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Hey Guys,
I'm pretty stuck here. I've tried almost every popular method out there, and pretty much every time I wind up with a pretty decent stream (1280x720, 20fps, 1000 Mb/s) that looks and runs well, but my performance hit is so awful in-game that I can't realistically compete. I usually get around 140 FPS normally, but when streaming it's around 15-40 and I feel input lag as well. Been playing with different settings and bitrates for days.
Here's the crazy part- from what I read, I should be able to handle this, and then some. Here's my system:
Intel Core i7 930 (quad core, hyper threaded)
2X AMD Radeon 5870s running Catalyst 11.6
6 GB of DDR3
Win7 64-bit
Running SC2 in Full-screen Window
Speedtest Results: 11.55Mbps down, 1.41 Mbps up. 0% packet loss, 102ms ping, 2ms jitter to SF, CA, USA
I've tried the following tutorials and configs:
Day 9's PC World Tutorial (VHSC + FME)
Destiny's Tutorial (VHSC + FME)
TeamLiquid Ustream Tutorial (VHSC + FME)
Xsplit Beta 4 RC5
SCFC in place of VHSC
All of these yield nearly identical results when configured properly.
Things I've tried:
1. Disabling AMD's Crossfire. No effect.
2. Rolling back to AMD's Catalyst 11.5. No effect.
3. Trying different CPU affinities between SC2 and FME, VHSC. Only makes problem worse.
4. Tried running FME in console mode. No effect.
5. Tried Ustream AND Justin.TV. No difference.
6. Tried lowering the bitrate as low as 400 bps (audio has been MP3, mono, 22kHz, 48 kbps). In VHSC, tried both VP6 and H.264.
7. Lowered SC2 quality to Medium. No effect.
8. No virus scanners or any other weird stuff running in the background.
One thing that I noticed is unique in my setup is that I have a 1920x1200 16:10 monitor. Anyone else using one? However, I just tell VHSC to grab 1920x1080 (16 ) and just live with the crop so that it doesn't have to do any work down-sampling the pixels. Essentially, my entire philosophy through this whole thing has been to get my computer to do the least amount of work possible while being able to still play SC2 at 1920x1200 (high quality) and have a decent 720p stream.
Forgot to mention... my Core i7 isn't getting nearly saturated... all cores are reporting roughly 30% utilization while streaming and playing SC2. No thermal issues or downclocking is occuring. GPU is around 90%.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike
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Well, your GPU has nothing to do with it.
Are you OCed at all?
I'd be happy to help you with OCing if you want.
Oh, what FPS are you trying to stream at?
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I have a similar problem, try using FME 2.5 and report back.
It allows me to stream, albeit it's certainly not ideal as it lacks proper multithreading support which means you're likely to have the lower the resolution to stream at a decent framerate.
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No overclocking at all on this rig.
Yes, tried FME 2.5 as well- still same result 
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On July 23 2011 14:46 Tempest261 wrote:No overclocking at all on this rig. Yes, tried FME 2.5 as well- still same result
What's your target stream FPS, and are you interested in trying to OC to see if it helps? You'd need an aftermarket cooler.
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On July 23 2011 14:55 JingleHell wrote:
What's your target stream FPS
You probably missed it (or the OP edited it in), but he says "20fps".
@OP
- I have the same resolution as you - it's not the problem. 
- I have the i7 920 and it's just barely powerful enough to stream 720p with the current software available. If you feel comfortable about OC'ing, go with JingleHell's suggestion.
- I would definitely change the FPS to 30 for better viewer experience.
- The ingame input lag and the FPS drop is "normal" and is due to the way the screen capture driver works. R1CH explains this in his guide. However in the newest version of XSplit you can try out their GameSource feature which grabs frames in a different (and better) way. It's still early beta though, and some have reported worse FPS than normal. You might have to wait it out.
- XSplit settings: Do not use the "slow/slower presets" - i strongly recommend to go with the "default" and quality around ~7-8. I also recommend setting the bitrate at half your connection speed (though R1CH says 75%)
- I have found one method of improving the ingame experience a tiny bit, and that's by giving SC2 access to all 4+4 cores in the affinity settings. By default SC2 only uses the even cores (on the i7 920).
- When using XSplit it is normal/ok that your specific CPU isn't maxed out. If you wan't to see it go up (really no point in this), fiddle with the before mentioned "slower preset" and watch it.
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I can easily try OCing- I've done a ton in the past- just have learned over the years that the perf gains are usually not worth the time.... The part of your suggestion that'd doesn't make sense is that the CPU isn't even close to being hammered. If it were the bottleneck, at least one of those cores would be maxed out.
The reason why SC2's default affinity is set to only even cores is that they probably wanted to only run on real cores- not the virtual ones created by hyperthreading. I've tried enabling the virtual cores and it only seems to make the problem worse.
As for the 30 FPS suggestion- I've tried that. 14.98, 15, 20, 25, 29.98, 30, 60- nothing makes a difference in-game.
