Question / Help High CPU Encoding Usage fix?

T

tricknasti

New Member
Hi all. Thought my PC was pretty good but I keep seeing this warning and I wonder if maybe possibly I'm hurting my CPU with my current settings?

Thanks for any help!
 

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You're using NVENC. It's not going to touch your actual CPU at all.
It's also going to look like complete and total crap as you're running 1080p, 57(?)fps, on only 3000kbps.

Not sure where you got those settings, but it's time to toss them out. And use the actual CPU; NVENC is there as a band-aid so those with extremely weak CPUs can still sort-of livestream (or for local recordings only at ludicrously high rates). Its encoding method is going to look poor compared to Veryfast x264 at equitable bitrates.
3000kbps is barely enough for 1080p@30fps, and you're trying to run at a random almost-double-that.

https://obsproject.com/estimator
Time to trim it back a bit. Shoot for 720p@30fps, 2000kbps, on Veryfast x264 encoding. It's the "golden point" for non-partnered streamers on Twitch. Don't get lost chasing numbers.
 
FerretBomb said:
You're using NVENC. It's not going to touch your actual CPU at all.

And use the actual CPU; NVENC is there as a band-aid so those with extremely weak CPUs can still sort-of livestream (or for local recordings only at ludicrously high rates).

Shoot for 720p@30fps, 2000kbps, on Veryfast x264 encoding. It's the "golden point" for non-partnered streamers on Twitch. Don't get lost chasing numbers.
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Incorrect. NVENC (in OBS' implementation) *DOES* use the CPU a bit, and it DOES require spare GPU power (if a game is at 99% GPU, below 60fps, etc etc, it likely will not record correctly or will "drop frames").

This, I agree with. Especially the way you worded it. I'm so fed up of everyone simply saying "well just use NVENC" or "just use quicksync" on various other forums as if it's a decent solution.

That only applies to non-high-motion games or games without repeating, similarly coloured scenes (like DayZ's grass). That ballpark figure (especially the "very fast" preset) should only be used if you are certain the game will look fine. His CPU is equivalent to an i7-4770 in speeds/compute power, so he should strive for at least "faster" in anything he does, considering the huge visual gap between "faster" and "very fast" and the minimal CPU performance hit associated with it.
 
D2ultima said:
Incorrect. NVENC (in OBS' implementation) *DOES* use the CPU a bit, and it DOES require spare GPU power (if a game is at 99% GPU, below 60fps, etc etc, it likely will not record correctly or will "drop frames").

This, I agree with. Especially the way you worded it. I'm so fed up of everyone simply saying "well just use NVENC" or "just use quicksync" on various other forums as if it's a decent solution.

That only applies to non-high-motion games or games without repeating, similarly coloured scenes (like DayZ's grass). That ballpark figure (especially the "very fast" preset) should only be used if you are certain the game will look fine. His CPU is equivalent to an i7-4770 in speeds/compute power, so he should strive for at least "faster" in anything he does, considering the huge visual gap between "faster" and "very fast" and the minimal CPU performance hit associated with it.
Click to expand...

True, but the CPU hit is low enough, especially on a CPU of that caliber, to write it off as a statistical deviation.
Yeah, useful for local recording with a near-zero additional hit, but the sheer number of 'guides' out there advising it as a first-choice is truly miserable.

Indeed, though DayZ's grass is notorious for killing just about any encoding setup without horking a few buckets of bitrate at it.
Interesting... I've actually found the opposite to be the case; I have a significant CPU hit going between Veryfast and Faster. My Core i7-920 can run 1080p@30 on Veryfast (wheezing), but chokes and dies on 720p@30 on Faster. Didn't really see any kind of noticeable quality improvement either in my comparative test-recordings, so I stopped using it and just bumped back up to VF.

Definitely though, 720p@30fps, 2000kbps, with as slow an encoding setting as possible without choking or overrunning the system would do wonders. Especially as from the log file, he seems to be trying to run League.
 
Your i7 920 not being able to run 720/30 at faster means you likely don't have it clocked too high? Because my old i7-950 I used to stream games like the Binding of Isaac at 720/60 on "medium" (though with 1600 bitrate total as that's the limit of what I can use) so that definitely sounds weird to me. But relatively speaking, veryfast --> faster is almost nothing, compared to "faster --> fast" or "fast --> medium", which are multitudes larger than veryfast --> faster.

Also, the IPC jump from 1st gen enthusiast i7 (which was stronger than 1st gen mainstream i7; unlike consequent enthusiast lines which have the same IPC) to 2nd gen and onward is quite large. You would need well over 4GHz on an i7-920 to match a 3.5GHz haswell i7.

If you're unsure what I mean about IPC etc, you can check this post I made explaining things here: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/305918-multi-cores-in-gaming/#entry4158245
 
Stock clocks. I don't bother with OC'ing any more; I used to back in the day and have watched the scene slide into the "throw everything until it breaks, then back it off a little" camp that's popular now. Might make me a bit of a snob, but it feels like kiddie stuff as compared to the risk it took before built-in automatic overtemp thermal shutdowns became near-standard. Despite having one of the most overclockable CPUs of its era (minus the multiplier unlock, being stuck with FSB boosting), I haven't touched it. Stock HSF too, just so I wouldn't be tempted.

The 950 is also a good step up from the 920, but even so I'd expect that the load involved with processing more than twice as many pixels would be larger than a simple encoding method step-down. Mostly was mentioning it as a comparative, because if the newer-gen i7s can run 720p@Medium but choke on 1080@VF, it just sounds very weird that my own, significantly older rig is the other way around.

Eh, LTT is decent, but tends to miss out on (or outright mistake) a number of details from the few videos I've watched. Good as an intro to a subject, but stumbles on the deeper fiddly bits. Kind of fitting, as that's the kind of market he's more working to address.

(edit) Just read the link, thought it was to an LTT video rather than a forum post there. Yep, I'm aware that the core op pipeline design has improved in later generations (especially in their predictive tree pathing microcode), though hadn't realized just by how much until I just looked up a comparative bench. Seems I may actually have to plan my new system soon.
 
Yeah, I figured it was stock. I didn't wanna suggest it though haha.

I understand not wanting to go hot and heavy into OCing, but it's almost necessary these days if you wanna make such old hardware stretch; especially if you get an enthusiast/unlocked chip XD.

And yeah, I likely won't link any of Linus' actual videos. I and Linus already have enough beef with his portrayal of high end laptops where he only cares if they're really thin. Finally got him to show that when he stresses those machines they do throttle, so people won't get by thinking they're fine for everything.

All my guides in my sig are from LTT too, but I am the one who wrote them and who updates them. They won't sticky them though.
 
usually nvenc tends to show the high cpu encoding warning when you alt tab, had the same warning when i was testing.

in the end i had no problems at all only when alt tabbing the warning showed up for a few seconds.
 
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