Will a GFX-upgrade help streaming?

[Icaros]

Hello everyone,

I keep holding on to my now rather aged rig and I'm happy with it after recent updates.

My specs are:
Conroe 6600 @2,4 ghz dual-core about to be updated to a used Q9400 @ 2,66 ghz
Asus P5w DH deluxe (Intel 975x chipset)
2x4 gb corsair (1333 mhz as far as I remember) and 2x1 gb kingston valueram (1066 mhz, as far as I remember they've been at 1333 at ocs too)
Samsung 840 EVO 250 gb
Hitachi 750 gb hdd
Asus GF8800 GT gfx (512 MB)
Seasonic power supply (430W I think)

I don't really play that many new demanding games anymore, so all in all I'm fairly happy.

Only recent annoyance is that streaming is not that smooth. I'm hoping that the CPU upgrade will help here, but I also know that higher resolutions are coming up, so my main question is if a newer generation card will help this? (I know the 8800 GT has some acceleration, but has it improved in newer cards?

I sometimes play new'ish games, so better performance in those won't hurt either.

I'm not budget constrained, but I prefer to use my money smartly.

I plan to a major upgrade in about two years time, probably along with a 4k monitor at that point. Does it make sense to upgrade the video card before that? – Possibly for a card that will carry over to my next platform.

If so I need a card that’s comparatively silent, and which will not require a PSU-update.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Zardnok]

I doubt any graphics upgrade will help you with steaming as most streaming problems are caused by bandwidth and latency problems relating to your internet speeds. Run a speed test to see what you are actually getting.

http://www.megapath.com/speedtestplus/

As for a new video card to make the games you play smoother with what you have, I would look at a GTX 750 Ti card. They are the new "budget" Maxwell cards, so you can get one for under $150, they are incredibly efficient, so you can get by with your current PSU. I would not try to buy a more powerful card now to carry over to your new system as whatever you buy now that could potentially run 4K will be strangled by your older CPU. You are better off buying all new in two years when the cards will be faster and cheaper than what you could currently buy.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Your 8800 GT scores 759 and the new GTX750Ti scores 3663 for roughly 5 times the performance.

 

[Denithor]

The biggest problem is that you are upgrading to a fairly obsolete CPU. Q9400 isn't a horrible chip but it certainly isn't quick by today's standards and simply won't be able to push a modern GPU fully. Do you have any plan to overclock the Q9400? If not, a new GPU is unlikely to help that much simply because the CPU is the bottleneck, not the GPU.

As a side note, I would certainly not expect a GPU purchased today to "carry over to" your next build in two years' time. Two years is about the max expected shelf life on a GPU, as you are discovering with your 8800GT today.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Does that motherboard even support the Q9400? Those older chipsets don't like high fsb frequencies.

For streaming it depends if the software supports the hardware encoding, try to find that out first.

 

[Icaros]

I doubt any graphics upgrade will help you with steaming as most streaming problems are caused by bandwidth and latency problems relating to your internet speeds. Run a speed test to see what you are actually getting.

I get a rating of 'good', and that's from across the point. I get much better ping scores on pingtest.net

Plus I'd assume that when videos are cached it shouldn't be much of an issue?

I'm running the E6600 right now, and the Q9400 should be compatible with my motherboard.

My shelf life for a video card is obviously a little longer than two years, considering I have a 7 year old card right now.

But can I understand this in the way that a newer video card will not do better at streaming/video decoding than my current one? - if it's only a matter of frame rates on games I get it that I have too many other bottlenecks in my system to get much out of an update.

 

[Erenhardt]

New GFX cards have hardware accelerated recording (streaming) which offloads the massive work CPU had to do. I can record in 720p on my HD7870 without noticing any performance loss.

Also, everything is build in driver, so you don't need to install 3rd party recording software.

 

[sxr7171]

Can't imagine why your rig can't stream properly. Even $60 Roku does fine. You probably have some OS issue.

Maybe reinstall windows?

 

[FatherMurphy]

Can't imagine why your rig can't stream properly. Even $60 Roku does fine. You probably have some OS

It is due to his system not having modern GPU hardware encoding/decoding. His CPU is burdened with that task and can't handle it.

Erenhardt and the others are right. A new GPU will handle encoding/decoding for your CPU and should do so automatically (i.e. once you have installed the appropriate driver).

Your rig is old, though. A GTX 750 (non-ti) would be good for streaming issues, and would likely still be faster than your 8800GT for games. Anything more on the GPU side is going to exhibit a greater and greater CPU bottleneck, especially if you don't overclock.

The GTX 750 (non-ti) should tide you over until you are ready to build a proper gaming rig.

 

[KingFatty]

Something like flash video enables GPU hardware support (fast decoding by the video card) for only certain video cards.

The funny thing is your old video card supports hardware/GPU decoding, so you should get good performance - did you accidentally disable hardware decoding in the flash control panel?

Here is a list that is published by Nvidia, for their video cards that support hardware flash decoding. I'll also copy/paste the list below for convenience: http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpus_supporting_adobeflash.html?ClickID=dnnzo0wxbkbm2ysz2k2xrtbtcobonk2oyymy

The various different GTX 8800s *ARE* supported, so you should enjoy stutter-free decoding of flash video on your video card.

Please confirm whether you've accidentally turned-off hardware decoding by the GPU? Turn it back on, and your videos should decode through the GPU instead of the CPU, which will make them smooth.

I'm using an ancient NVidia 8600M GT on a laptop, and I can smoothly decode 720p flash (and even most 1080p flash video, unless there are a lot of things moving quickly on screen simultaneously).

Here are all the Nvidia cards that support hardware/GPU flash decoding, from the link above:

GeForce GTX TITAN Z Quadro 6000 ION
GeForce GTX TITAN Black Quadro 5000 ION LE
GeForce GTX TITAN Quadro 4000
GeForce GTX 780 Ti Quadro FX 5800
GeForce GTX 780 Quadro FX 5600
GeForce GTX 770 Quadro FX 4800
GeForce GTX 760 Quadro FX 4800 for Mac
GeForce GTX 750 Ti Quadro FX 4700 X2
GeForce GTX 750 Quadro FX 4600
GeForce GTX 745 (OEM)* Quadro FX 3800
GeForce GT 740 Quadro FX 3700
GeForce GT 730 Quadro FX 1800
GeForce GTX 690 Quadro FX 1700
GeForce GTX 680 Quadro FX 580
GeForce GTX 670 Quadro FX 570
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GeForce GTX 660 Quadro FX 380
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GeForce GTX 650 Ti Quadro FX 370
GeForce GTX 650 Quadro FX 370 Low Profile
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GeForce GT 630 Quadro NVS 420
GeForce GT 620 Quadro NVS 295
GeForce GT 610 Quadro NVS 290
GeForce GTX 590 Quadro Plex 7000
GeForce GTX 580 Quadro Plex 2200 D2
GeForce GTX 570 Quadro Plex 2100 D4
GeForce GTX 560 Ti Quadro Plex 2100 S4
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