Question / Help Game capture not working, high cpu usage and frame loss in game.

[Orbigod]

Hi all,

Please help me out with the problem.

First of game capture is not working with overwatch and if it works it will make my game to drop frames.

My pc specs are:
Cpu: intel i7 6700k
Mobo: msi z170 m7
Gpu: msi gtx 1080 gaming x
Ram: 32 gb
Storage: samsung evo 500 gb
Cpu cooler: corsair h115i
Windows 10 64 bit
Obs 19.0.2
Running latest drivers for gpu

Now as seen above i think that my pc can handle both streaming and playing games at the same time. If not please advise me on what i should do.

My problem lies when i try to run a game such as battlefield 1, the game drops frames and lags a lot, i have tried to play other games and see if the problem would continue to persist. And it does, i have tried different games like diablo 3 and overwatch, even other indie games.

I have set obs to take less load on cpu, and that didn't work.

The problem is caused by obs studio because when not running it everything works just fine.

Please not that i don't have dropped fps in obs, my problem is with in game and high cpu usage and dropped fps, could somebody explain to me why this problem is occurring?

At the moment i don't have the log file, what i need to understand is what could be wrong.

 

[3steJungs]

Try to download the newest Nvidia drivers from Geforce Experience. Thats works fine for me!

 

[Orbigod]

I have downloaded the latest drivers, even used ddu to do a clean install to the drivers and that didn't solve anything, it's not making sense to me anymore, cause i did all what is required. And the problem still exists

 

[kokowang]

I don't understand why people think they're machines are going to be lagless just because they spent $500 on an i7.... Set your encoder to use NVENC, set preset on max quality. (Settings > Output > Encoder > NVENC).

 

[Orbigod]

I don't understand why people think they're machines are going to be lagless just because they spent $500 on an i7.... Set your encoder to use NVENC, set preset on max quality. (Settings > Output > Encoder > NVENC).

I did that, and things got worse. and i know that anything could mess up the stream, i am trying to figure out what could be the problem my friend, I'm not saying that my pc is the best around, what I'm saying is that it could handle things with ease, and should not have such problems :)

 

[kokowang]

I did that, and things got worse. and i know that anything could mess up the stream, i am trying to figure out what could be the problem my friend, I'm not saying that my pc is the best around, what I'm saying is that it could handle things with ease, and should not have such problems :)

An i7 6700k can get 82 FPS on x264 720p encoding (from 1080p source, scaled to 720p - most common setup) using medium preset. This means that if you're trying to record 720p60fps video with x264, you have 25% of CPU power left for other applications.
Having an i7 doesn't mean you can handle everything with ease. A Game + 720p encode will max out your CPU and cause lag.
Your build, while definetly not bad, is not what would be considered great for what you're trying to do. The only hope you have of streaming HD while playing games is through the Nvenc hardware encoder on your GPU. What's the problem with the Nvenc encoder? Post logs or there's not much we can help with.

 

[Orbigod]

An i7 6700k can get 82 FPS on 720p encoding (from 1080p source, scaled to 720p - most common setup) using medium preset. This means that if you're trying to record 720p60fps video with x264, you have 25% of CPU power left for other applications.
No just because you have an i7 doesn't mean you can handle everything with ease. A Game + 720p encode will max out your CPU and cause lag.
Your build, while definetly not bad, is not what would be considered great for what you're trying to do. The only hope you have of streaming HD while playing games is through the Nvenc hardware encoder on your GPU.

I will try that out for sure and play with setting, im only streaming without recording, i will do some tests and see if it will solve the problem, a quick question though, would that effect the game or does the game rely more on the cpu?

Any idea why game capture is not working? Or is it better to do a sceen capture?

Thank you for explaining what's happening as i was totally lost, and my knowledge is not that great. Again thank you for the help

 

[kokowang]

I will try that out for sure and play with setting, im only streaming without recording, i will do some tests and see if it will solve the problem, a quick question though, would that effect the game or does the game rely more on the cpu?

Using hardware encoders (nvenc) on GPUs will not effect performance. The hardware encoder is a separate chip/core from your actual graphics cores on your GPU. OBS's renderer and streamer will still use a bit of resources and slightly affect performance, but shouldn't have too much impact.

 

[Orbigod]

Using hardware encoders (nvenc) on GPUs will not effect performance. The hardware encoder is a separate chip/core from your actual graphics cores on your GPU. OBS's renderer and streamer will still use a bit of resources and slightly affect performance, but shouldn't have too much impact.

Good to know that. I will test it out and post the results, again thank you for the support and your time, much appreciated.

 

[Orbigod]

An i7 6700k can get 82 FPS on x264 720p encoding (from 1080p source, scaled to 720p - most common setup) using medium preset. This means that if you're trying to record 720p60fps video with x264, you have 25% of CPU power left for other applications.
Having an i7 doesn't mean you can handle everything with ease. A Game + 720p encode will max out your CPU and cause lag.
Your build, while definetly not bad, is not what would be considered great for what you're trying to do. The only hope you have of streaming HD while playing games is through the Nvenc hardware encoder on your GPU. What's the problem with the Nvenc encoder? Post logs or there's not much we can help with.

here are the log files for the tests. what i did is stream for a bit and i what happened is at both x264 and Nvenc when i use the game capture option fps drops drastically in game and the game lags. i was opening the browser also. And what happened is when i switch to the display capture things are resolved and i see no drops. now i never had this problem before. all i want to know is why is this problem happening now and what could solve the problem?

when i choose Nvenc at high the pc crashed and restarted.

could it be that the drivers of the gpu are wrong?

or would be my last resort to format windows and install it again?

 

[Harold]

Remove the display capture sources you have from ALL scenes.

 

[Orbigod]

Remove the display capture sources you have from ALL scenes.

that didn't work out the problem is still there. so i don't know to be honest

 

[kokowang]

You have 4gb VRam, I recommend first disabling shared system memory to avoid transfers between DDR RAM and VRAM from taking up resources. Most applications won't need more than 4GB Vram. The lag could be caused by this if OBS is moving frames between Shared VRAM and Dedicated VRAM. To do this, go into your UEFI - Advanced settings - PCIE (might be labeled north bridge or south bridge) - Shared memory - Set to 0/disabled. Make sure you are in the settings for your GTX 1080 and not your intel HD graphics. The HD graphics only has 200mb VRAM and disabling shared VRAM for that chip will likely cause it to cease functioning (especially on 4k displays). You may also consider disabling the HD graphics altogether if you don't care about power consumption, and use solely the GTX 1080.
(I assume you have a UEFI considering the budget of the build...)

Game capture can also cause games to lag if the capture hook isn't properly injected. I recommend always using display capture unless you need game capture for some reason.
Nvenc should not crash your PC. What did the error say? (Go to start > view reliability history > Look for critical errors). If you think it's because of your drivers, you should install the latest drivers from your manufacturer's (not Nvidia) website.