Seasons of Jason
Let's do some performance testing of #Steam Game Recording!
Starting off on #SteamDeck LCD with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I ran the benchmark at MED quality preset with Game Recording off, then Background Game Recording on and recorded results for the *2nd* run of each. I also ran each set of benchmarks twice to ensure I saw the same results.
For this example, we're seeing a 5% performance hit.
(In results screen, you can see the GPU working just a bit harder w/ recording on.)
More to come.
Daniel Melzak
@killyourfm Do you know which codec it uses, is it h.264 or h.265?
I do look forward when all the hardware and software moves to AV1.
Seasons of Jason
@TeamLinux01 I just verified that Steam is exporting the video with h.264.
Seasons of Jason
@richarddegenne Would you accept "Shadow of Mordor?"
Richard Degenne
@killyourfm Feels weird to see "Shadow of the" with anything other than "Erdtree" these days 😂
Seasons of Jason
Whoo boy. The performance hit changes drastically when stepping up to my gaming laptop. (Asus ROG Strix G15 running Bazzite 40 with Ryzen 9 5980HX + Radeon 6800M)
Running Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1440p with the Highest quality preset, I did two benchmark runs with Game Recording on and off, recording results from the 2nd run to ensure hardware was nice and toasty.
The reduction in performance this time was a whopping 37%!
Seasons of Jason
@JoeRess I'm not sure I can speculate without running more games across more hardware (the latter is in very short supply these days). And under Wayland vs X11.
Just not optimized yet is one guess.
5% is impressive on the Steam Deck, but I wouldn't expect to see that drastic a performance hit on my laptop even if I was recording with OBS. Or with the Nvidia/AMD tools on Windows.
It's a curious issue. The kind I miss chasing :D
So I'm gonna go chase it.
Joe Ressington
@killyourfm any theories in why the difference is so much more?
Seasons of Jason
@root You know what, that's a good shout.
I'm gonna run the same test on my laptop at 720p.
cybik :deifirev:
@killyourfm I mean, to be fair, not only do you hella crank up the resolution AND refresh rate so the render needs to be more beefy
but the codec itself *also* has to record at that scale.
37% perf hit is NUTS though.
Seasons of Jason
@root The video output seems locked at 1080p btw. Even using the Highest Game Record setting (24Mbpss)
Seasons of Jason
@JoeRess 15% tops, especially if it uses hardware-level encoding.
(I'm going to look forward to seeing Digital Foundry's verdict on this.)
Joe Ressington
@killyourfm what kind of hit would you expect with OBS?
el_haych2024
@killyourfm geez 37% is pretty significant
Seasons of Jason
@el_haych2024 Yea. WAY more testing is required to get a sense of things though. Let's see if that same performance hit is there with something like Cyberpunk...
Seasons of Jason
@JoeRess yea it’s shockingly good for that hardware.
Joe Ressington
@killyourfm so the 5% is really good then. That's vertical integration for you.
Seasons of Jason
@JoeRess the LCD ones are on sale right now…
Joe Ressington
@killyourfm I don't even play games and I'm on the lookout for a used Steam Deck (if I can find one super cheap) 😂
Seasons of Jason
@JoeRess do you have a different use case in mind?
Seasons of Jason
@JoeRess Nice! The plus side of using it for retro gaming is considerably longer battery life 😜
Joe Ressington
@killyourfm not really. Maybe a bit of retro gaming and generally seeing what it can do. I'm hoping to get one with an SSD for around $200. I'll have to be patient but that's part of the fun.
Seasons of Jason
Back to the Steam Deck for now, testing Cyberpunk 2077 (using the Steam Deck quality preset). Can confirm the EXACT same performance hit of 5% (producing an average 42FPS during the benchmark) when switching on Game Recording. Which is an impressive result!
(Next up, I'll bounce back to the gaming laptop for Shadow of the Tomb Raider -- but this time running it at the same resolution and quality settings from the Steam Deck runs.)
Seasons of Jason
OK, so back to the gaming laptop and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Does that massive 37% performance hit scale down as expected when lowering resolution and quality?
I reduced the output to 720p on my gaming laptop and switched to the Medium quality preset to somewhat mirror the Steam Deck test.
