What hardware is really necessary for steam in home streaming?

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1

Ok so this is mostly just me being intrigued and (probably) moronical but if you know the answer please let me know. I just entered the world of PC gaming this last week and I'm really enjoying playing games that look and feel much nicer to play than before and I quite like tinkering around. For instance I made steam boot up in big picture mode when I turn on my controller and press start and I decided to check out steam's in home streaming with my surface pro and it runs better than I initially expected which made me ponder what kind of hardware would one really need for in home streaming? I honestly have no clue and if someone could point me in the right direction that would be great. It would be great if I could stream downstairs to the TV on a NUC but i'm not sure if we're really there yet.

 

Anyway if anyone knows that would be great. What experiences has everyone had with steam's in home streaming?

2

I have used it with a gtx 670, 560 and a 860m and a 750m on OSX, Linux and Windows 7 & 8.1  it seems to work well across the board. Your router is the most important thing for smooth game play.

I think they are on to something. Now if they can get this to stream to ARM devices other than the shield. Imagine stream to a chromecast, roku, phone or tablet would be so cool. The future of Computing is personal servers with small thin clients. 

3

Well I've streamed 1080p over my laptop on the middle stream setting and I was getting about 30fps.

The laptop has a 1.8Ghz dual core i3 with 4 threads and intel HD4400 graphics.

It only uses about 30Mbps of local bandwidth to play 1080p at highest stream settings.

4

I use it on a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet with an Quad-Core Atom and it works fine for me as well. and the clock-speed on it is 1.8ghz. it's pretty good it does come down to your internet speed though

I will say this you will feel like a god playing PC games in the Lavatory.

5

Specifically, each machine needs a GPU capable of real-time video encoding/decoding (which is almost any GPU). You also want a decent network setup. Far as I can tell, that's all there is to it.

6

I think my problem is probably my internet connection at home. How much difference can a different router actually make?

7

Your internet connection doesn't matter. Steam In Home Streaming is just that- in home. The traffic never leaves your network. 

A router can make a pretty big difference. A high quality wireless N router is recommended and you don't want to be too far away from it. (Good signal strength)

The actual device receiving the stream doesn't need to be powerful at all.  

8

Could you point me towards said routers? Or what to look for in a router?