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On July 23 2011 21:12 Tempest261 wrote:
The part of your suggestion that'd doesn't make sense is that the CPU isn't even close to being hammered. If it were the bottleneck, at least one of those cores would be maxed out.
I do realize the illogical statement I made, but XSplit just doesn't utilize all the power in a multi-core CPU. R1CH wrote about this in his guide. If you use the "slower preset" or even FME you will se the stress more clearly which is why I find the i7 920 barely capable of streaming (@stock clock).
On July 23 2011 21:12 Tempest261 wrote:
As for the 30 FPS suggestion- I've tried that. 14.98, 15, 20, 25, 29.98, 30, 60- nothing makes a difference in-game.
That was merely a suggestion to give the viewer a better experience (less stuttering).
On July 23 2011 21:12 Tempest261 wrote:
I've tried enabling the virtual cores and it only seems to make the problem worse.
I definitely get better ingame input control when allowing SC2 full control over all cores. This is strange.
Am I right in understanding, that your issues currently are the frame drop when enabling XSplit and the ingame input lag? As said, a frame drop is "normal" with XSplit - it's by design. So is the ingame input lag. IMO, streaming is not invisible to the performance in SC2 on a i7 920/930. I'm trying to relay what expectations you have may not be realistic .
Can you post all your current XSplit settings please?
Have you tried the GameSource feature? Im streaming pretty well with that: 720p example 30fps|1000kbit/s|default preset|quality=10 The ingame FPS sits around ~40 which is playable.
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Yeah I'll have to try a few of these settings when I get back to my PC on Tuesday- I'm unfortunately unable to try anything else until then.
I guess most of my confusion stems from my belief (correct me if I'm wrong) that the i7 930 is still a pretty high-end CPU, and that it makes no sense that the utilization is so low... This is with FME as well. I'm actually a GPU design engineer, so in my head I'm saying to myself that if I assume that there isn't some significant O/S level perf issue, driver issue, or SW issue (w/xsplit or FME) here has to be a bottleneck *somewhere* whether it's the CPU, memory, file I/O (if there was paging)... And from the stats that I have running in my 2nd monitor I'm seeing no perceivable bottlenecks.
Let me be clear- the STREAM looks fantastic. I'm seeing very few to no frame drops from Xsplit or FME unless I go absolutely crazy with the settings. I'm not claiming at all to be an expert in how this stuff works (I'm a HW guy) but in a worst case I'd expect a slow CPU to not be able to render a frame on-time for Xsplit/FME, causing the frame to be dropped and utilization to look low like I'm seeing... But I'm not seeing that, and I'd expect that the game would be untouched without one of the cores being pegged since its frames are rendered by the GPU.
Anyway, I appreciate the suggestions and I will give them a chance when I return on Tues.
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Your upload speed seems to be a bit low for a 720p stream. Try to monitor it during streaming, maybe thats the bottleneck. Check if lower stream settings (smaller resolution or bitrate) will affect your problems.
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On July 24 2011 00:22 Tempest261 wrote:
Yeah I'll have to try a few of these settings when I get back to my PC on Tuesday- I'm unfortunately unable to try anything else until then.
I guess most of my confusion stems from my belief (correct me if I'm wrong) that the i7 930 is still a pretty high-end CPU, and that it makes no sense that the utilization is so low... This is with FME as well. I'm actually a GPU design engineer, so in my head I'm saying to myself that if I assume that there isn't some significant O/S level perf issue, driver issue, or SW issue (w/xsplit or FME) here has to be a bottleneck *somewhere* whether it's the CPU, memory, file I/O (if there was paging)... And from the stats that I have running in my 2nd monitor I'm seeing no perceivable bottlenecks.
Let me be clear- the STREAM looks fantastic. I'm seeing very few to no frame drops from Xsplit or FME unless I go absolutely crazy with the settings. I'm not claiming at all to be an expert in how this stuff works (I'm a HW guy) but in a worst case I'd expect a slow CPU to not be able to render a frame on-time for Xsplit/FME, causing the frame to be dropped and utilization to look low like I'm seeing... But I'm not seeing that, and I'd expect that the game would be untouched without one of the cores being pegged since its frames are rendered by the GPU.
Anyway, I appreciate the suggestions and I will give them a chance when I return on Tues.
Actually SC2 is significantly CPU limited, but only uses two cores. Any GPU that has a right to be on an LGA 1366 board isn't going to be the bottleneck to your in-game FPS.
Feel free to take a peek at the RAM benchies I did in SC2 on my 930.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=245087
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2792/13
The second is an article about memory scaling on Bloomfield CPU's.
http://www.techspot.com/review/305-starcraft2-performance/page13.html
There's some more CPU testing results from another source, without the RAM focus.
Is that enough to convince you that you really are having CPU troubles? I'd suggest at least trying it with HT off, even if you don't OC, maybe the virtual cores are causing some weird issue. If that doesn't work, you might try a mild OC, even just up to 3.4 or so, to see if that helps.
