Hey @bluenote

I am using a Pi4 1gb.

I've struggled a lot to get it to perform "decently". I've got fkms on, running everything at 1080. 4K does not work well, lots of stutter I think it's because it needs more memory.

The memory split I'm using is 384. But in order to get less stuttering I had to overclock the h264_freq and v3d_freq to 600.

I wonder if everything works much smoother on a Pi4 4gb

Thanks for speaking up @ckoryom. I wonder if you need that high of a split for 1080, did you try it? Are you using any cooling for that overclock?

@bluenote

I just have heatsinks, but I'm not sure. I've been experimenting, sometim a I feel like the actual overclock it's not doing much.

I've disabled all the overclocking now and set the memory split to 256. With fkms on or off does not make a lot of difference.

Still performance is very similar with the overclock. But I tried with a Pi 3B this morning and the performance felt much better somehow.

I'm not sure that the Pi4 is ready for steam link yet.

Thanks for checking back. How is your sound, do you get cutouts ? And occasional black screen for a sec?

Originally posted by bluenote:

Thanks for checking back. How is your sound, do you get cutouts ? And occasional black screen for a sec?

Hey sound is good so far,

I've ran a couple of tests now. Pi4 is different man.

Now I've disabled all overclocking and left only memory split 256mb with fkms on.

Everything without fkms looks horrible and laggy.

This worked much better than using the overclocks. Pi4 is completely different when it comes to overclocking. Specially on the gpu side. Actually playing around with h264_freq and v3d_freq was worst. In Pi4 touching core_freq and gpu_freq is a NO GO!

Then I did another test and lowered memory split down to 128mb... Everything looks so much better... Bitrate at 25mbit, somehow with 30mbit it looks better but stutters more.

Can you run some tests too and let me know?

I have been running experiments but I haven't come up with anything that really helps: I get too many sound cutouts, and some black screens. But I haven't recorded my results either. I'll report back the next time I do a session of comparisons, that might be the weekend though.
Are you noticing that there's a difference between a native steam game and a custom shortcut? which one are you using to test?

Originally posted by bluenote:

I have been running experiments but I haven't come up with anything that really helps: I get too many sound cutouts, and some black screens. But I haven't recorded my results either. I'll report back the next time I do a session of comparisons, that might be the weekend though.
Are you noticing that there's a difference between a native steam game and a custom shortcut? which one are you using to test?

Absolutely!

Steam games are running way smoother. For example, I've managed to find a configuration that I'm kind of comfortable with Tomb Raider (2013) and F1 2019 on Steam. Then is switch to my Fifa 19 shortcut (which runs on Origin) and man it looks terrible.

I've read that non-steam games don't perform really good with Steam Link.

Another thing you gotta make sure is that you are not running in-gamea-overlays from those launchers. And definetly turn off Nvidia gamestream.

For your sound issues there is a very recent post here on how to fix that.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/6/1642042464753800526/

Originally posted by ckoryom:

Originally posted by bluenote:

I have been running experiments but I haven't come up with anything that really helps: I get too many sound cutouts, and some black screens. But I haven't recorded my results either. I'll report back the next time I do a session of comparisons, that might be the weekend though.
Are you noticing that there's a difference between a native steam game and a custom shortcut? which one are you using to test?

Absolutely!

Steam games are running way smoother. For example, I've managed to find a configuration that I'm kind of comfortable with Tomb Raider (2013) and F1 2019 on Steam. Then is switch to my Fifa 19 shortcut (which runs on Origin) and man it looks terrible.

I've read that non-steam games don't perform really good with Steam Link.

Another thing you gotta make sure is that you are not running in-gamea-overlays from those launchers. And definetly turn off Nvidia gamestream.

For your sound issues there is a very recent post here on how to fix that.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/6/1642042464753800526/

By the way, give it a try just with 128mb split. That's what I've been running for the last two days. Using 256 somehow gives me way more stuttering. Like I said before I've read that Pi4 is different when handling memory/v3d etc.

Yeah at 128 and 720p my video is quite good (custom shortcut). But the audio dropouts continue, and I have no default.pa file. Do you have it?

For some reason today my latency is crap. Still some dropouts. Steam native games do perform better but at the moment, not good enough. Parsec is so much better, but I'm tired of using another pc at the TV.

So installing pulse audio and applying the fix in the pinned thread made a huge difference. Now problem is latency/jerkiness. I'm running at 128mb gpu ram.

Originally posted by bluenote:

So installing pulse audio and applying the fix in the pinned thread made a huge difference. Now problem is latency/jerkiness. I'm running at 128mb gpu ram.

lag only on non-steam?