Civ VI test stream on both Twitch and YouTube. (Update: YouTube... strikes again...)

Testing to see if my computer can handle doing this. Network upload speed shouldn't be a problem. Let's see if my computer can handle it. If not, then the streaming PC definitely needs to be used.

Update: Hi folks. Looks like YouTube is being a royal pain in the arse today. Not sure why, as I thought I solved it with getting rid of the chat box OBS pops up, cause the frames stopped dropping.

But now the stream just went dead over on YouTube. For no good reason. Not sure why.

Will try again soon I guess. Sorry again.

~~~~ Original Post Below ~~~~

Hi again folks.

Here is the stream link if you want to watch on YouTube.

If you wish to see me stream on Twitch instead, here you go. This link should do fine for now.

These will not be live until sometime around 10/11AM. (Edit: Roommate isn’t awake yet, so judging by his usual habits, he’s probably not going to be awake for another hour. I’m not waiting longer than that to get started.)

Anyways.

We can consider this stream to be either a one off, where nothing counts towards the save file; or we can let it be part of the series proper. I’m going with part of the series proper for now, but if we have too many issues, I’ll be yanking it and starting over with the part 8 save file left as it was.

Here’s the situation.

I’m trying to see if my computer can handle the thoroughput of:

1. Running Animaze to capture my camera and turn me into one of those V-Tuber things. Whilst also…

2. Capturing the game and encoding it for YouTube. Whilst also…

3. Capturing the ‘screen’ from OBS and using it in Twitch Studio to kind of cheat the system of capturing the game itself or my V-tuber camera by Twitch itself.

So the end result is that it should mostly look like Twitch is getting a normal stream, but otherwise it’s just YouTube’s stream being copy and pasted to Twitch Studio in a way.

Neat, huh?

And how is my computer handling it so far? Well, as far as just sitting here waiting to see how streaming goes in a moment, it seems to be handling the resource load… amicably.

So long as I can keep the CPU hovering below 90%, and the GPU in the same realm of usage; I should be able to keep things stable and cool enough for operation in my room without needing to turn on the window fans.

Why am I going through this trouble right now?

Because I’m trying to see how much I can get away with using just one computer before getting my 2nd rig involved. 2 PC’s = more power use. I already have my Gaming rig and Laptop running. Getting the streaming rig running full and proper means I am going 100% full tilt into it, meaning I need to set aside an extra … 35-50$ for added power use between it and the fans that will be running more often.

35-50$ may not seem like a big deal to many, but for me it’s the difference between having a cellphone plan, or not. I bought it outright, but monthly plans still cost money, ya know?

The alternative to this, is activating a few things in my Gaming rigs bios after an update. Turning back on the virtual cores for the CPU, and activating the GPU options that have to do with large ram access and stuff like that; will help. But I’ve been putting that off, because bios upgrades while easier now today, can still lead to other issues for some people.

It’s probably not going to be a problem if I need to do it, but I would rather exhaust all other options first. Especially since I have a capture card I should be using as well, in that streaming rig. I want to save those performance boosts for later when the gaming rig really needs it. Not activate them just because I want to stream to two platforms simultaneously.

Yes, there is restream.io. But the means relying on a 3rd party service, which could work out well, but I basically have the ability to stream to 2-4 platforms if my idea works out anyways. 2 on gaming rig, and 2 on streaming rig, if I really want to. Or I could be recording on one rig, and streaming to 3 others platforms instead. Something like that.

So, since YouTube is set to 26Mbps and I have Twitch set to 8Mbps, I have an extra 85Mbps to spare roughly speaking, network wise at least.

But GPU wise… Well, CPU seems to be more the issue so far. I’m running a benchmark while recording atm.

As you can see,

We are definitely pushing things pretty close on the CPU and in terms of Ram usage as well.

But the GPU seems pretty happy to keep on keeping on. Spikes now and then, but that’s it.

So the problem here is Animaze mostly. It takes 24% of the CPU on its own, just to render and run. Then droidcam takes another 4-7% on its own. After that it’s everything else doing whatever it needs to.

So I’m losing a third of my CPU’s capability to just having that V-Tuber thing going.

I dunno. I think I might say nay to that for now. Not to mention that Droid cam stops working part way because of … reasons… Probably my cellphones fault somehow.

So it’s not like I can trust it to keep operating for more than … an hour.

And as for the resulting quality of the recordings?

OBS looks just fine.

Twitch looks exactly how you expect it would probably look like. But, that might be fine, considering that Twitch limits people to using bitrates that are… uhm… abysmal. It’s kind of their own fault, because if I was able to use higher bitrates properly, it would probably look the exact same in both streams.

