is that Intel UHD the one you're streaming from? Does it run the game fine without streaming?

The one spiking is display delay, the red line in the screenshoot I provided,
The Intel UHD 660 is the GPU I stream to, not from: the server machine is equipped with an RTX 2060 SUPER and a Ryzen 5 3600X. Yes, it can totally run Helldivers without hiccups, the problem is on the client side but I have problems with integrated GPUs from both Intel and AMD.

[Kangaxx.it]

Originally posted by Joke:

Your TV might cause the delay by itself.
Many TV's have a "Game mode" to bypass advanced image processing the TV do on regular TV/Movies.

That makes sense but i'm ok with a fixed delay due to the TV not being as fast as my PC monitors, but if you look at the screenshoot of the streaming performances I provided it's clear that the delay is constantly spiking up and down and that can't be the TV fault.

[Kangaxx.it]

Lowering the resolution but most importantly the refresh rate on the client PC improved the situation by a lot, but it's still inside the graph only at 1080p 30fps.
This of course is not a solution that makes me happy.

[Judgmental Amaterasu]

I'm not sure what you consider to be "robust" but an 8 year old integrated chip is far from it.

[Kangaxx.it]

Originally posted by Damp Wizard Sleeve:

I'm not sure what you consider to be "robust" but an 8 year old integrated chip is far from it.

Well it does work better than the Intel UHD 600 from last year I found on this mini PC.
Still, I excpect both of them to work better than 1080p 30FPS in streaming.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Kangaxx.it:

https://imgur.com/HLSFRbu
Sorry, i tried to set it to english but it did not work.
I'll translate what it says:
Reduced velocity of decoding, screen (decoding is there only because PC was busy taking the screenshoot, it's not usually there)
Acquisition 3840x2160 at 50.57
Encoder: Game polled D3D11 NV12 + NVENC h264
Decoder: DXVA2 hadware decoding
Transmission latency: 1< 1ms input, 160,28 ms screen
Ping: 23.27ms (direct)
Input bitrate: 15666 kbit/s video: 15187 kbit/s
Output bitrate: 147 kbit/s
Packet loss: 0,00% (60.67% frame loss)
Press F8 to save screenshoot on remote PC

Your client sucks at decoding. Play around with hardware decoding settings.

[Kangaxx.it]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Kangaxx.it:

https://imgur.com/HLSFRbu
Sorry, i tried to set it to english but it did not work.
I'll translate what it says:
Reduced velocity of decoding, screen (decoding is there only because PC was busy taking the screenshoot, it's not usually there)
Acquisition 3840x2160 at 50.57
Encoder: Game polled D3D11 NV12 + NVENC h264
Decoder: DXVA2 hadware decoding
Transmission latency: 1< 1ms input, 160,28 ms screen
Ping: 23.27ms (direct)
Input bitrate: 15666 kbit/s video: 15187 kbit/s
Output bitrate: 147 kbit/s
Packet loss: 0,00% (60.67% frame loss)
Press F8 to save screenshoot on remote PC

Your client sucks at decoding. Play around with hardware decoding settings.

Yeah, that's it, I am asking too much.
I fiddled with every setting I could find, disabled any GPU filtering but it's still lagging beyond belief.
I tought it did not take a powerfull PC to decode but it seems like it's totally needed and that integrated gpus are not fit for the job.
I'll return this mini PC as long as I can and get a device specific for game streaming at 4k.
Oh and Gaben, if you want to make one yourself I would be happy.

[Sazzouu]

Don't know if that was asked already but....
Are you using a wired connection? And if not are you using 5GHz wireless connection?
Steam Link (App) suffers severely on 2.4GHz connections.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Kangaxx.it:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Your client sucks at decoding. Play around with hardware decoding settings.

Yeah, that's it, I am asking too much.
I fiddled with every setting I could find, disabled any GPU filtering but it's still lagging beyond belief.
I tought it did not take a powerfull PC to decode but it seems like it's totally needed and that integrated gpus are not fit for the job.
I'll return this mini PC as long as I can and get a device specific for game streaming at 4k.
Oh and Gaben, if you want to make one yourself I would be happy.

You don't need a powerful PC to decode, you need a hardware decoder. If you have enabled HW decoding and it's still slow, this ♥♥♥♥ GPU doesn't have one.
If you haven't tried HW decoding yet, do it now!
I recommend getting yourself a Steam link. Those things are available for fair prices off eBay, they're not powerful at all, but come with that hardware decoder I'm talking about.

[Sazzouu]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

I recommend getting yourself a Steam link. Those things are available for fair prices off eBay, they're not powerful at all, but come with that hardware decoder I'm talking about.

Are you even reading what OP says? They say they already HAVE a Steam Link but it performs worse than having the Steam Link App directly on their SmartTV. Which is why I assume the only issue here is the network connection.

Also (@ReBoot)...

Originally posted by Kangaxx.it:

an RTX 2060 SUPER

What kind of monster GPU do you expect is needed if you somehow think an RTX 2060 Super cannot handle the hardware-encoding/decoding required here? Keeping in mind the Steam Link as well as the Steam Link App were released BEFORE the RTX-series cards were even introduced.