Question / Help FPS in OBS drops unless Vsync is enabled

[Althegamr]

I've done fairly extensive during the past two days on this, and found nothing to help, hopefully someone here can. I did a stream on Wednesday night, playing Overwatch, everything was fine. Then all the sudden on Thursday I was setting up a new layout and tested it with the game and noticed something strange: the FPS in OBS read between 17-24, BUT my in game FPS was over 130. I usually get between 130-160. I tested it with other games and the same issue rose. After MUCH trial and error, I discovered that if I turned vsync on in any given game, the FPS counter in OBS would stay at 60 while I was playing the game. AHA! I fixed it... wrong. I 've been playing on a 144Hz panel for quite some time, I can see the difference between 60 and 130ish when I play a game. Sure enough, I opened the game with an FPS counter and it was locked at 60. Ok, back to work. I then discovered that with vsync turned on, and OBS closed, my FPS was locked at 144, Ok, that's normal. But, then if I opened OBS and began to stream, the FPS would drop and lock at 60. I disable vsync, and my in game FPS jumps back up, but OBS will only capture at the before mentioned 17-24 FPS. I haven't changed any settings in OBS, the only thing I changed was a source in one scene, and even removing it does not help. I also tried with OBS Studio, to no avail. My PC specs are,listed below, and before anyone says it, THE HARDWARE IS NOT TOO LOW FOR STREAMING! I STREAMED BEFORE AND IT WAS PERFECTLY FINE! I will not even consider a response that says my hardware is not good enough. CPU, GPU, disk and RAM usage are not capped out by any means, and the temps are more than acceptable. I will also include a log file, but for some reason, it does not want to attach to this post... Figures :P

CPU: FX-6300@4.5
GPU: GTX 960 4 GB
RAM: 16GB DDR3
MOBO: MSI Gaming 970
SSD; Corsair Force LE 240GB

 

[Althegamr]

Looks like the log file DID attach! Yay! Thanks in advance!

 

[Althegamr]

Bump

 

[Sapiens]

Running without any type of frame limiter (vsync or otherwise) typically maxes out your GPU because the game renders as many frames as possible, which in turn hurts OBS performance. A GTX960 isn't exactly a powerhouse and if you aren't willing to balance your system resources you're in for a bad time.

You also have three monitors connected to two different GPUs, put them all on the one that renders what you plan to capture. Cross-GPU capture and preview rendering (e.g. putting OBS on one of the monitors connected to the AMD GPU, then having it capture something from the NVIDIA GPU) performs terribly.

 

[Althegamr]

Yes, I understand the a 960 isn't a powerhouse, but in both scenarios, my gpu doesn't ever max out. Also, the cross gpu thing? The Radeon card is for completely separate monitors, and only runs my web browser and other side tasks, and I've never had a problem with it before. I've streamed games like Overwatch at 60 fps while getting over 100 fps in game, with this exact setup. It isn't an issue that has always occurred, it's just now starting to do this.