Forcing OBS to render using a different graphics card

[Mysk]

This is a very unique situation so hear me out. My goal here is to make obs run and render exclusively using one of the gpus in my computer. I would like the other gpu to be used for everything else. This would be very easy, except for the fact that the 2 gpus are a geforce gt 710 and a radeon E8860. And before it is said, I know that at least the geforce card has no dedicated video encoding hardware (or at least none the system is willing to use), so just saying that one gpu is enough because the other applications will use the 3d and obs will use the video encoding does not work here. Moreover, I need the the entire application of obs to be run through the other graphics card, not just the streaming/recording portion. For explanation, obs uses about 30% of the geforce graphics card even when not streaming or streaming using x264. I need all of this to be moved over to the other card.

Sorry this sounds a bit rude and badly written. It was written fast and in a rush. If no options are available for this issue, another alternative would be to move the other large 3d application to the other gpu, but this has its own set of issues, mainly that neither gpu is recent enough to be switched over that easily.

Thanks for any help that can be given on this mess!

 

[Mysk]

To briefly clarify for this, my goal is to adjust a setting ideally in obs (likely in the config file) to move it to the other gpu. I have already tried amd switchable graphics (it doesn't work with a card this old), nvidia control panel (it doesn't allow gpu assigning on a card this old), and in the windows graphics settings menu (it only shows the nvidia gpu as both the power saving and high performance options).

 

[FerretBomb]

Unfortunately, you'll run into the same problem as most 'second GPU to offload encoding' folks; that all video frames will have to be sent across the PCIe bus and loaded into VRAM on the other card, which is a MASSIVE performance hit due to the overhead and bus-jamming. It really isn't viable, which is why the GPU selection was removed from the Advanced section of the settings menu.

I just spent a bit looking around in the config files and was not able to find a setting there, though it MAY still be configurable through the launch command line parameters, for testing purposes. (I just checked, it isn't there either.)
Realistically though, it isn't going to work well.

If you're on Windows 10, the standard GPU selection method SHOULD work for assigning OBS to a specific GPU:

Wiki - Laptop GPU Selection Windows 10 | OBS

This page has moved to https://obsproject.com/kb/gpu-selection-guide.

obsproject.com

 

[Mysk]

That's unfortunate, but not completely unexpected. With the standard gpu selection, is there any way to make a card appear as one of the options? Because unfortunately, I've already tried that and it just makes the Nvidia card both the power saving and the high performance.

 

[FerretBomb]

I'm not sure, unfortunately. That would be a Windows-side issue and outside the scope of OBS Support.
Honestly though, grabbing a modern nVidia card with NVENC support would be recommended if possible.

 

[Mysk]

Oh absolutely. We're just trying to work with what we have. We're well aware that what we have is not good.