100% GPU usage when OBS is open (no streaming, no recording) and playing at high framerates

hungryforcatnip

New Member
I am experiencing very weird issues with OBS.

If ANY game is set to 90+ FPS (some 60+),my GPU usage spikes to 100% the second I open OBS.
If I put the FPS limit just 10 FPS lower (ex. 80 instead of 90), it drops from 100% to ~65%.

It happened with Advanced Warfare yesterday, and it was crashing my OBS; the solution was to limit the fps to 90.
It's happening today with Horizon Zero Dawn, the solution is to limit my FPS to 80.
Also, Rocket League is quite choppy in the preview & recording even though I am recording at 60 and playing capped at 144fps.

1.jpg

GPU being fine with OBS closed (game is even at max graphics, 120fps cap)

2.jpg

GPU is now at 100% GPU usage, just by opening OBS, even on an almost empty scene.


3.jpg

Dropping the FPS limit to 80FPS or below incurs a huge drop in GPU usage (selected 60FPS in this screenshot, but 80FPS yields the same result).

4.jpg

Setting the FPS limit to 90FPS (just 10 more than 80FPS) makes the GPU spike to 100% again (you can see the dip in usage, it was when I dropped it to 80FPS, and the spike right after setting it back to 90FPS).

I have no idea what the issue is.

I do not need to be recording or streaming for the frames to drop immensely the second I open OBS if the framerate is set even 1 fps too high for OBS's liking.
Yes, my drivers are up-to-date (522.25 as of writing this).
Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling is off.
NVIDIA Control Panel performace mode is set to "prefer maximum power".
Game Mode on/off doesn't seem to matter, so I left it on.
Temps are perfecty fine for both, OBS doesn't seem to have much effect on them, even when streaming & recording.

GPU: RTX 3080Ti FE
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900x
 

hungryforcatnip

New Member
I have made some new discoveries:

OBS' GPU usage seems to change depending on the game's framerate, or so it seemed at first.

Here are some screenshots I took of task manager:

30fps.png

Game limited to 30FPS

60fps.png

Game limited to 60FPS


100fps.png

Game limited to 100FPS

It clearly didn't make sense, as the GPU usage reported values didn't add up to 100% (The game was using like 4% at max)

Since then, I rollbacked to the previous NVIDIA driver (to fix the Desktop Window Managament high gpu usage issue), as well as updated to 22H2 (manually), tried turning on HAGS, etc.. and the values are now being correctly reported.

Untitled.png

OBS is now at low usage, and the game is now at high usage, instead of the opposite.

I guess the only solution is to limit the game's framerate, as it is now not an OBS issue anymore, but just a GPU ressources issue.

I have no idea if the 22H2 update is what fixed the task manager for me, but is is now kinda fixed.
 
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