Any way to cap FPS at 30? :/

[WhiskeyJensen]

I've been looking everywhere, but cannot find any settings in any config files etc. that allows me to cap my framerate to 30 or 40 when streaming. I even tried Nvidia Inspector, but it still streams at 60fps.

Any suggestions? :) Thanks!

[Awesome Bill from Dawsonville]

Can I ask why you are trying to do this?

From my understanding the host machine will render the game normally and it plays locally on that machine at whatever frame rate it can. However, the client is only getting 60 FPS streamed to it. Remember this is 60 frames streamed, not rendered by a GPU so the client isn't really doing much except sending its input to the host and receiving, essentially, a video stream of what the host is doing. Unless it's causing some sort of problem, just stick with 60.

[WhiskeyJensen]

Thanks for the reply. :)

My host PC is kinda a monster, so I'm not worried about the performance. However, due to some weird router setup (which is inaccessible for me to change), I can only stream at a limited 10Mbit/s bandwidth - which really sucks. :P

And this produces some pixelation at 1080p resolution. Not too bad, but I'd rather be with a cleaner picture.

So my idea was that if I could somehow limit the streaming frame rate to 30 or 40fps, instead of 60fps, the picture would be smoother and not pixelate (as much). But I really have no idea how this is possible, since Steam removed the option to lock the FPS. :(

[Dav]

Look to see if there is a way to cap the FPS to 30 in the game settings. Many modern games will let you do it, others might require a .ini file edit. Some may not be possible at all. PCGamingWiki is your friend.

[WhiskeyJensen]

Thanks for the reply dqtl74 - I have already tried that, but unfortunately that only limits the frame rate that the host PC is running the game at, but it doesn't lower the streaming fps at all. :(

Example: I forced framerate lock with RivaTuner to 10fps (it definitely works, cause the game became super choppy even when streaming), but for some reason the streaming still sends a whopping 60fps resulting in the same amount of pixelation as before... just now lagging away at 10fps too haha :P

Any ideas friends? :)

[Dav]

That's strange. Everytime I limit in-game FPS, Steam streams at the lower rate. A few examples of games I've tried that have an in-game setting limiter; Batman: Arkham Knight and The Witcher 3. I know for a fact it streams at 30FPS because I turn on the detailed streaming settings and it shows 29.9x.

I don't know if it makes any difference but I use Nvidia hardware encoding on the host and Intel integrated graphics hardware decoding on the client.

[WhiskeyJensen]

Same here regarding the encoding/decoing. Hmm... How do you limit the FPS? Do you have to change the particular game's individual setting, or have you found a way to just force the framerate to 30 for "all games" universally? :)

[Dav]

Not universally, and I've only tried it with a few games just to test it out. My connection runs fine on 1080p60, so I don't use it frequently at all.

[kreiselhoschi]

Did you try to limit your display refresh rate to 30 MHz?

[WhiskeyJensen]

Yeah, it still doesn't work though. I can limit it on my client pcs, but then I'd have to do that everytime I switch PC or want to do something else than gaming. There has got to be a simpler way to just force the host to only send the stream in 30 frames per second (like there used to be).

[Awesome Bill from Dawsonville]

Is there any way to address the core problem? How close are the host and client? Are you on wireless or something else?

If your close enough, and you have an extra nic in each machine you could setup a basic p2p network and just get around the network limitation.

Some wireless routers have the option to prioritize traffic, there is a setting in steam you can turn on (on mobile atm) both machines to prioritize their traffic. Might help but the router needs to support it.

[WhiskeyJensen]

No, unfortunately the router setup is inaccessible to me, which is why I'm looking for another solution.

It just seems extremely weird that there is no way to limit the streaming fps, even through config files etc. like there used to be. Why remove that option? :/

Or maybe I'm just blind? :)

[Awesome Bill from Dawsonville]

By chance have you tried setting the client options to "fast." It might not limit frames but may provide a slight performance boost.

[WhiskeyJensen]

Yeah, but I see no difference unfortunately. :) Bitrate stays the same as well.

[Bam]

I know this is an old thread, but for anyone who might come across this thread on google like I did, I solved my problem (who was the same as OP's) by simply reinstalling my Nvidia drivers and GeForce Experience.
Yep, it does sound cliche, but it did work for me. Capping the game framerate now caps the stream as well.

[Mc$core]

As of today, the steam in-home streaming seems to interfere with the rendering process on the source system. It forces the server to render with the client frame-rate, overriding all other mechanisms (nVidia Control Panel, CRU, RivaTuner, dxwnd).
However, you still can manually force the client frame-rate with this hidden command line option:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -console +@StreamClientArgs "--framerate 50"

(This was taken from https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/0/613937306812471185/#c613937306849982289 )