Streaming directly from home with multi-brand GPUs.
Streaming directly from home with multi-brand GPUs.
While I don't expect many people to have experience with this, I'm reaching out on a limb about a purchase. In fact, this question might go unanswered.. but I figure I'd take a gamble here first (since this forum likely has a high population of "gamers"). I use Steam's in-home streaming to play my games. As of right now, my system has two Radeon HD 7950 cards and an i5-4670k (overclocked). Steam in-home streaming offers hardware encoding, where you can have the gamestream encoded by your GPUs (exciting, right?). There's an option that allows you to decide how the stream is handled. I've attached a screenshot, since I'm awful at explaining things. Forgive the weird look of the fonts; this was taken on the Linux client (but the settings and options are the same). I'm sure many of you (that know what this is) are shouting at me for not encoding with my AMD GPU, but that brings me to my question. There's a fundamental problem with encoding video on the AMD side. For some reason, under Windows (with the 7950s CrossFired on Crimson driver), the stream comes out very bad (only sometimes; it's actually perfectly okay a lot of the time, but others it completely botches the bottom half of the screen). Here's a screenshot of what I mean. Please note that I have no clue if this same issue happens with nVidia GPUs. This is why I am posting. Notice the artifacting on the sand. That's not the proper texture. It gets worse, but I couldn't actually get it to do it when not in the middle of a dungeon (which is a bad time to take a screenshot, IMO; also, I didn't want to run one because the stream is very weird when it does it). Here's what it looks like normally. Crystal clear. Makes for nice gameplay. (random side note: the game in the image is Final Fantasy XIV, an MMORPG. Yes, I am a cat. Yes, I am a female.) See what I mean? It looks awful (or can, anyway). While this doesn't make the game unplayable, it's annoying. It breaks immersion, so on and so forth. I don't need to explain this. So, down to the question. As you noticed, there was an option to encode using the nVidia GPU (which is probably better, because CUDA). Does Steam support this kind of behavior (using AMD GPUs for the game and the nVidia GPU to encode the gamestream)? Could I buy an nVidia GPU, shove it in the machine, and have that dedicated to streaming? I haven't mixed brands of GPUs before, so how would they interact with each other (both drivers running at the same time)? What kind of card could I throw in that would be able to handle 1080p60fps on-demand video encoding (note that the idea is to remove the iGPU from the workload entirely as to not tie-up the CPU any more than we have to)? I also ask all of this because a few other titles that are more CPU-bound are simply killing my poor Haswell 4670k (and I doubt the iGPU is actually worth a damn for doing what I want with this). Note that any titles I have mentioned are perfectly functional at 1080p60fps in a normal, non-streaming setting. I have no issues with them whatsoever. Needless to say, I haven't mixed brands of GPUs together. This is a weird solution I figured might be possible if I'm willing to invest in it, which I am. I don't know how I can possibly tell the game to not touch the nVidia GPUs but tell Steam to for the video encoding (beyond the settings page). If anyone is able to provide any information about this, I'd be grateful. I'm not submitting my next order of GPUs for a little while, but I'm eager to try and get this set straight (also, I totally didn't fry my only free nVidia card a few days ago, I swear). Cheers.
I think the process happens on a dedicated chip inside the graphics card, called an ASIC or application specific integrated circuit. Perhaps another person can verify this. According to what I understand, both NVIDIA and AMD's hardware encoding are quite similar. In theory... yes. Does Steam support this? I suspect not. It might be OBS Studio that does, though that doesn't really matter. You're free to use GPUs from different manufacturers together—though they won't work in SLI or Crossfire mode. They function separately. This could let you utilize many displays if needed. In summary, getting a NVIDIA GPU likely won't improve things. My recommendation is to upgrade to a GTX 1080 when it's released, switch to an i7 processor, and stick with software encoding. By the way, you didn't mention if this works for you—does it? And is there any noticeable performance difference compared to AMD hardware encoding? On a side note, I might be mistaken, but the iGPU seems to be built into the CPU, so it shouldn't impact its performance. It appears something like this.
Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't realized how to reference a particular comment repeatedly until midway through writing. I was still unsure about the details of their hardware-accelerated video encoding. I had always thought NVIDIA GPUs might handle on-demand encoding better than CPUs, but I never imagined it would be the case. I assumed using an iGPU would only use a little extra power, though my experience showed otherwise—especially during gaming. It's manageable, but I can't maintain 60fps consistently. Sometimes the stream drops to 30fps or even 20fps, which Steam falls back on. Switching to an AMD GPU makes things worse, causing visual issues like distorted black-and-white patterns. I just want smoother performance.
The encoding quality is much better with AMD, but it hurts the overall stream. Steam does support certain GPUs, but I was more curious about using just an iGPU for gaming. I wanted to know if it was possible to run a game solely on an AMD GPU, with only that specific card for the game and no iGPU involved. I was also wondering if an i7 on an LGA1150 socket could help, though those chips are expensive unless I buy used. I didn’t want to jump straight into a Skylake upgrade, since that would be costly and might limit future upgrades like 4K streaming.
I also found some info about choosing between manufacturers for specific games, but it felt a bit confusing. I wasn’t sure how to decide which GPU to use for each title. My main goal was a mid-range card costing around $100, not something like $1,000. I guess that’s a realistic budget.
Also, I didn’t realize the i5-4670k and i7-4790k would perform similarly since they share the same iGPU. I was hoping for a noticeable difference, but it didn’t seem to exist. Overall, I just wanted some clearer guidance on making the right choice.
This is a major issue. I don't know if steam is causing this... I'd bet that if you record with OBS Studio and force hardware encoding, the resulting video file would be fine. Perhaps you could try updating your drivers? Or even rolling back a version or two. The fact the steam has multiple options, no matter what GPUs are installed, makes it seem like you could use an Nvidia GPU to do the encoding while rendering the game with the AMD GPUs. I believe you can switch which GPUs do the rendering in the game graphics options; it's not always on every game, but some let you choose which graphics adapter to use. Here's the video options from the game Space Engineers ; the first option is what I'm referring to Yes the 4670k and the 4790k share the same iGPU. But the extra threads on the 4790k make software encoding viable, instead of hardware encoding. That is, the CPU cores would do all the work, not the graphics cards or iGPU. Speaking of software encoding, how does it work for you? Should be terrible, in theory, but you never know... Your 7950s are pretty capable. They do fine even at 4k (maybe 40 FPS average). Crossfired, of course. A single 7950 gets like 20 FPS. Additionally, you want your GPU to be your bottleneck. It should always be pinned at 100%, which is fine if you have good cooling. Upgrading to skylake would be awesome, but it would cost a good amount. Maybe 500 USD for CPU + MOBO + DDR4 RAM This is what I'd do. A 1080 is a great investment. Dual 7950s are OK, but they're ageing, and are limited to 3 GB of VRAM, if I recall correctly. The GTX 1080 will go for 600 USD at launch. Aftermarket coolers should be on the market by the middle of June. The 1070 is 380 USD, but I doubt it will be capable of 4k on its own (A GTX 1080 might be) He does explain Around 4:15
@HPWebcamAble You've been a big help. I'm basically a giant idiot, haha. Thanks for holding my hand. It has helped me think about my setup a lot. I'm going to admit I actually was pulling an all-nighter when I posted this (I was really tired). I just woke back up from a 6-hour sleep session and basically all of this made sense to me when I did. Sorry about wasting your time here, but you've definitely helped tired-me out. Yeah. I've found basically nothing on this. I'm probably going to ask around on the Steam forum or IRC channel. I need some information. I think this is what I was originally trying to answer when I posted this thread, actually. Just the problem with the AMD cards, not if I could circumvent using them. Of course I can do it this way! I can pick the