Now limited to 30mbps?

[TheJFK]

I have been extensively using steam in-home streaming as my default way of playing Steam games for about a year now. I have a gigabit network with a dedicated gigabit switch and my computers are well set up for the tasks. The host is on Windows 10, previously 8.1 and client on Windows 10/Steamos, depending on my mood.

Since my network setup is so ideal for the task, I've been using the "beautiful" setting and "unlimited" bandwidth on the client side for decoding. It's been working great with very low latency and very good quality. However, as of about a week ago, I've noticed a huge drop in streaming quality with colours washed out and compression artifacts. The stream is still fast and reliable, just a drop in quality. I did notice that where once my estimated bandwidth was around 600mbps and varying around that point it was then limited to 30mbps and was rock-solid limited to that point. I verified that my settings were set to unlimited, but 30mbps was the hard limit.

I solved the problem by opting out of the beta and all was back to normal. However, last night the changes were pushed to the stable client (I presume) and the issue is back. Is this something anybody else is noticing? Can I get back my high-quality unlimited stream? My network can push at least 10x what the new hard limit is and the quality is suffering from it. I suspect this has something to do with the imminent influx of Steam Link users and preventing complaints of latency issues on less-than-ideal network connections :(

[Halfmystic]

Would love another Valve poster in this - it's a pretty frustrating issue. Really don't want to play Witcher 3 when it has all this really noticeable grain due to that limitation.

[[masni] CYKA CLEANER]

I stream from windows 7 on gigabit connection, it estimates 30mbps and its terrible...

[Zoktar]

woke up to find steam refuses to conecect to eachother. everything else seems to be working fine, switching from normal to beta has no effect. multiple reboots later and still just says "not connected" as they seem to find eachother, just refusing to connect. idk whats going on here.

is there a specific log somewhere that might tell me whats wrong here?

edit: nm reset router fixed it

[loler_SK]

I have the same problem (latest non-beta steam). With hardware encoding enabled, estimated bandwidth is always limited to 30Mbps (host is connected at 1Gbps Lan cable, client at 150Mbps wifi). I'm using "unlimited bandwidth" settings in Steam client.
No matter if NVIFR or NVFBC encoder is used, I tried both (Nvidia GTX770). Because the estimated bandwidth is limited to 30Mbps, video stream is limited to half of this bitrate, cca 12Mpbs and quality is really bad, pixelation everywhere. With software encoding, there is no bandwidth issue and video bitrate goes up to 70-80mbit... however software encoding is slow and unusable for me. I tested it on Witcher 3.

[Saftle]

Originally posted by loler_SK:

No matter if NVIFR or NVFBC encoder is used

How do you change the encoder? Mine is currently encoding with NVFBC. How would I go about switching it to NVIFR?

[loler_SK]

You have to uninstall GeForce experience and it will switch to NVIFR. If you want to go back to NVFBC, install GeForce experience again and turn ON, then OFF Shadowplay in GF experience settings.
NVIFR works better and faster for me.

[loler_SK]

Ok guys, I finally found a solution for this issue. Until the steam developers fix this hard-limit bug, you can use this workaround:

As you know, you can set "30Mbps" as the highest bitrate in the steam client settings. "Unlimited" does not work with HW acceleration enabled. So what you have to do is manually edit the steam settings file in any text editor and set the bit rate to any desired value. I've set it to 100000 (100Mbits) and it works great, real stream bitrate is around 80 Mbits and video quality is GREAT.
Steam setting file can be found in:
"c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\xxxxx\config\localconfig.vdf"
and the value you have to change is called "BandwidthLimitKBit" "100000" (for 100Mbits).
So close the steam app, find your settings file, change it, launch steam and enjoy the high quality streaming again.

To steam developers: Please let us choose bitrate higher than 30Mbit, if we have hardware/network for it. It's year 2015, 30Mbit is a joke, Gbit lan and AC routers are standard for many users. Thank you for your hard work anyway.

PS: do not change your steam client settings afterwards, or your bandwidth settings may get overwritten.

[fatSki]

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work when using Steam Link as the client.

