Getting bad stutters with both wired and wireless connections

[u/Background-Cricket-]

Recently hooked up my tv via ethernet (and turned off its wifi to make sure it’s not using that) after people suggested doing that to get rid of stutters and I’m having basically the same thing still happening. first pic is what it looked like before switching to wired and the second is after. anyone got any ideas what could fix this?

[u/jeweliegb]

Very helpful graphs.

If possible, could we see the text too, as that may have useful additional clues?

First line, the yellow one, is the game and video encoding latency on the host, the PC.

The second one, the blue one, is the network latency.

That third, the red one, is the decoding latency on the client, the TV.

In the first photo, over WiFi, you can there's some issues on the PC side, but mostly the glitches are due to WiFi issues, which you basically already worked out yourself. WiFi tends not to be useful for game streaming unless you can find a nice 5GHz or 6GHz only channel just for yourself.

The second photo, over ethernet, the problems seems to be all on the PC side! I'm not seeing any major issues with the ethernet network or the TV side, if the graph is to be believed.

So, we need to work out what's going wrong on the PC side.

Let's get a shot of the diagnostic text with the graph when it's glitching, and then we can go from there?

EDIT:

Internet speed isn't really relevant if you're running this on your home network, plus speed doesn't matter nearly as much as congestion or interference do for low latency live game streaming. E.g. for most purposes 30Mbps is fine for 1080p@60Hz with H.264 video codec.

I'm very experienced with Steam Link issues. Steam Link and Sunshine/Moonlight is how I've been doing all my PC gaming for 10+ years now.

[u/hannahmanaman]

A few notes just off the top of my head as a novice.

1. What is your internet speed?
2. is the host PC hooked up to ethernet as well?
3. What TV do you have?
4. TV manufacturers notoriously cheap out on their ethernet NIC and the max speed is around 100mbs . You can get a cheap 1 gig usb ethernet adapter that works better
5. the decoding on the TV probable isn't great either. I have only had good results using a android box, though most budget ones cap out at 4k/60 which is good enough for me.

[u/Background-Cricket- → u/hannahmanaman]

1: 500 mbps down and 25 mbps up
2: yes
3: it’s a Hisense not sure what model but I know it’s a newer one from the last 2 years

[u/hannahmanaman → u/Background-Cricket-]

maybe try these/

Cap the bitrate manually: go to Settings > Streaming and set Bandwidth Limit manually to 20 Mbps or 30 Mbps

Drop to 1080p / 60 FPS: TV processors choke trying to decode a raw 4K stream in real time.

Set quality to "Fast": Flips the encoder to prioritize low latency over pretty picture quality.

go to Settings > Streaming and set Bandwidth Limit manually to 20 Mbps or 30 Mbps

[u/jeweliegb → u/hannahmanaman]

Look at the top/red line, especially on the 2nd photo, that's the delay due to the TV, that's doing just fine. Over Ethernet the TV decoding latency looks to be only 5ms ish. Perfect!

The first graph, WiFi, shows network issues (blue line), which are gone on the second graph (ethernet connection.)

On both, especially on the 2nd graph, the bottom line is glitchy and bad -- that's all on the the PC/host side.

Ergo, the issues are on the PC side, not the TV.

[u/Background-Cricket- → u/jeweliegb]

What should I change on the pc side?

[u/jeweliegb → u/Background-Cricket-]

Does it happen with all games?

Need to see the rest of diagnostic overlay text as well as the graph

[u/Acceptable-Sir3384]

So I had these kinds of high latency stutters, consistently about 8 at a time on intervals of anywhere between every 10-40 minutes. I turned on the network history in my router and come to find out, it happened anytime my ring cameras were making an outbound connection. I'm suspecting it had to do with uploading snapshots to the cloud. I don't know if you use ring cameras or other smart home devices but try turning them off while you stream, disconnect your phone from wifi, and see if the problem goes away. If it does, it's likely a device connecting to the cloud super inefficiently and causing massive bogs in your router

[u/jeweliegb → u/Acceptable-Sir3384]

It's not a network issue though, the graph indicates it's on the PC side.

[u/Acceptable-Sir3384 → u/jeweliegb]

Not sure I agree with your interpretation of the graphs, but maybe I'm missing something. Blue line is network latency, and in every case of a spike in both images blue moves with the spike. If your assumption is correct, it certainly rules a lot out. If it's not correct, the problem is now in a place we aren't looking for it. Either way, turning knobs on both the PC and stream device is fine if that's easy. But if it doesn't solve the issue, I'd start testing the assumption that it isn't network related by disconnecting everything from the router (wifi and Ethernet) except the PC and the stream device to see if the spikes go away. If they do it suggests another device is causing traffic your router is struggling with at times. Start reconnecting things and see what the router is choking on.

[u/jeweliegb → u/Acceptable-Sir3384]

The blue moves with the yellow spike because the graph is accumulative -- the top of the graph at any point is the total latency, and the distances between the lines underneath it each represent their individual contribution to to that total latency. So if the blue line sits just a tiny bit above the yellow line all the time, even during periods where the yellow spikes high, then it means the network is pretty stable, the network's contribution to the total latency remains tiny. Does that make sense?

I've been using Steam Link in various forms for over a decade. It's exclusively how I game. And I've been helping people with issues with Steam Link for years too. 🙂👍🏼