I say probably, because there might be a small amount of degradation due to the way I am doing it.

But otherwise, it should be coming out looking roughly the same if using high bitrates on both. But since you can’t use that high a bitrate on twitch… well…

Can’t be helped at that point, beyond just ‘doing it right’ which will only look partially better anyways.

But then again, if I just setup my 2nd rig and used it, then most of this wouldn’t be an issue at all in the first place.

I’d just have to deal with paying more for power usage. Which is kind of a No Bueno for me until I can get some cash flow happening somehow.

In the meantime, I figure I should at least write this post, and put it up. That way people have some time to plan ahead to watch the stream if they want, however they want.

If Twitch, check the twitch link by 9:55AM at the earliest. If YouTube, same idea. If I decide to move it ahead to 11Am for sure, there will be an update to this post stating it as so. Right now, I have it set for between 10 and 11, but won’t be starting until I know my roommate isn’t sleeping for sure.

So, that’s the current situation.

Once this stream is done, sometime around … 1pm? I’ll be probably doing a ‘just chatting’ in Twitch for a few hours while using the V-Tube thing.

I’m not sure what the chatting is going to be about, but I’ll have a web-browser ready to go so we can pull up articles about new games, and stuff going on in the gaming industry I guess.

Like the news about EVGA giving Nvidia the Linus Torvalds middle finger salute, to put it lightly.

That was spicy news to hear about yesterday.

Long story short for those who just want the quick details.

1. EVGA realized that a crypto crash means high glut in supply, meaning massively reduced prices eating into their profit margin.

2. EVGA is tired of being treated like a 3rd rate citizen by Nvidia, and isn’t alone.

3. EVGA is basically stepping out of GPU manufacturing entirely while they get their backlog of supply dealt with, and after that it’s basically anyones guess as to whether they are going to stick to it or not. They say yes they will, but anyone looking at this right now is basically calling their bluff. They could be telling the truth, but until some time passes, we won’t know for sure.

4. They said no to working with Intel and AMD, but more in the sense that they weren’t going to seek them out. I.E. if they approach EVGA maybe things will change. But according to Gamers Nexus “Steve”, They basically claimed they don’t want to ‘backstab’ the partner company they feel constantly sabotages and backstabs them anyways.

5. They still intend to provide customer support up to a certain point, but once that threshold has been crossed; you’re on your own basically. They are going to keep extra supply on hand apparently, to be able to deal with RMA processes still. That sort of thing.

Basically what this all means is that if you are going to buy a new GPU any time soon, it might be a good idea to avoid EVGA if you don’t want to deal with the headache of owning a dead companies card. At least on the GPU side of things. (*They are still very much alive in other departments.)

But it also means you could probably get an EVGA GPU for dirt cheap here soon if you play your cards right. Between the stock going up on Ebay pushing the price down from crypto miners dropping their loads, and the other vendors and Nvidia driving prices down as well…

Basically EVGA is looking at this round of crypto boom and bust cycle, the second it’s been through now, and saying “nope, not doing this.”

They liked it when they were making mad money, but now that Nvidia’s antics are causing them problems again; they’ve had enough. I can’t say I blame them on the second part, but the first part makes it hard to feel sorry for them.

But what do I know. I usually just rock team red. AMD is what I’ve generally used for decades now. Jeez… I just realized how long I’ve been using AMD for now.

The only reason I have Intel or Nvidia at all, is because of my Laptop mostly, and my streaming rig is supposed to have a Xeon chip in it, but I cheaped out with an i7 instead… for reasons that are currently beyond me now. I should have just got the Xeon chip… lol.

Oh well.

In the meantime, you all have a good day/night, and I hope to see some of you in one of the streamed platforms. If the initial first 15 minutes go without any hiccups, I’ll keep the stream going for the 2 hours or so I mentioned. If things start to pick up, we may even go for a full 3 to 4 hours like I used to.

But again, I might need to do some changes to my setup to make it work like the way I am hoping to make it work.

And if this works out well, well enough to work well enough that is, then it shows me that my planned upgrade to the 5800X3D for my gaming rig will likely be more than enough to handle the extra headroom needed to make it all work perfectly. 2 extra physical cores, and like… 3x the cache. Yeah, I think it will do just fine. And I’ll be able to put my current 3600XT up for sale and maybe get a few hundred for it. Maybe. We’ll see what the market looks like when I do. If I do.

Cause I also might just put it in a small ITX rig and make use of it that way instead. Who knows.

Anyways. See ya all later. That’s enough rambling for now.