[TheJFK]

Originally posted by loler_SK:

Ok guys, I finally found a solution for this issue. Until the steam developers fix this hard-limit bug, you can use this workaround:

As you know, you can set "30Mbps" as the highest bitrate in the steam client settings. "Unlimited" does not work with HW acceleration enabled. So what you have to do is manually edit the steam settings file in any text editor and set the bit rate to any desired value. I've set it to 100000 (100Mbits) and it works great, real stream bitrate is around 80 Mbits and video quality is GREAT.
Steam setting file can be found in:
"c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\xxxxx\config\localconfig.vdf"
and the value you have to change is called "BandwidthLimitKBit" "100000" (for 100Mbits).
So close the steam app, find your settings file, change it, launch steam and enjoy the high quality streaming again.

To steam developers: Please let us choose bitrate higher than 30Mbit, if we have hardware/network for it. It's year 2015, 30Mbit is a joke, Gbit lan and AC routers are standard for many users. Thank you for your hard work anyway.

PS: do not change your steam client settings afterwards, or your bandwidth settings may get overwritten.

Amazing! This is working great. So it clearly is something with Steam and not entirely NVIDIA. Funny that my estimated bandwidth is still reading as 30mbps when the video stream is in fact pushing well beyond that now with this fix.

Of course, this will only work on a Windows client and is completely hopeless for Steam Link users. I will look into a similar fix for SteamOS and linux users tomorrow to keep this thread alive.

Thanks so much

[TheJFK]

I can confirm that the same fix works for SteamOS!

Open terminal, change to steam user

# sudo su steam

then navigate to the same file and make the same modification at the below location

/home/steam/.steam/steam/userdata/xxxxx/config/localconfig.vdf

Unlimited bandwidth in steamos :D

[fatSki]

I actually found it a bit surprising that the fix didn't work with the Steam Link, as far as I can see all it does is stream Big Picture mode directly from the host, and any client settings I make there are applied as expected (bandwidth, display streaming stats etc.) so I would have thought any config changes I made on the host would be picked up as well, but apparently not :/

[Mashed Buddha]

This fix didn't work for me, if that's even the problem I'm having. All I know is that streaming was fine and then quality went to crap. I tried every possible setting for In Home Streaming in the Steam settings on both PCs. Turning on Hardware Encoding makes the game not get to the main menu, just freeze on the splash screen on the client. Hardware decoding does nothing but I assume it only matters when Encoding is on and working. Two games I'm testing with are Citiies Skylines and Wasteland 2. They are unplayable, slideshow and very grainy video quality. Tested with Netgear Powerline adapters (which I always used without issue), then Netgear wireless bridge setup, then even wired directly and still the same problem. Also not sure if I need to adjust settings on both computers are just one of them. Makes testing a real chore.

[TheJFK]

Originally posted by fatSki:

I actually found it a bit surprising that the fix didn't work with the Steam Link, as far as I can see all it does is stream Big Picture mode directly from the host, and any client settings I make there are applied as expected (bandwidth, display streaming stats etc.) so I would have thought any config changes I made on the host would be picked up as well, but apparently not :/

To clarify, this fix is entirely client-side. It seems the client controls many elements of the streaming service. I suspect this issue could be resolved with a fix on the link if the file system were accessible, but, I haven't played around with one nor do I even know if it's theoretically possible to modify the file system.

[TheJFK]

Originally posted by Mashed Buddha:

This fix didn't work for me, if that's even the problem I'm having. All I know is that streaming was fine and then quality went to crap. I tried every possible setting for In Home Streaming in the Steam settings on both PCs. Turning on Hardware Encoding makes the game not get to the main menu, just freeze on the splash screen on the client. Hardware decoding does nothing but I assume it only matters when Encoding is on and working. Two games I'm testing with are Citiies Skylines and Wasteland 2. They are unplayable, slideshow and very grainy video quality. Tested with Netgear Powerline adapters (which I always used without issue), then Netgear wireless bridge setup, then even wired directly and still the same problem. Also not sure if I need to adjust settings on both computers are just one of them. Makes testing a real chore.

To clarify one thing, hardware decoding is still relevant even if you're using software encoding. These are completely separate.

[Mashed Buddha]

Ok is it necessary to adjust settings on both the host and client? Also is this problem most likely the result of a Steam update?

Host: Windows 7 64 bit, i7 950
Client: Windows 8, AMD A10-5800K APU w Radeon HD

It was working fine before, pretty good quality.