Question / Help Extreme lags while streaming ghost recon wildlands.

[Cryonic]

Well, i could not stream the game. Not even at medium settings.

Hardware:
i7 5820k @4,2
16gb DDR4 (gonna increase that but so far it was at 12gb total)
850 EVO 250gb (with the game installed on that)
GTX 970 Windforce OC (1530Mhz core).

Software:
Win10
Geforce 378.66 driver
OBS Studio
Everything upgraded to the latest version.

So far i stream at 1080p 60FPS with a variable bitrate from 5500 to 7500, often higher. The issue here is not the bitrate, since i have 25mbit/s upload. The issue is: i cant get OBS to have a higher priority on the encoder, i simply cant get a 1080p 60FPS stream up and running with the x264 encoder with modern games. BF1 works like a charm with 60FPS lock and high settings, but many other games turn out to be a lagfest without any signs of overloading the GPU or the CPU.

Specially Wildlands right now, the only way to stream it with THAT rig was on low graphics settings, how the hell is that possible? I mean the 970 is not the fastest GPU out there, but @ 1080p 60Hz it is enough to drive modern games without any problems at high/ultra settings. And the newest Ghost Recon has low requirements so far.

I just need a fix for that issue where i lose FPS on stream once my GPU starts to actually work and produce a decent amount of FPS ingame. Ingame it looks good, on the preview i see a slideshow and the stream looks just like that (checked with my laptop to make sure i dont push more GPU usage by looking at my own stream on the same PC).

Here is the current logfile:
https://gist.github.com/128ed05202c2fbcdb35f8e59c52167a4

Do i really need a freakin 1080Ti to push the game to max on a 1080p panel? Or a dual PC setup? I get it done, but i was able to stream for almost 3 years with that PC with no issues, just right now it feels like the usage on the hardware has increased by factor 5 or something...

Doublechecked everything, MSI afterburner did show me like 99% GPU usage and around 70-85% CPU usage that is completly fine and worked for me with the same settings for years... Wth is going on?

https://gist.github.com/128ed05202c2fbcdb35f8e59c52167a4

 

[wallrik]

So the log contains two stream sessions.

First stream to eu-central.restream.io

Total encoded frames: 19153
Total drawn frames: 19153
Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 1 (0.0%)
Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 4745 (24.8%)

Second stream to eu-ams.restream.io

Total encoded frames: 1158515
Total drawn frames: 1158515
Number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 8464 (0.7%)
Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 4307 (0.4%)
Number of dropped frames due to insufficient bandwidth/connection stalls: 197 (0.0%)

First one seem fine other than the network connection being extremely poor. Either on your end or their end.

Second stream not as good. Encoding lag due to CPU exhaustion and rending lag due to GPU exhaustion.

I would advice you to downscale to 720p and lower the bitrate.

 

[Cryonic]

Yep, 2 streams. First one: Frankfurt Restream server went bananas. Fixed by switching to Amsterdam as the log shows.

Second stream: CPU was completly fine, GPU was completly fine.
How the heck can i stream BF1 at high settings and not Ghost Recon:Wildlands @ medium? Ghost Recon is not that taxing on the GPU and CPU side compared to BF1.

Like i said, that CPU was able to handle 1080p 60 @ fast before, right now it cant even take veryfast, are you guys kidding? Thats an overclocked sixcore with 1303 points in cinebench, thats not a joke.
I see guys with way lower hardware streaming completly fine with settings that are higher than mine and i used way higher settings on Win7 on that rig and it worked like a dream 2 years ago. Nothing changed besides the more efficiend Win10 and OBS Studio instead of Classic and driver updates. So what is going on? Can you explain me what overloaded my rig there?

I have enough bitrate in the backhand, the connection is stable, so i would not lower that. I wanted to go for a 1440p stream at 20.000 at some point that summer, once i get my hands on the 1080Ti (maybe 2 in SLI) and a 4k monitor so i can downscale to 1440. And you recommend me to go with 720p? nope, nope, just nope. I need the right settings to get 1080p 60 working fine, since i stream to youtube in the end, it will take what ever i can throw at the server.

 

[wallrik]

I didn't even pay attention to the fact that you've been around these forums for a long time.

I'm sure you're aware that 1080p60 requires a lot of juice. But I agree that you should absolutely be able to handle that with your CPU, even on a "fast" preset. But it entirely depends on what other tasks you're doing, yeah? If the game is demanding that's how it is. Maybe you can tweak the game settings?

