HW encoding does not seem to work?

[ThrustVector]

Hi, I'm trying to get in-home streaming to work on my GF PC but nothing seems to work.
Streaming from my own system (i7 6700k + GTX1060) to our steam link, everything is fine but when trying from her laptop (i7 5500U + Nvidia 940M) to the steam link the problem start.

The CPU Utilization on her computer goes directly to about 50 - 65% with only IHS and no game running. Starting a game and the CPU throttles and framerates are hitting the flor.

Tried enableing / disableing HW encoding on her computer. Tried difrent types. iGPU, GPU and software encoding. Nothing seams to help. Surely a i7 and a Nvidia 940M should be capable of HW encoding right?

[kreiselhoschi]

In my opinion, the 940M is not capable of handling a game and the encoding properly. Besides it´s other specs, only 64bit memory interface and lame DDR3 memory are a serious bottleneck. You could try lowering the resolution and quality settings, 1366 x 768 and low to medium should be "OK".

According to some tests I read, it doesn´t support Shadowplay and Nvidia Gamestream - so I doubt that it´s able to use the NVENC chip that is found on desktop cards.

[ThrustVector]

Have tried 1280x720 but with little to no luck at all :(
If I force it to iGPU HW encoding I encounter som strange behaviour were the games start but wont render to the screen. I belive I see a small drop i CPU-usage while doing this but ofcource it's worless when you don't see the game.

[St.Dragon]

What's interesting is that the 940M is based on the Maxwell GM107/GM108 GPU, meaning it's the second generation (version 2) of NVENC. Per Wikipedia "increases encoder throughput up to "16x realtime" (which corresponds roughly to 1080p @ 480fps with the high-performance preset)" Essentially, it encodes to a H.264 stream. If I'm not mistaken, the default option of hardware encoding with the nVidia GPU uses the NVIFR method where only the game frames are captured, encoded, and shoved down the wire to be picked back up at the client end. Enabling NVFBC is essentially the same thing, but encodes the entire frame of everything, including desktop icons and taskbar if visible. This method is more efficient?? Anyways, hardware encoding should work. I'm assuming you're using the latest video drivers available?

As for the Intel Core i7 5500U: It's a good CPU...for a laptop. In terms of performance, it's the desktop CPU equivalent of a Core i3. In both cases, they're dual core that HT for a total of 4 threads of execution.

If I were you, I would try only enabling nVidia GPU for HW encoding with all other HW encoding options unchecked.

[ThrustVector]

I will try nVidia GPU HW encoding only with NVFBC prefered and get back ASAP. Thanks for the help so far St.Dragon :)
Edit: And Yes, we have the latest drivers from nVidia on her computer

[ThrustVector]

Have now tried with nVidia HW encoding only. Both with and without the NVFBC checkbox ticked. Still the same problem. Steam client continues to use around 50% CPU.
I tested just for fun the other way around and when her computer is used as a client HW accelerated decoding works like a charm but as soon as we use her computer as the host and it is responsible for the encoding the CPU throttles. :(