bloody graphics adapter! What am I doing! I claim to know what the hell I'm doing with a computer, good lord. I tried software encoding before. No, not a chance. The iGPU buried it; it was absolutely terrible. I didn't realize you were hinting at using software encoding (again my reply was 2 hours before I went to bed from all-nighter), but I'm just going to evade this concept at all cost (use it as a last resort). Fun fact, I apparently got brave when I was as tired as I was. I managed to get a 4.9GHz stable overclock on the i5-4670k. I don't know how I thought that was going to help me. I've apparently got the option to overclock the iGPU as well.. maybe that's worth looking into as well? I'll try that and, if it fails me, I'll just pick up a nVidia GPU in my next hardware shipment. The 7950s are VERY capable. They're about -2% of a GTX 980 when crossfired (well, sort of; they're not a huge issue right now which is what I'm saying). They are TOTALLY not the problem here. I actually checked, when using hardware encoding on the most demanding title I owned (GTA V on maximum settings, sparing a couple for VRAM concerns since 3GB cards), and found out that a single HD 7950 wasn't even going over 50% load (according to OpenHardwareMonitor) when handling the game AND the gamestream). I think it peaked at .. 65%(?) which was for a few seconds. Not enough for me to actually see it happen (OHW shows the maximum value of all of the stats). I'm intentionally stalling doing this. I'm planning to upgrade this puny system soon (within a year or two) but I'm unsure what route I want to take. Before I do anything, I'm waiting for AMD to release Zen and maybe some GPUs. Yes, you were right about the 3GB VRAM; this is a prominent issue when running GTA V at absolute maximum settings. Some of the things AMD promises, while they seem out there, are probably worth waiting for, though. Plus, Skylake was overhyped. I don't actually play demanding titles like GTA V often; they just don't interest me, so I'm probably going to skimp by with Old Faithful here for a little longer. or if I was smart I would have pieced how to do this in my peanut-sized brain without having to dig up an ancient video, bah! Thanks again. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking when I made this thread, but you definitely helped me out. Also, I never knew exactly how the iGPU worked, so that will definitely help me out. ^^
I checked the top result from a Google search, but nothing came up. I meant I only looked at the first link. It’s likely you’ll find more info with deeper research. It seems VRAM might be the issue—crossfire 970s could outperform a 980 Ti, but you’d be stuck with just 4 GB. Nvidia addressed this by adding 12 GB to the Titan X. Maybe the 970 or 980 could have utilized some of that extra space, though I hope you sort it out eventually! Another idea: skip using game streaming. Either relocate your PC to another room or move yourself closer to it. Food for thought, though...
Interestingly, VRAM isn't the main issue. I'm keeping a close eye on how resources are being used, and it seems the CPU is the real culprit. Even when encoding video with the nVidia chip, its usage stays at full capacity. It bothers me that this old GT 520 model is running poorly—hardware info is scarce from OHW. I might have to settle for a budget 1-bay card, since mounting one would be tricky without a riser and I only have a few options. I'm hoping to keep going, though. Maybe something will work.
I’m still trying to figure out how to bypass the gamestream without losing my usual setup. I want the same mouse, keyboard, and everything from my main machine. My current keyboard collection is basic—just a bunch of rubber-dome and Romer-G models—but my IBM Model M is still the best I’ve got. It lets me switch between tasks smoothly, which is important for my workflow.
I play games on Linux, which is great except for the setup hassle. My main rig has an UpDesk, but it’s too bulky for another monitor. I don’t want to pay extra for extra gear just to keep things functional. Plus, I’m used to having everything on one system, and switching feels like a hassle.
If I push voltage higher, overheating becomes a real risk—clocks would stop working. So right now the CPU is hitting its limits.
CrossFire 970? It feels like a tough bet too. I’ll keep trying, but it’s getting harder to see a clear path forward.