I'm now seeing a performance hit of 19% when enabling Game Mode. I still think it should be considerably less on hardware this powerful 🤔
Thoughts?
More testing required!
(thanks for the idea @root)
Seasons of Jason
@root I'll do some more testing tomorrow with different games. Tonight I'm whooped! Stay tuned and thanks for all your feedback.
cybik :deifirev:
@killyourfm I was gonna yell at the iGPU but then I realized that if Steam used the iGPU for encoding and the dGPU for rendering, there would *literally not be a performance delta*.
Beyond that, scaling up 720p to native-res should NOT take that much processing power.
Beyond deck-specific optimizations (SteamDeck=1 environment variable anyone?), seeing as the GPU in that laptop is LITERALLY 5 TIMES THE MUSCLE, *and* has dedicated memory, this shit is beyond me.
Seasons of Jason
@akhenaton @root I believe so too.
Think it's worth testing on Windows and another distro to have some comparisons.
akhenaton
@killyourfm @root That's high CPU usage. I think it was using software encoding for the laptop.
Seasons of Jason
@ReverseModule @root Just make sure you're using the latest Steam Beta, go into Settings, and select the Game Recording area to choose off/automatic/on-demand.
Cosmic Kokiri
@killyourfm @root How do I enable it if I may ask? I would like to run some tests as well! :)
I'm curious how it fairs on a REALLY high end laptop which is Nvidia as well. I have a 7945HXand 4090M.
Seasons of Jason
@nev You can use it for non-Steam games, as long as the Steam Overlay can run on top.
Nevy
@killyourfm@layer8.space does it only work with Steam games or can it be also used outside? 👀
Seasons of Jason
@ReverseModule @root I'd be interested to see your results. I'm fairly certain Steam is using software encoding instead of hardware encoding on my Bazzite install, which is not ideal.
Cosmic Kokiri
@killyourfm @root Perfect, thank you! :) I'm waiting for Bazzite to get the new Nvidia stable drivers to try it out. Apparently there's a Fifefox issue so it will take some days but I'm hoping to test it soon! Thanx! :)
Seasons of Jason
@root @akhenaton All these results so far are on Bazzite 40...
cybik :deifirev:
@killyourfm @akhenaton I kind of missed the mark on that one 'cause I assumed VALVe did their homework on GPU-accelerated encoding and dumping on Windows. That one's on me.
Unless this is recording on Linux via Chimera/Bazzite/etc, in which case, wot.
Seasons of Jason
I'm testing Steam Game Recording on Windows now. This is Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the same 1440p/Highest setting as on Linux/Bazzite. Here, you can see the performance hit is only 13% with background game recording ON.
This is the way it *should* be, so I'm convinced Steam on Bazzite is using software encoding and not hardware encoding for this AMD RX 6800M.
I'll definitely be testing this on another more vanilla distro to see how things compare.
Seasons of Jason
@ReverseModule @root meanwhile, I'll finish up testing Cyberpunk on Windows, then see how things look on a more vanilla distro like Ubuntu 24.04.
Cosmic Kokiri
@killyourfm @root I see. Well, let get the testing Bazzite image and give it a shot then. I'm gonna use Assasin's Creed Valhalla to take it to the limit as much as I can.
necrophcodr
@killyourfm the performance impact should be barely noticable with hardware encoding to a raw output, so there's definitely something wacky going on. Perhaps the Bazzite install (flatpak?) is missing the appropriate VAAPI libraries/drivers for this.
Seasons of Jason
@necrophcodr Ya know, that IS possible. I just noticed that my installation of OBS isn't offering up any hardware-level encoding options...
Maybe I should get in touch with them?
necrophcodr
@killyourfm might be worth investigating where it goes wrong, but if both are lacking this then it's probably Bazzite. Maybe others have noticed too? Definitely worth putting attention to for the right people.
Seasons of Jason
@hg810316 @necrophcodr That's the nudge I needed. I was thinking about testing these same games on Kubuntu. Thanks for sharing!
hg810316
@killyourfm @necrophcodr
I am using OBS on linux (Kubuntu). H.264 Vaapi is available for my RX 6700 XT and works pretty well for my needs (1080p 60fps). OBS is installed as a Flatpak. The performance impact is around 3% load on the CPU.
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