I'd like some help with the 6-tier dream

[SteveCZ]

For $1K you can get a GTX 1070 and a skylake I5.

Oh yes, he could. What a happy year.

[TyroneSama]

PSO2 streamer here. PSO2 doesn't really incur a lot of load on either side, so any current or last-generation GPU will be fine paired with an i5 (provided you're playing in 1080p60 and encoding at 720p60). SSDs are really nice for general operation, but not really a dealbreaker bump in performance for either streaming or PSO2 in particular -- grab one if you can, otherwise plan for it later.

I use an i7 6700 to give myself as much headroom as possible, but I've streamed similarly demanding games on laptop i5s with minimal problems before, and my 660Ti runs the game at 60fps with the exception of premade Magatsu -- heavily clustered particle effects and effect lighting, and really weird AO on the grass in phase 2.

Now is a great time to pick up a used 970 or 980 as everyone jumps on the 1000 series train, though.

[Selphea]

B-but I want to encode at 1080p60! That's the max res for Twitch right?

[TyroneSama]

B-but I want to encode at 1080p60! That's the max res for Twitch right?

Yes, but the max bitrate is 3500kbps, so good luck getting anything looking good at 1080p, especially a game as high-motion as PSO2 (basically a video compression nightmare). 720p60 is the absolute farthest I'd push anything that isn't Hearthstone.

[Skyly]

Commenting on the current topic.. if I play at 1080p60 and wanted to stream at 720p60, would I have to scale down my in game resolution, or does twitch automatically do that according to my bitrate.

[Selphea]

The software you use takes your raw 1080p footage and downsamples it to 720p before sending to Twitch

Yes, but the max bitrate is 3500kbps, so good luck getting anything looking good at 1080p, especially a game as high-motion as PSO2 (basically a video compression nightmare). 720p60 is the absolute farthest I'd push anything that isn't Hearthstone.

Is that with H264 or NVENC?

[TyroneSama]

Commenting on the current topic.. if I play at 1080p60 and wanted to stream at 720p60, would I have to scale down my in game resolution, or does twitch automatically do that according to my bitrate.

You can scale things more or less however you want, provided your streaming software supports it (OBS and XSplit both do).

Is that with H264 or NVENC?

Even with x264 at faster/medium, PSO2 looks like absolute garbage at 1080p60@3500kbps. There's just not enough data. NVENC is even worse -- it's good for local recording, but a disaster for Internet video.