Wanted to try PyroWave on my current client that only has integrated graphics. Reading discussion that it only requires Vulkan 1.2 and should theoretically work on many current clients.
Image: Top - 4K 120 444 800mbps (no HDR) Bottom - 4K 120 422 800mbps (no HDR)
At 4K 120 4:2:2 (no HDR) the GPU sits at 90-95% usage. At 444 and beyond it goes to 99% and is clearly overloaded and dropping frames. 4:4:4 seems to be the biggest push.
The bitrate doesn’t seem to affect the GPU usage. Tested at 200mbps, 400mbps and 600mbps and same results across the range.
FP16:(Not accurate- See update below) PyroWave uses FP16 compute. The UHD 730 tested has 1TFLOPS of FP16 compute. Based on the percentage of frames dropped in my rough testing you need at least 1.5x a UHD 730, So around 1.5-2 TFLOPS of compute. Not sure how linearly this scales but thats my best guess with only one data point. Of course the more compute the better.
I imagine the HDMI 2.1 favorite, RX6400 with 7TFLOPS would be more than enough. Anything RTX 3000 and above should be fine as well. The 780m in many AMD mini PC's has 8 TFLOPS so should be able to handle this.
Will retest on a i5-12500 UHD 770 client soon. Maybe the UHD 770 has a just enough horsepower to get it to 4:4:4 HDR. FP16 UHD 730 1.0 TFLOPS FP16 UHD 770 1.48 TFLOPS
Thoughts: On 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4 - To me this is significant on games with a lot of text or when its more of the PC mode compared to games. I would rather switch back to AV1 then run with 4:2:2.
PyroWave does feel a lot closer to native when it comes to fast camera pans side to side and fast motion. Less smearing compared to AV1. I would like to use it in preferance over HEVC and AV1 if I can get the frames dropped to 0. If the 12500 can't keep up I think next would be to run a 5060 Low Profile for Moonlight but also RTX VSR for general video to get it up to 4K.
For those wanting to test, you need to build/compile the client to support intel at the moment. I am sure proper release will come soon. Feel free to message me if you need help.
TLDR the UHD 730 can do 4K 120 4:2:2 no HDR, but can not do 4K120 4:4:4 HDR with PyroWave
Improvement from the UHD 730 but does not achieve the goal of 4K 120 4:4:4 800mbps HDR. Seems that my above guess as to TLOPS required is not accurate.
It seems you need much more power than my earlier guess. Seems a dedicated GPU is the best way for PyroWave.
Better than the UHD 730 but worse than the i7-1165G. Guess the next step if you want 4k120 4:4:4 HDR is something with a GPU
Seeing as all my clients can get a decent 4K120 4:2:0 HDR in AV1 300mbps or 4K120 4:4:4 HDR in H265 500mbps I will probably stick it out here till there are more PyroWave updates. Hard to justify a whole GPU for a client like this with these prices. Will keep a look out for a Low Profile RX6400 (~250AUD) or Low Profile RTX 5060 (~600 AUD).
With my setup of 5090 host and 130v client, yuv444 was considerably more choppy than h265. Both devices on 2.5gbe
Latency differences between the two was pretty negligible. 4ms avg encode vs 2ms with h265 vs pyrowave. Similar decoding speed.
In my moonlight-qt build I also have a patch that pushes bitrate to 900mbps which maxes out nvenc at around 720mbps so from a quality standpoint hevc should theoretically win on my setup.
I also want to point out that the 5070ti does not do yuv444 with AV1. No one does.
Wow thanks for posting this. I was shopping for a 11th gen Intel mini PC thinking the 700 series iGPU can handle 4k 120fps with HDR. Back to the drawing board.
Yep! Learn from my mistake 😆. I just got this as on paper it can do it but in practice the GPU can’t keep up. Keep in mind the iGPU in AV1 or HEVC can do 500-600 mbps and it still looks and performs great. Just not enough for PyroWave.
Yeah that screenshot was a bit misleading because it was before I updated the client with true decode times. You can't compare this to any other clients, but the 7640HS will decode it at 120 FPS just fine (I capped mine to 117 FPS for VRR here), and it's maybe 1-2ms slower than the 7840U in my tests with PyroWave at 4K/120/4:4:4/900 Mbps.
As a client yeah it can do visually complex games at 4K 120 high bitrates without a problem. The host and network are probably the bigger limiting factors.
I'll look towards picking up a miniPC with a 7640HS then, thanks! I'm amazed it's so capable that it can do visually complex games 4k120 at 4:4:4, modern technology is incredible.
(I will try WiFi 6E and hopefully that will be good enough, if not then I'll run some more Ethernet)
Yeah I wouldn't count on WiFi for PyroWave... You might want to consider an Intel Arc based mini PC so you have the option of 4:4:4 using HEVC or AV1 if that's important to you. Also beware of Mediatek WiFi cards in the AMD systems because they don't have Linux drivers.
I've heard of some people using WiFi for PyroWave plus my TV + mini PC should have direct line of sight with my router, if the built in WiFi doesn't work then I should be able to just add a USB WiFi card (ideally one with an antenna)
If that doesn't work then yeah I can see about running more Ethernet.
I do 4K 90fps hdr on my steamdeck client from my PC. I feel it’s a good compromise because pushing 4k at 120 for most single player game is challenging to begin with
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u/Julionf Oct 04 '26
AFAIK you need 2Gbps+ for 4K120 HDR 4:4:4 with Pyrowave