SteamLink Test on the Raspberry Pi 4

Given the inclusion of USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and a faster Wifi connection in general it appears that the Pi 4 B may be the ideal Steam game streaming box so I installed the steamlink package on Raspbian Buster and tried streaming the game Cuphead at 1080P to see if the fast paced side scrolling shooter was playable. This is a short summary post of the experience rather than an in depth technical breakdown, but I figured it valuable none the less. One additional thing of note is that the Pi 4 is in a case, as is common, and that the case is metal. Since it also acts as a heat sink the Pi 4 is kept cool and the on board Wifi will be tested under less than ideal but very real world conditions. First off was the Gigabit Ethernet connection and its probably no surprise that this worked flawlessly. The Pi does get a bit warm under the load of dealing with the stream, but is more than capable of keeping up with the task when it can move the raw data on the network. Second off was the on board Wifi and unfortunately it was not up to the task. Frame and input drops immediately plagued the experience. Next I tried 2 different USB 3 5Ghz Wifi adapters claiming a top speed of 1300Mbps. One adapter with external antenna and one thumb style without external antenna. Both ended up preforming the same despite the smaller adapters worse maximum range, but someone streaming a good distance from their access point will probably need the higher gain of the external antenna. However the smaller thumb style adapters driver was found within the latest version of Raspbian Buster whereas getting the other model working required tracking down, compiling, and installing the driver for the chipset. Since the smaller adapter is easier to work with and preforms the same in my environment, I will likely keep using that one for the foreseeable future.