Question / Help High cpu usage warning

[RisupFIN]

Hi!

Didn't find solution to my problem, so I decided to create a new thread.


Today I ran in to a problem. OBS is giving me high cpu usage warning when i'm streaming. Never had this problem before... I've streamed more than I can remember and made close to 70 youtube vids with this setup. My in game fps also drops near to 20 depending on the game..

First I thought that my cpu could be throttling because I've recently clocked it to 3.8GHz, but after a short stream max. temp was 59°C and that's normal. I also tried with lower 3.6GHz clocks (same clocks I've had for over year now) and same situation(except lower temps)..

Normally I could record FarCry 4 at 1920x1080 with ultra settings, but now I can't even stream at 1280x720 resolution.. I have also tried different x264 presets with no luck. Now it's set to superfast like it was before.

And here is my log file: https://gist.github.com/c740efc27f92478de360

 

[RisupFIN]

No one knows what could possibly cause this??

I just streamed for four hours and zero dropped frames. Also played FC4 for a while, but batman arkham city was lagging like a hell.. I noticed that sometimes Desktop Window Manager tries to kill my cpu.. Cpu usage was near to 30% almost all the time and OBS used cpu only 20% on above than normal priority. So what the heck should I do?? D:

 

[Osiris]

That cpu is quite old, can't believe you managed to record FC4 at 1080p with that.

 

[RisupFIN]

Yup, huh.. I had to overclock it like 1.4GHz

 

[RisupFIN]

Now it doesn't give me high cpu usage warning but still the games are lagging as much as before.. Pretty annoying. Tried different game settings also and changing them does not help at all.

Anyone??

 

[alpinlol]

this cpu isnt really capable of recording or streaming especially not streaming


you might get away with recording since you can record with the ultrafast preset. but 720p30 is probably the maximum you can achieve

also make sure to only use one capture mathod per scene if possible use game capture if possible

 

[RisupFIN]

Seems like you don't know what you're talking about and you didn't even answer to my question. Very helpful people in here...

Oh, and it is Desktop Window Manager (DWM.exe) which uses my cpu like 30% when I'm streaming game.. I never shouldn't upgrade to Win8.1. Had zero problems with Win7. Lots of people are having problems with that and it obviously can't be disabled, so I will buy new SSD and install Win7 on it asap.

So my problem didn't have anything to do with OBS.. It is only this crappy Win8.1 which is causing problems...

And lastly. Alpinlol, are you trying to troll, or are you a retarted? I didn't ask what my cpu can handle...

 

[Boildown]

RisupFIN, you do realize that we're all volunteers here right? No one is paid to answer your questions. I think your appreciation is lacking. Another disrespectful response and I personally will put you on my ignore list and you'll never get a response from me.

Now, you said you used to use "ultra" settings and it worked fine.

Well now you're using "super" settings and its not working fine. Set your preset back to "ultra-fast". For encoding (not just OBS), it goes backwards from how it works in most video games. "ultra" is the lowest graphics and runs the fastest. "super" is better quality than "ultra" but runs slower. "fast" is better quality than "super" but it runs even slower still. And so on.

So its not surprising with your old CPU that you could run fine at "ultra", i.e. ultra-fast preset, and now that your log shows you've changed it to super-fast preset, you're having problems.

17:26:03: Total frames encoded: 2555, total frames duplicated: 405 (15.85%)

17:26:03: Number of frames skipped due to encoder lag: 82 (3.21%)

17:26:03: Total frames rendered: 2375, number of late frames: 41 (1.73%) (it's okay for some frames to be late)

You want your duplicated frames to be less than 1%. You're fifteen times higher than that. Your CPU can't handle super-fast preset, set it back to ultra-fast. Alpinlol was right and in general knows what he's talking about.

 

[rektxx]

wow this is crazy same happend to me i was srteaming yesteday with 150+ fps , started OBS today i get 70 fps not more

 

[RisupFIN]

I would appreciate if someone would even try to help, like you.. I don't know if I explained it bit wrong, but I meant in game ultra settings with that "ultra". I have always streamed with superfast preset without any lag. There was also compatibility issues with that game I were streaming, so fps was <--30 because of that.

 

[Boildown]

Well if I were you I'd establish a baseline of something that still works, and then tweak it upwards from there. Get it working with ultrafast preset. If you can't get it working with ultrafast, then you have bigger problems. You should look at what else changed. OBS hasn't changed recently, so that's not it. You did something with overclocking, so I'd look at that. Also maybe you have a monitoring utility for your overclock that is taking up too much CPU... who knows? If you have old OBS logs from when it was still working fine, post those up, maybe we can see what changed in those.

 

[RisupFIN]

I don't have older logs because I installed this Windows 8.1 and wiped that hard drive where Windows 7 and those logs were.

When I stream, I have only OBS, game, Skype, Steam and Google Chrome running (Chrome for Twitch chat and dashboard). Maybe I should re install Windows 7 because I didn't have any problems with it.

I noticed that OBS is using cpu about 20% and sometimes games are using it around 70% I know my cpu isn't that bad.. I googled and some people have had same problem with newer processors like i5 3570K.

I tested and I can easily stream games like csgo on "faster" preset with 720p30 with zero lag. "Slower" preset was pain in the ass because cpu where used by 98% :D (had to give it a try).

I also streamed today like four hours and it worked fine (except Twitch's servers).

