GPU selection

[SomebodyOdd]

Hello!

Okay, so there is a problem when your game is too heavy and OBS cant render frames correctly, and we see frame drop cause of it. But many Intel (and maybe AMD, but I'm not really sure) processors has interated GPU that could possibly help.
I've made some tests, you can make it too, if you want.
1) Turn on integrated GPU and connect second monitor to it
2) Make sure that your first monitor is on discrete GPU
3) Make your second monitor as main
4) So, as of now we have first monitor on dGPU and second on iGPU, and second is main. Lets launch OBS now. Launching OBS makes it use iGPU as its renderer because main monitor is on iGPU which is considered default right now
5) Now we can make first monitor as main in Windows settings again, and make all programms launched from now to use dGPU again.
6) Profit. You have iGPU, rendering your OBS frames and dGPU rendering your game. OBS dont have to conflict with game for GPU resources anymore. Yes, you have to use SLI/Crossfire mode for capturing your game, but stable stream FPS is pretty good, isn't it?
Its tested on latest release Windows 10 with GTX 960 and Intel chip (latest drivers as well)

So, i'm not expert in DirectX, but i believe you can choose rendering GPU in your programs. I dont know if its true for Windows 8.1 and lower, but its possible on Windows 10. So, maybe OBS should chose as well? We can eliminate low stream FPS problems by doing that and free a bit of dGPU resources as bonus!

 

[Harold]

These steps introduce a MAJOR performance hit because you have to get the frame data from the game from your primary video card over to the secondary video card instead of just using that frame data in-place on the primary video card for scene composition.

 

[SomebodyOdd]

True, but when you have 60 fps in-game and, like 5-15 fps in OBS - that will be at least SOMETHING... SLI/Crossfire is about same thing - copying from GPU to another instead of in-place processing, right? But SLI owners can live with it, well, they HAVE to live with it.

 

[Harold]

True, but when you have 60 fps in-game and, like 5-15 fps in OBS - that will be at least SOMETHING...

So you go from 60fps in game and 5-15 in obs to 30 in game and 20-30 in obs.

 

[SomebodyOdd]

So you go from 60fps in game and 5-15 in obs to 30 in game and 20-30 in obs.

Not exactly, i've got not much frame drop in PUBG and much better fps in OBS when I've made test with steps in thread start. Again, i'm not talking that it will be easy or perfect solution, but this can be handy in some hard situations, so why not have it with some "SLOW" markings?

 

[SomebodyOdd]

Well, my English is probably bad, sorry about that =)