Game FPS halves upon opening OBS

[mrkharos]

This is a relatively new problem of mine, the current version 28.1.2 gives such an issue, but also tried with an older version 27.2.4 and neither of them gave a solution.
What I realized however is that the OBS shows as a GPU - 3D engine instead of the GPU - Video Encoder or whatever it was called, but I clearly remember it was separate and it was called an encoder in the task manager

- This actually gave me a quick thinking, what if I try admin mode - didn't work
- Tried both versions I mentioned above - didn't work
- Tried to setup different encoders - didn't work

Before opening OBS

After opening OBS

What is weird, that this occurs only just by opening the program, no recording or streaming involved.

Tried to look up in the Advanced tab just in case there was something new or different settings than I remember, but I highly doubt it affects anything related to this.

I assume there must have been some settings either in NVIDIA control panel or some Windows settings that must have changed over time and forces the program to behave like this. It also makes a simple YouTube video playing on the second monitor sometimes struggle.

PC config - Windows 11:
- i7-12700K
- MSI 3070 Ti
- 32 GB 5200 MHz
- 1TB Corsair NVMe M.2

Altogether I never had any issues both streaming, and recording footages in 1440p 60FPS with high bitrates, which surprised me because that was my biggest fear, but the system handles it surprisingly well... except now.

If anyone have any solutions for this or suggestions, I'm more than willing to listen to.

 

[Harold]

Provide your OBS log please.

 

[mrkharos]

uploading the bunch in a rar

 

[Abort Quest]

Wouldn't it depend on whether it's capturing game or encoding video/video recording that it shows 3d or video encoder? Just my uneducated guess sorry. Is it during streaming or recording video? I suppose it could say encoder if it was remuxing something.
As for the halving of your fps, maybe you could give obs a different priority for the graphics settings?
You could try Winkey+R -> Graphics Settings -> search for obs, if it's not there you can add it and browse to the .exe, and once that is done you can click on the "options" button in the graphics settings window and try assigning a different graphics preference for obs (Let Windows decide/Power saving/High performance). Maybe try let windows decide.

 

[Harold]

Wouldn't it depend on whether it's capturing game or encoding video/video recording that it shows 3d or video encoder? Just my uneducated guess sorry. Is it during streaming or recording video? I suppose it could say encoder if it was remuxing something.
As for the halving of your fps, maybe you could give obs a different priority for the graphics settings?
You could try Winkey+R -> Graphics Settings -> search for obs, if it's not there you can add it and browse to the .exe, and once that is done you can click on the "options" button in the graphics settings window and try assigning a different graphics preference for obs (Let Windows decide/Power saving/High performance). Maybe try let windows decide.

This will not help, as the computer in question is not a laptop.

uploading the bunch in a rar

You need to connect both of your displays to your dedicated graphics and do not connect ANY to your motherboard's ports.

 

[mrkharos]

Wouldn't it depend on whether it's capturing game or encoding video/video recording that it shows 3d or video encoder? Just my uneducated guess sorry. Is it during streaming or recording video? I suppose it could say encoder if it was remuxing something.
As for the halving of your fps, maybe you could give obs a different priority for the graphics settings?
You could try Winkey+R -> Graphics Settings -> search for obs, if it's not there you can add it and browse to the .exe, and once that is done you can click on the "options" button in the graphics settings window and try assigning a different graphics preference for obs (Let Windows decide/Power saving/High performance). Maybe try let windows decide.

Tried the Graphics Settings option, did not work and yeah like Harold said it's not a laptop so it wouldn't really work

Also the problem starts when I just simply open up the program, as soon as I close it the game jumps back to normal 144fps as it supposed to - and yes, tried admin mode

 

[Abort Quest]

Tried the Graphics Settings option, did not work and yeah like Harold said it's not a laptop so it wouldn't really work

Also the problem starts when I just simply open up the program, as soon as I close it the game jumps back to normal 144fps as it supposed to - and yes, tried admin mode

Ahh I mentioned the graphics settings not because of laptop btw - for example on my desktop, a browser was not using hardware decoding of av1/vp9/etc until I changed that preference so it's not a laptop related thing (basically I was able to toggle whether my browser was using cpu more or gpu for the decoding), so I thought maybe it may be useful in your case somehow with relation to fps drop. Was worth looking into anyhow.

 

[mrkharos]

This will not help, as the computer in question is not a laptop.


You need to connect both of your displays to your dedicated graphics and do not connect ANY to your motherboard's ports.

I did connect it back but no such luck, it was fine before and it wasn't an issue

The problem is not getting worse upon streaming or recording, it's only bad when the program opens up
Also tried during this phase with NVIDIA NVENC H.264 with my old settings of the recording which was VBR 160k to 180k bitrate (footage ends up always around 110k to 140k bitrates) on 1440p 60fps, it was running fine but obviously with now lower fps is happening but the encoding is the same as before
Also tried this new CQP around lvl 22 (seemed like the same bitrate as the VBR settings I have) and the footage is almost the same but lower size

Also tried these AV encoders, it straight up told me encoding is overheating or something, so that's a no go for me now lol

But all in all the issue still stays, as the game stays on low fps

HOWEVER

- I tested now some things because I was curious, Apex in the menu runs just fine, but ingame it halves the fps (windowed, borderless & fullscreen)
- I tested in Doom Eternal, almost played through a hard fight during my record testing, it went smoothly & the recording was nice
- Tested in Elden Ring, game was staying on 60 FPS (not sure if the game was always 60, it was a long time I played not sure if it's normal) also footage was looking surprisingly good.. tho I died after a bear since I forgot how to play
- Yakuza 0 runs just fine, during recording drops like 10 fps and stays a little bit below 100 but still running good


So all in all I assume something is really unoptimized with Apex or some settings are off for me

 

[mrkharos]

Ahh I mentioned the graphics settings not because of laptop btw - for example on my desktop, a browser was not using hardware decoding of av1/vp9/etc until I changed that preference so it's not a laptop related thing (basically I was able to toggle whether my browser was using cpu more or gpu for the decoding), so I thought maybe it may be useful in your case somehow with relation to fps drop. Was worth looking into anyhow.

my CPU uses the browser, I set it up like that, I have no issues watching videos even ok 4K, but not much point since my monitor can only show up to 1440p which I'm completely fine with - but yeah, I'm aware of that option =)

but it's kinda unrelatable in this case, cpu is kinda strong and apex only uses GPU.. but it seems like it have a bottleneck of some sort, not sure why

 

[Abort Quest]

my CPU uses the browser, I set it up like that, I have no issues watching videos even ok 4K, but not much point since my monitor can only show up to 1440p which I'm completely fine with - but yeah, I'm aware of that option =)

but it's kinda unrelatable in this case, cpu is kinda strong and apex only uses GPU.. but it seems like it have a bottleneck of some sort, not sure why

No no, I meant the toggle was for obs to not use gpu as much, since I thought it was affecting your fps, but like you said it may be something related with apex itself. Btw I think elden ring is capped at 60 by default

 

[mrkharos]

No no, I meant the toggle was for obs to not use gpu as much, since I thought it was affecting your fps, but like you said it may be something related with apex itself. Btw I think elden ring is capped at 60 by default

It does affect the FPS but simply just by opening up the program, the encoding part does not seem to bother too much