Anyway, I don't think there's anything weird going on.

Maybe someone else has some good tips. I'll be following the thread :)

 

[Cryonic]

I didn't even pay attention to the fact that you've been around these forums for a long time.

I'm sure you're aware that 1080p60 requires a lot of juice. But I agree that you should absolutely be able to handle that with your CPU, even on a "fast" preset. But it entirely depends on what other tasks you're doing, yeah? If the game is demanding that's how it is. Maybe you can tweak the game settings?

Anyway, I don't think there's anything weird going on.

Maybe someone else has some good tips. I'll be following the thread :)

Yeah i am sticking around here for a while and i know a lot after all the years, my main problem is: i cant get anywhere with my knowledge since everything looks amazing and then - boom, i have the performance of a potato rig.
I just saw a streamer with a laptop (6700k or HQ, 980m, nothing special) that was streaming Ghost Recon Wildlands on ultra/high mixed with 720p 60fps and he was getting constant 60fps.
I have no freakin idea what is overloading my hardware so hard, since every tool that i have shows me enough overhead not only for streaming, but also for the game - and it is still lagging on stream like crazy.

I know that overloading a GPU to the limit will result in a jerky, low FPS stream (while that should NEVER happen since we use the x264 encoder), but in every modern game i was able to reduce the settings or limit the FPS to 60 and it went stable, but with every update on the software side it gets worse and worse. No freakin idea how. It looks like OBS has a decent impact on the GPU while it should not touch it at all when i force it to x264. This was the reason that i dumped some cash into the X99 system with decent OC, so i dont have to deal with GPU encoding and GPU load so far.

I have nothing else in the background. Everything off, just Chrome with a lot of tabs (but no GPU or CPU usage, just RAM) and chat + normal background stuff from Win10. Even the Xbox app is disabled and everything else too.

It feels like i lost about 50% stream performance after i switched to Studio for no reason.

 

[psynaps]

i7 5820k, 64GB ram, GTX 1070 here.

I could not use OBS while playing Wildlands too. The game played great, but OBS could not run while playing it. OBS just got choppy, and strange behavior, stream worked but was unwatchable. I tried different combinations with OBS, x264, nvenc, directx, opencl, etc.

I assume wildlands is in beta and not optimized. Hoping they (uplay) fix it.

P

 

[Cryonic]

Well i assume it is OBS that cant properly work with heavy titles, since the game is actually fairly playable at that highend rig. Lets see if anyone from the crew is willing to help. Xsplit worked for me in the end, but thats not the point, i dont want to switch software mid stream..

 

[psynaps]

Do you think this is a performance issue? I don't feel that way because every other game works fine. I think (speculating) its just Wildlands beta since the behavior is so dramatically odd compared to every other game. OBS works great (1080p60) for every other game i play (all blizzards, battlefields, division, others). Plus, other apps and video in browser and etc are smooth during gameplay, just a wonky mismatch with OBS it appears. Does anyone else experience this? Wildlands is a beautiful game, its open beta if anyone wants to test. Unfortunately for ubisoft, if I cant stream that game (or any other), then I simply wouldn't play it.

 

[Cryonic]

Well people report a lot of issues with that game, specially reported to FPS, CPU usage and other stuff. But i did not expect the game to have such an impact on my hardware. Well, on the GPU side for sure - the 970 is an outdated midrange card. But the 5820k @ 4,2 is still a beast that has enough horsepower do drive every game out there and i will pick up a 1080Ti soon after launch, but so far i wanted to stream the game and i cant. Not even at low settings. I can live with lower settings, i cant live with a choppy stream where the game looks like i play it on an office notebook.

 

[kilyan]

Irun the game fine while streaming, but the streaming is stuttering like hell and has visual artifacts. So is this game the problem, not the settings of obs

 

[StefanThePro]

Can Confirm, Wildlands Crashed me out of OBS after about 5min and dropped frames leading up to that. OBS is giving me issues now just trying to stream anything.

 

[Cryonic]

Can we get something official on that?

 

[Osiris]

OBS needs a small bit of GPU power for scene compositing and downscaling (assuming there is any).
Does Wildlands have some sort of fps cap that you can enable? Judging from the log there aren't even that much lagged frames compared to encoded frames, so the cap doesn't even have to be very low, just enough to make GPU usage drop a few percent.

