Bug Report Constant lag whenever OBS is visible, stutter when OBS is not visible, using Win7 Classic theme

Jellymouse

New Member
Whenever not using Aero/desktop composition, OBS lags hard just by being visible, even with nothing captured or displayed. With anything being captured, it lags linearly harder(aka 32ms stutters become 64ms stutters become 96ms stutters become 128ms stutters), scaling proportionally with canvas resolution.
It is unaffected by actual encoding or recording.
Using desktop composition completely eliminates the stutter, but increases CPU load substantially, forces programs to update slower/less frequently, and causes performance issues in Clip Studio Paint, notably significant cursor delay, more frequent spots of lag/stutter on the canvas(made worse by Clip Studio being open at all), much slower canvas scrolling, scaling, and rotation, and oddities with pen tracking precision.

However, this only happens when the OBS window is visible. If it's even just behind another window, this does not occur. My capture is one scene to capture the Clip Studio Paint window, cropped slightly, and then a crop of that to focus on the navigator, with a bunch of still images and a single high speed slideshow. However, all of these things will only double the duration of each stutter, which will occur as soon as anything is being captured/displayed at all, regardless of the rest of the fluff.
Everything is stutter free as soon as OBS Studio is minimized or not displayed.

Possibly relevant information includes:

  • CPU is an Intel Haswell quadcore, post patch.
  • This problem seems to have cropped up in roughly a two month period, maybe less than a year ago? It's possible that it was there before, but I didn't notice it because I didn't have enough displays or some such. However, the time when I started to notice(and it is very noticeable when happening. Like, impossible to miss.) was when I started:
  • Running two asynchronous GPUs, a GTX 1060 6GB to drive my primary(165hz, 2560x1440p) display and secondary(120hz, 1680x1050), and a GT 1030(4x pcie) to drive my 4k Cintiq Pro 16, which becomes the primary monitor when active.(And therefore making the 4x pcie 1030 the primary GPU during this time; however the stutter remains when the 1060 is the primary GPU, or when the Cintiq is off) Both are driving a displayport GPU each, with the 1060 also driving a DVI-D display.
  • Persists across multiple driver versions, however drivers more recent than the one I'm using break Gsync completely, as well as a dozen other things at any given time, and also bluescreen the computer when downgrading to a working version, destroying all of my settings and profiles, and causing my Cintiq to throw a shitfit for at least an hour before I can coax the damn thing into actually doing it's job again FFS so I haven't tested newer than... 391? and don't intend to. Using 384.76 because it's the only good driver for 1060 ffs nvidia I went green to stay away from this shit why
  • Gsync, but the problem happens when Aero is off and is unaffected by Gsync settings so probably not important?

My full system specs are:
MSI Z97 GD65 Gaming
32GB(4x8GB) of 1866mhz DDR3, running 9-9-9-24 I think?
i5 4690k
GTX 1060 6GB
GT 1030
Some cheap Crucial TLC SSD
Some big slow spinny drives
Dell S2417DG
Cintiq Pro 16
Viewsonic something something it's DVI-D who cares
Logitech G502 mouse and Gsomething keyboard, one of the 'cheap' featureless mechanical ones with white LEDs.
Windows 7 x64

Log is here
https://hastebin.com/umenedizud


Update: And to make things more confusing, when the Cintiq is off, OBS no longer lags when visible. With the Cintiq on OR off. Even though, under the same conditions, it did less than an hour ago, and nothing has changed. Months of frustration trying to fix this and it's just fixing it's self???
Working with a full 4k canvas, no stutter, reasonably low CPU load of 15~30% across 4 cores with clip open and OBS visible and as I type this stutter is creeping back in. Well, I have no idea at all at this point. OBS is just broke somehow.
 
Last edited:
Top