Question / Help "Encoding overloaded" because of GPU?

[KuJoe]

So I recently built a new streaming PC and randomly during the stream my viewers will say it's stuttering/lagging and when I check OBS shows the "Encoding overloaded" message in the bottom left. I check the resources and CPU never gets above 60% with the x264 CPU preset of Medium with a bitrate of 10Mbps and the temps look good for everything but my GPU (NVIDIA GT 710) is maxed out at 100% usage. I basically just bought the cheapest GPU on Newegg that still had Windows 10 support but it looks like that was a mistake. Before I go out and buy a new graphics card just for streaming, can somebody confirm the overloading is GPU related or could it possibly be something else (in which case 100% GPU usage is to be expected)?

Somebody told me that GPU is used for the scene/assets in OBS but I didn't expect them to max out a dedicated graphics card because other people have told me that even an IGP would be fine for streaming. I guess it depends on the OBS scene right? And details and information anybody can provide on the topic would be appreciated so I can get a better idea of what is happening and why so I can make an educated decision on how to proceed. Thanks! :)

 

[Sapiens]

https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/please-post-a-log-with-your-issue-heres-how.23074/

 

[KuJoe]

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/2ad039fbdebe3b7d3b7fb175bac7a62c

 

[KuJoe]

I was able to get my hands on a more powerful video card to do some testing and it looks like it's not the GPU after all (the overloading happens with the GT 710 at 99% load and with an HD 7970 at 12% load). I did see the CPU hit 100% a few times in the performance monitor but I find it strange that the CPU would get overloaded at the current settings when the same settings worked fine in a single PC setup meaning I was streaming AND playing games on the same CPU with the current settings. I will need to do some more digging to figure out what might have changed.

 

[Albrat]

You might want to open Disk manager, goto your recording drive that you use to save recordings and check that the Drive cache is enabled. I had this error after over a year of usage windows just switched off the drive cache in a update.

This resulted in my computer working fine, 60fps in games and OBS recording 5 seconds of video perfectly fine... then the encoder overloaded errors started. Video was as choppy as a rough sea and processor usage was 3.2% for OBS, 36% for the game I was recording. I realised it was the HDD after many hours of changing settings and trying to get OBS to work again. (it had been working fine for over 12 months.) The only reason I found the drive issue was that I accidentally reset my save location to C: and poof the recordings worked fine. Reset it to my normal drive and encoder errors. Changed to other drives and got the same errors. Only after 3 hours of checks did I find windows 10 had disabled Drive chache's on all but C: ... 10 minutes later after resetting the drive cache and suddenly my recording drive works perfectly. no buffer overruns or encoding errors. Also my games play much better / faster again.

 

[KuJoe]

You might want to open Disk manager, goto your recording drive that you use to save recordings and check that the Drive cache is enabled. I had this error after over a year of usage windows just switched off the drive cache in a update.

This resulted in my computer working fine, 60fps in games and OBS recording 5 seconds of video perfectly fine... then the encoder overloaded errors started. Video was as choppy as a rough sea and processor usage was 3.2% for OBS, 36% for the game I was recording. I realised it was the HDD after many hours of changing settings and trying to get OBS to work again. (it had been working fine for over 12 months.) The only reason I found the drive issue was that I accidentally reset my save location to C: and poof the recordings worked fine. Reset it to my normal drive and encoder errors. Changed to other drives and got the same errors. Only after 3 hours of checks did I find windows 10 had disabled Drive chache's on all but C: ... 10 minutes later after resetting the drive cache and suddenly my recording drive works perfectly. no buffer overruns or encoding errors. Also my games play much better / faster again.

Thanks, I checked the cache settings and it's enabled but I'm running a benchmark to make sure the drive isn't misconfigured. This morning I decided to do some local recordings using hardware encoding and I still got the "Encoding overloaded" message meaning something else is going on besides the CPUs maxing out. This is really annoying. :(

 

[Fissshie]

You might want to open Disk manager, goto your recording drive that you use to save recordings and check that the Drive cache is enabled. I had this error after over a year of usage windows just switched off the drive cache in a update.

This resulted in my computer working fine, 60fps in games and OBS recording 5 seconds of video perfectly fine... then the encoder overloaded errors started. Video was as choppy as a rough sea and processor usage was 3.2% for OBS, 36% for the game I was recording. I realised it was the HDD after many hours of changing settings and trying to get OBS to work again. (it had been working fine for over 12 months.) The only reason I found the drive issue was that I accidentally reset my save location to C: and poof the recordings worked fine. Reset it to my normal drive and encoder errors. Changed to other drives and got the same errors. Only after 3 hours of checks did I find windows 10 had disabled Drive chache's on all but C: ... 10 minutes later after resetting the drive cache and suddenly my recording drive works perfectly. no buffer overruns or encoding errors. Also my games play much better / faster again.

I don't know if this works.. But I had a little problem trying to figure out how to do this on Windows 10.. So here's how to do it (but again, don't know if it works).

(FOR WINDOWS 10): Go to device manager and go to disc drives. Double click your main drive (or whatever you store your videos on) and go to the Policies tab. You should be able to see two selections.

 

[Boildown]

I had a GT 630 and I easily maxed it out. I swapped it for a GTX 560Ti for a bit and everything ran smooth. The GPU can definitely be a problem. A GT 710 is even worse than a GT 630 so I'd absolutely expect it to be a source of problems with OBS.

My rule of thumb is that OBS needs a GTX x50 or better, where the letters are GTX instead of GT, x is anything from a 5 on upwards, and the last two digits are 50 or better. AMD equivalents to those also work (but I've been on Green team for a while so I'm less familiar with them).

The embedded GPUs on Intel CPUs from Haswell and later are much more powerful than a GT 710 (or my old GT 630). Again, not sure on the AMD side but its probably similar, especially since AMD is actually a legit GPU manufacturer (unlike Intel).