Core i5 750

[Mr. EZEKIEL]

Quick question,

My steam host has a core i5 750 @ 3ghz with a gtx680, assassins creed and other graphically intense games stream at about 20-30fps and are unplayable, the CPU usage is very high so i figure that is most likely the problem, even though i thought i could do hardware encoding with the GTX 680? If this is the case, i was thinking of going for the i5 4570 (I'm not into crazy overclocking so not sure if i should get the K version of the i5.... unless its easy to get a good boost out of it). What are you thoughts, will this improve the frame rate?

The second thing is if i upgraded the motherboard/CPU then it would go to my sons computer and i would have the core i3 540 to use for streaming, is this without a discrete GPU enough for the streaming client?

Thanks for your help!

[DiamondPugs]

Originally posted by Mr. EZEKIEL:

The second thing is if i upgraded the motherboard/CPU then it would go to my sons computer and i would have the core i3 540 to use for streaming, is this without a discrete GPU enough for the streaming client?

Should be more than enough. I was perfectly able to stream from my gaming rig to an 8 year old laptop (CPU: Celeron M, GPU: Integrated ATI Xpress 300).

[Bloodred]

AFAIK hardware encoding only works with QuickSync (available on the iGPUs of newer Intel processors) and while it's very effective at reducing CPU usage it also has lower image quality which is especially noticeable in dark scenes/some gradients when using bitrate below 30Mbps or "Unlimited".

[Mr. EZEKIEL]

So does this mean there isn't support for the Nvidia Kepler hardware encoding? And can you use the QuickSync of an intel iGPU while using a discrete GPU?

[NeptNutz]

Originally posted by Mr. EZEKIEL:

So does this mean there isn't support for the Nvidia Kepler hardware encoding? And can you use the QuickSync of an intel iGPU while using a discrete GPU?

As an experiment, take out your discrete GPU and try everything again. I think you will be quite surprised.

I was.

[Mr. EZEKIEL]

All that would achieve is my computer not booting....

[Mr. EZEKIEL]

Looks like I am in luck and i have been made redundant but found another job which pays double what i was on before. So i will be upgrading my games PC shortly and i believe i have decided on the following (I already have a GTX680).

CPU: Core i5 4670k
RAM: 8GB 2000something mhz
HDD: 120gb SSD + 2TB hybrid

So before I bite the bullet and buy it, I have a couple of questions for anyone who will listen.

1: Hyper-threading is no good in games and I imagine it is not useful for encoding video, the extra 2mb cache would be..... but not worth paying $125 for the core i7. Am i wrong?

2: Is 8GB enough memory to run 1080p games and stream? I know it is enough for the games but not sure if streaming chews up a bit of memory.

3: Is quick sync useable when you are using a discrete GPU?

Any other suggestions would be great, the PC is just for games, my mac is used for everything else.

[Th3Cha0z]

well I think i5 is more than capable enough for your wishes, I myself am streaming quite often and never found to be in need of an i7. In regards to the 8gigs of ram, sure it's enough, unless you're like opening 40 chrome windows or something like that. To be future proof I'd invest in 16 gigs simply because it'll be enough for the next couple of years ;) And yes quicksync is useable with discrete gpu, I've been using it on my configuration countless times :D

[Baub]

Congrats, Yeah that set-up will do everythig you need it to do.

[Mr. EZEKIEL]

I'm just trying to limit the money spent and the PC is only used for games, my macbook I use for everything else so I think I'll just stick with 8GB unless I find it maxing out.. well at least for now.

And it sounds like the Core i5 will be plenty if quick sync works, I could probably even drop down to a slower version. I was considering the AMD FX 8 core but I think it makes more sense to just stick with Intel at this time.

I'll be a happy fellow when i can go back to playing games on my TV, it used to be fine until i moved house and the computer is now 25m away from the big screen.