My 930 can boot to 3.8 at 1.25v, and overnight P95 stable at 1.25625v. Batch is 3011B106.
If you turn off HT, you can easily get the thermal headroom to OC to probably a minimum of 3.6 or so on the stock cooler if you don't have an aftermarket cooler. Although odd numeral multipliers seem to work better, so a Bclk 200x17/x19 might be easier. Just don't forget to set uncore to 2xRAM clock minimum.
You might need 25-50mv VTT if you try 3.8Ghz. And as always, OC at your own risk.
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On July 24 2011 00:22 Tempest261 wrote:
I'm actually a GPU design engineer, so in my head I'm saying to myself that if I assume that there isn't some significant O/S level perf issue, driver issue, or SW issue (w/xsplit or FME) here has to be a bottleneck *somewhere* whether it's the CPU, memory, file I/O (if there was paging)... And from the stats that I have running in my 2nd monitor I'm seeing no perceivable bottlenecks
I hear you and agree completely, but with streaming I've found it useful not to underestimate CPU usage. Add to that that XSplit is still in beta
@JingleHell
Thanks for those links - good read!
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I have the same problem, except that my in game fps will say 60-70fps, but when i pan the camera, it stutters as if it was reallly 15fps or so
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Wow your computer has almost identical specs too mine. I have been streaming recently as well. I also had similar issues to you as well. One thing I found that made a huge difference when streaming was setting priorities on my processor from the taskmanager. I would set sc2 to high and iTunes and other programs to low, but I left FMLE and VAC as normal. This solved most of my problems. I'm not sure if this is any different that changing affinities or not as I am not super tech savvy, but this solved any problems I was having.
The only reason I tried this was because I knew Sc2 is CPU intensive so I figured it should be the highest priority. I read through the thread and I don't think I saw that suggestion anywhere.
Perhaps this might help you?
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Hey everyone,
So I tried the following:
1. Overclocked my i7 930 to 4.2 GHz. Surprisingly, it's pretty stable after some TLC.
2. Disabled Hyperthreading (related to #1)
3. Disabled crossfire
4. Set FME/Xplit to cores 3,4 and set to normal priority
5. Set SC2 to cores 1,2 and set to high priority.
Results: nada. Pretty much the same result. Awesome perf when not streaming- noticeably reduced performance when streaming.
Pretty close to giving up until my next system build.
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Uhm. Pretty stable meaning? How'd you test and for how long? I'm assuming you know how to test properly if you can get it to boot at 4.2, but still gota ask.
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Stable meaning I haven't had a freeze/crash/bsod- trust me, I've done this before. I also don't see how that question's relevant.... 920's and 930's hitting 4 GHz+ on air is apparently really common.
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On August 01 2011 09:25 Tempest261 wrote:
Stable meaning I haven't had a freeze/crash/bsod- trust me, I've done this before. I also don't see how that question's relevant.... 920's and 930's hitting 4 GHz+ on air is apparently really common.
If you don't understand how asking how you tested and for how long is relevant, and think comparing your chip to random other ones without even referring to batch numbers is relevant, I have trouble believing you do know how to test properly for stability.
But hey, it's your PC that should be capable of streaming that isn't doing it effectively, so since you know it all, go ahead and blow a pile of money instead of troubleshooting.
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On August 01 2011 09:27 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2011 09:25 Tempest261 wrote:
Stable meaning I haven't had a freeze/crash/bsod- trust me, I've done this before. I also don't see how that question's relevant.... 920's and 930's hitting 4 GHz+ on air is apparently really common. If you don't understand how asking how you tested and for how long is relevant, and think comparing your chip to random other ones without even referring to batch numbers is relevant, I have trouble believing you do know how to test properly for stability. But hey, it's your PC that should be capable of streaming that isn't doing it effectively, so since you know it all, go ahead and blow a pile of money instead of troubleshooting.
Hey man, I'm an ASIC design engineer- I've not only designed high-speed digital ASICs, but fabricated chips with my bare hands. I understand how ASIC binning works. Not to mention the countless hours of overclocking that I've done for well over a decade on my personal systems. We do not need to waste time vetting my understanding of clock speeds and gate timings. I've stress tested with Prime 95 for hours and trust me, it's stable.
I say your question was irrelevant because either the system would have crashed, or not crashed, during streaming. It was solid. The CPU held out at a solid 4.2 GHz the entire time. Again, do not understand the relevance of the question.
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See, now you answered. I'm not sure how you can not know that it's possible to have an OC that boots and sort of runs, but isn't completely stable, and doesn't perform like it should. It's actually pretty easy. That's why I asked (And I did mention that I was pretty sure the question wasn't relevant for you personally, since you got it to that speed.)
Plenty of people are dumb enough to google it, use someone else's settings, and assume it will work for them perfectly, and then not have a functional OC. Since you just said "pretty stable", I just wanted to verify for sure.
Oh, and your profession doesn't mean much, plenty of people in high tech jobs are horrendous at other PC related stuff.
I really think there's something going on here, your hardware should be fine.
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EPT
