Testing on netbooks/low-powered laptops

[JTalent91]

Just got an invite to this beta and I tested this out on my 2-3 year old netbook (Toshiba NB550D) over Wireless-N Wi-Fi.

The results weren't exactly promising. The streaming just seems too much for the little APU to handle. Massive frame drops occurring every couple of seconds, with the red bar on the stats overlay showing massive spikes above 100ms when this happens. Frame loss is also horrible, with frame loss % figures going as low as 25% and as high as 40%.

On the same overlay, it seems network utilisation is quite low (only using around 10-18 mbps depending on the game out of a possible 80-95 mbps) so I'm guessing it's just the hardware limiting the stream. Checking CPU logs seems to confirm my thoughts.

Leaving all the streaming options on automatic seemed to display in 1080p only with variable framerates, so maybe locking it to 720p streaming might be worth a shot the next time I test it out. Failing that, I'll see if a gigabit ethernet connection helps any further. This netbook can handle 720p video with no issue and generally 1080p video has no major problems either, but I'm guessing the constant encoding for streaming is pushing the APU just a tad too much.

I'd like to see if anyone else has had similar or differing levels of success on similar hardware.

Also, what are the games is everyone finding to have most success with streaming? I've heard reports some games are better for testing than others, and I'd rather test the best working ones to eliminate any potential issues there to more easily spot any local issues.

[Mayor Humdinger]

Dunno if this counts but my Asus Transformer T100 can perfectly stream games, even w/o cable connection. Kinda amazing, although it has a Bay Trail CPU.

[bored one]

I can't seem to get it working. all i get is a black screen on my ideatab lynx
cpu: atom z2760
I will update this if I figure anything out.

[Bahn Yuki]

Does ti really Leo? My GF has that tablet(gave it to her for birthday) and I'll have to try it out tonight!

[Mayor Humdinger]

引用自 Bahn Yuki：

Does ti really Leo? My GF has that tablet(gave it to her for birthday) and I'll have to try it out tonight!

Yeah, check the "does a game run or not run" pinned thread for my results, but in summary it is perfect for streaming.

Incidentally that tablet is also my gf-s and she has received it from me for Christmas :-)

[No antimage]

I have an Atom 1.6ghz cedartrail, 2gb ram and gma3600 netbook. My netbook can play 1080p video with no issue but when stream game i have 60% packet loss. My wifi router is 150mbs ! Don'n know any problem

[Rλven]

Just got in the beta today so I haven't had much of a chance to test.

Streaming computer:
AMD Phenom II X6
Geforce 550ti
12GB Ram

Receiving computer:
Asus N10J-A1 running xbmcbuntu off expresscard ssd
Intel Atom N270 1.6ghz
2GB Ram
Geforce 9300M (VDPAU h.264 decoding)

Network:
Streaming comp 10/100/1000
|
8 port 10/100/1000 switch
|
Linksys WRT400N/4 port 10/100 switch (ddwrt)
|
4 port 10/100 switch
|
Receiving comp 10/100/1000

Half-Life 2:
Mostly solid 1080p 30fps. Very infrequent fps drops. Maxing out at around 14mbps. Very playable.

MGS Rising Revengeance:
1080p generally 20fps or lower. Very laggy. 14mbps. Occasional slow encode. Settings probably too high although it runs more or less flawless on the desktop.

The 15mbps seems pretty low. I had it set to automatic though. Could be the 4 port 10/100 switch is junky (well it is..). Still the quality seemed pretty good. Could be better but it was far from awful.

Side note: I noticed in the streaming logs it said its using only 2 threads for x264. Any way to increase that? I wouldn't mind putting it on 3 since a lot of games I play barely use 2 cores. Also I'm going to try streaming to my windows 8 tablet and see how that goes.

*Edit* Quick followup. Streaming to the tablet sucked. Lousy wireless n router. Latency was almost 200ms with average 25% frame loss... All at 720p30, 5-10mbps

[ZombieBloodLust]

HP mini 210-1010
N450
Intel GM3150/Broadcom HD70012(Crystal HD)
2gb DDR2 800
60gb SSD
10/100 lan

Not going to lie, it performed MUCH better than I had anticipated! 9-15fps ALMOST PLAYABLE!! HA! here is the deal with this, unless it has a bit more robust APU or integrated GPU(other than INTEL) it should be okay. it all comes down to the the decoding your GPU/APU can dish out. In my case I have a Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator card installed. So far,Streaming from steam does not support this(CS-GO anyway) the way i see it is if your Video Processor can Dish out HD/Blu-Ray quality playback, things can only get better. having just the CPU do all the work is just not going to cut it.

I know some Netbooks have the PCIe expansion for this, and from 10$-15$ for that card on ebay, as soon as it is supported things could drastically change!

[bored one]

UPDATE:
As of the latest update I get stutter free audio and alot less lag still no video, however.

remote pc:
lenovo Ideatab Lynx
CPU: Atom Z2760 @ 1.8Ghz
RAM: 2GiB ddr3 400-1200 FSB:DRAM 1:4
GPU: intel Graphics Accelerator revision 5; memory: 0MiB
WIFI: 65Mb/s

Host PC:
CPU: Phenom II X2 550BE @ 3.71Ghz
RAM: 8GiB DDR3 1366
GPU: GTX 760 HAWK + GTX 260 SSC(physx)
LAN: 100Mb/s

[Ad Hominem]

I've got the exact same netbook and was getting terrible input lag, something like 70ms. Now I was running it with the stats showing and that might have been bogging it down, but could someone share their optimum settings for a low power netbook that's a few years old?