 

[wallrik]

I had to give this a shot myself. I ran the built-in benchmark and found that I was completely unable to record in 1080p60.

Turns out the game eats a lot of CPU, and for some reason the devs thought it would be a good idea to set GRW.exe to High CPU priority in Windows.

When I change it back to Normal, and give OBS higher priority, it works fine! Here's a quick recording of the built-in benchmark.

Changing the priority down to Normal also seemed to solve some issues I had with textures not loading properly, which I find weird. But I was able to replicate it every time I restarted the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Cryonic]

OBS needs a small bit of GPU power for scene compositing and downscaling (assuming there is any).
Does Wildlands have some sort of fps cap that you can enable? Judging from the log there aren't even that much lagged frames compared to encoded frames, so the cap doesn't even have to be very low, just enough to make GPU usage drop a few percent.

Yeah i gave up on that crap.
Some of my friends managed to stumble over some workarounds like that high CPU profile (they had Xsplit run at highest profile so they can avoid similar issues, i never thought of that).

And like i said, i like my games uncapped, my GPU should work as hard as it can, i prefer to bump graphic settings up and run at 55-60 FPS instead of going lower, capping at 60 and leaving some GPU power for other tasks. If OBS wants some, it should handle that with higher priority, i will not cap or cripple my games until i get tearing or other heavy issues.
2 problems appear, the preview in OBS is laggy as hell (and it is always on the other screen, i need that and it is always on. And the FPS on stream are actually dropping hard once i force my GPU into 100% usage. Like i said, i need it to run MAXED out, even with DSR, no way to force OBS to stop messing around with my GPU? Thats why i dumped some decent money into the CPU, so i can use that instead. The only way that i see right now is a capture card, this is the only way to get the maximum performance out of that system. Or 1080 Ti SLI so there is something left for OBS somewhere :D

 

[Psylocibin]

Was this ever fixed or is there a stable work around? I'm not running the top of the line hardware or anything, an i5 7600k @ 4.4GHz and GTX 1070 OC @ 1860 MHz, but it should be able to handle this no problem. Every other game I've streamed has been silky smooth at Ultra 60fps... this one is chopping like crazy, noticing that everything instantly smooths out in menus or pre-rendered movies. My connection is fine (200mbs down/20mbs up), the stream is steady with audio and all... but once I actually play (outside of the menus or movies) it is lag city. Any help would be great, even though I know this is an old topic.

 

[NekoMina]

Was this ever fixed or is there a stable work around? I'm not running the top of the line hardware or anything, an i5 7600k @ 4.4GHz and GTX 1070 OC @ 1860 MHz, but it should be able to handle this no problem. Every other game I've streamed has been silky smooth at Ultra 60fps... this one is chopping like crazy, noticing that everything instantly smooths out in menus or pre-rendered movies. My connection is fine (200mbs down/20mbs up), the stream is steady with audio and all... but once I actually play (outside of the menus or movies) it is lag city. Any help would be great, even though I know this is an old topic.

I know this response is quite a bit late, but have you figured out how to fix it?

Fair warning, I have an Intel Core i7 5820k @ 4.7Ghz with two GTX 980's in SLI and still can't run this game on Ultra by itself, let alone while streaming. At least not at a steady 60 FPS. I can barely handle MEDIUM settings while streaming. Methinks you're expecting a bit too much from your computer.

The game itself sets itself to High priority, so it gives priority CPU cycles to the game. Try reducing this using the Task Manager prior to streaming. It showed some minor improvements for me.

Other than that, streaming this game while playing it is pretty damn demanding for whatever reason, and I wouldn't recommend trying such.

 

[yomaltes]

Hi,

I know it is a bit old post but maybe this can help to someone in the future. In the description of this videos you can see my video configuration in game, and for when I do streaming in OBS for my system: GTX1080 + i77700k

In OBS my settings: NVEC, 1920x1080, 60frames, 10k bitrate, Lanczos 32 samples. High Quality,

Im know in this game that when you remove the Anisotropic Filtering: x0 it looks better in OBS, but I am okay like this. In case you have low specs it is mater to play with the Very High settings and go to High or Normal until you get the 60 frames. However I play in 2k so if you play in 1080p it must be okay with this settings with low specs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBb1LbcBi9E&list=UUJBx-vMTVqbsHxvO7CV4FVw&index=3