 

[Sapiens]

Your CPU is very underpowered for streaming and isn't going to handle 720p encoding for much of anything. Claiming your Q6600 will handle 720p30 on the fast preset while playing CS:GO is very hard to believe, those settings pushed my old 2500K fairly hard and that's a much more powerful CPU in comparison.

The answer to your question is that your PC can't keep up with the settings you're trying to use, the CPU alone is from 2007 and most modern games probably push it fairly hard without the added burden of streaming. If a game is already making it hit 70% utilization then you don't have much to work with. Start by downscaling to 360p or 480p, maybe turn your preset down to superfast or ultrafast, and see if your results are any better. If not, feel free to post an updated log and we can take a look.

If you want to be belligerent to the people volunteering their time to help you and provide information about the issue you requested help with, or refuse to make any of the changes suggested to help with the issue, I advise you to post elsewhere.

 

[RisupFIN]

Excuse me, but when did I say that I refuse to change my settings? I just wanted to push my cpu to it's limits, so I tested slower presets and told you what happened. :)

What I'm trying to ask is that can Windows 8.1 possible cause this, because I didn't have problems with Windows 7??

I also made test streams with both presets (faster and slower). For me, the gameplay looked fine and smooth with faster preset when I watched the local recording of that one. OBS didn't give me any warnings and showed that fps was @30 all the time.


My viewers said that the stream looked too blurry with ultrafast preset, so I changed it to superfast and they liked it. (talking about the four hour stream I mentioned before).

I said before that I've always been streaming with superfast preset. This problem just came out of nowhere.

If you want, I can make short test streams with different presets (for example: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast and faster) and post logs here.

Don't forget that I've overclocked my cpu from 2.4GHz to 3.8GHz and believe or not, that made a huge difference in power.



E: Here are the logs.

Ultrafast: https://gist.github.com/5b5645483593b912b7b8
Superfast: https://gist.github.com/f08aaa7a159d55bdc165
Veryfast: https://gist.github.com/f7453d1c00983380ffe5
Faster: https://gist.github.com/29341ce395e1cd270db7

I noticed that there was 2 duplicated frames when I checked the log file of "faster" preset and at "ultrafast" preset, there was one duplicated and one late frame. "Veryfast" preset had one late frame.

Keep in mind that the game I were playing was FarCry 4 and it's not very light game to run. I did pretty much same things (like a little benchmark) in all of those streams and all of them were also about one minute long just to be equal.

Hope those helps :)

 

[RisupFIN]

Today I tried hitbox and also downscaled the resolution to 480p30 @veryfast preset like you suggested and OBS only used my cpu max. 11%.

One thing that is annoying in 480p resolution is that I can't make compilation vids of my streams to youtube. That's why I wanted to stick in 720p :D

 

[RisupFIN]

Thanks for the answers and you were kinda right at the beginning :)

My cpu had enough power to stream @720p30 (tested CS:GO @1080p30 stream year ago and was lagging only a bit, believe it or not) but nowadays it's just slowing down so I can't even record @720p30 with a webcam.. I think that it's just getting too old for this :D

So about two months ago I hadn't any problem recording or streaming 720p30 with webcam, but yesterday I noticed that I can't record Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 MP with webcam anymore and that's not even cpu intensive game..


Hope I get a summer job at next summer, so I could build a new pc.. What would you suggest for cpu?? i5-4690K, i7-4790K or maybe i7-5820K with 2011-V3 socket and ddr4 memory?? i7-5960X would be sweet, but it could be bit to expensive for me and my Asus HD 7870 would also be a hell of a bottleneck :D

 

[Boildown]

A Intel quad-core with hyperthreading is best. So basically an i7. If you stream and game on the same CPU, its definitely worth the money over an i5. One of the hexa-cores is still overkill IMO, but if you do, it will perform like a champ. Octo-core actually sacrifices a bit of most game performance since its clockspeed doesn't scale as high, but the encoding part will be a breeze. Way past the ideal on price/performance though, maybe will be better spent when we can encode H.265 to Twitch, but that is probably still years away.

 

[RisupFIN]

Thanks for the answer! :) Will the hexa-core's (i7-5820K) performance/price value be good if it'll be
compared to i7-4790K? What do you think? The hexa-core costs exactly 419€ while i7-4790K's price is 350€.

4790K is clocked to 4GHz stock and 5820K to 3.3GHz. To me, the performance/price value of 5820K sounds pretty good, not to mention the ddr4 memory.

There will be downside with 2011-V3 socket.. Cheapest mobo costs over 200€ and the memory isn't that cheap eather :D Luckily I only need new mobo, cpu, ram, power supply and ssd so all the parts I need will cost around 1000€ :)

 

[RisupFIN]

Can you tell me if this is good or not??

"20:51:23: Total frames encoded: 7126, total frames duplicated: 38 (0.53%)
20:51:23: Total frames rendered: 7119, number of late frames: 7 (0.10%) (it's okay for some frames to be late)"

 

[Boildown]

Yes, that's good. I always want my Duplicated Frames to be less than 1%, to me I notice the hitches when the duplicated frames are higher than that. Yours is a half percent, which is fine.

I think the 4970k is the best bang for the buck because of its high single core speed, which is still the most important factor for many games. And yet its plenty good enough to stream at a decent preset while gaming on it. If you know you're playing a GPU-limited game, then its pretty safe to get one of the new hexa-cores like the 5820k. And as you've discovered you have to pay more for the motherboard and RAM in addition to the CPU.

Basically I would only get the hexa-core if you know you can afford it fairly easily.