Question / Help High FPS in game, absymal in OBS/stream

[Bortward]

While streaming Death Road to Canada to Twitch, I was getting a perfect frame rate in the game itself, which makes sense; it's not a game that's very hard on your processor or GPU by any stretch. But in the OBS preview and in the stream itself, I'm getting 7 FPS if I'm lucky. This is especially weird, because I was streaming the same game a week ago with no issue. Admittedly, I was streaming it last week at around 480p, and I adjusted that to 720p between streams, but even after adjusting my output resolution back down to 480p, my frame rate was the same.

My hardware is:
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
RAM: 16GB
CPU: Intel i5 3570k @ 3.40 GHz (4 CPUs)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080SC (from EVGA)

While my CPU isn't as beefy as my GPU, for sure, I should be able to handle pretty much anything at a decent frame rate, as I understand it.

My connection speeds are:
Down: 570.74 Mbps
Up: 718.76 Mbps

I'm sure I'm not getting the whole hog when I'm actually streaming or using the internet in any capacity, but even at a fraction of those speeds I think I should be able to stream in at least 480p, no problem.

Log file: https://gist.github.com/6999e74875bfcc9215da1121777c5a12

I have already tried switching from the software encoder to the NVENC hardware encoder, with no effect on FPS. My bitrate is set to 2500, and dropping it as low as 1000 had no effect no FPS, either. My CPU tops out with this particular game at about 30% usage, and temperatures are well within acceptable limits. I also recently thoroughly cleaned my case, and reapplied thermal paste to my CPU.

As a sidenote, I also tried to stream Hyper Light Drifter last week at 1080p, and couldn't get a good frame rate in the stream until I lowered the output resolution to around 480p. I could certainly be wrong, but with my hardware and settings, I think I shouldn't have had any problem streaming that game at 1080p.

I just recently got into streaming, and so far I'm having fun! It feels pretty rewarding to be able to entertain people, even if it's only a half dozen of my friends at a time, so I'm a little bummed that I wasn't able to put on a decent stream because of these issues. As such, I'm grateful for any help or advice that anyone can offer!

 

[Sapiens]

Define "high FPS". Are you running without vsync or some other form of frame rate limiter? The log indicates a bottleneck with your GPU.

 

[TheProperBloke]

I am also receiving low fps in both test streams and recordings. The actual performance of the game "while streaming/recording" on my 1440p @144Hz monitor, not OBS Studio, runs smoothly no performance drops. However, when I look at OBS, even when not recording or livestreaming, the fps hangs around 40fps instead of 60. When I do record, it looks like an unstable framerate, sometimes freezing and unfreezing in a split second, then returning back to 40fps... but outside of OBS, the game on my screen looks smooth and normal. My specs are the same as Bortward, except my cpu is an i7 4790K @ 4.4GHz and I have Windows 10. I've never experienced this issue in OBS Classic, however, I never had the same pc specs at the time either.

 

[TheProperBloke]

However, when I look at OBS, even when not recording or livestreaming, the fps hangs around 40fps instead of 60.

I did some more testing and it seems like Game Capture is unstable. CPU usage when recording at 5000bitrate (x264; faster; one pc) from 1440p to 720p is between 25%-35% on maxed out GTA V. The fps was 60fps, the way Game Capture should be displaying at. However, seeing how this issue has already happened, it's bound to happen again, as I didn't change a single thing to my settings or Game Capture. Just a random test afterwards and OBS ran properly.

 

[Bortward]

Define "high FPS". Are you running without vsync or some other form of frame rate limiter? The log indicates a bottleneck with your GPU.

Hyper Light Drifter has the option to lock at 30 or 60 FPS, as well as vsync. I use the 60 fps lock without vsync, and tend not to use vsync in any game, Death Road to Canada, on the other hand, has neither vsync nor any kind of in game FPS lock. As far as OBS goes, I have it set to stream at 30 FPS. I'm guessing that ensuring some kind of FPS lock should, at least in theory, keep my GPU from trying too hard and bottlenecking, but that doesn't seem to explain how I was streaming Death Road to Canada at a decent frame rate one week, and then streaming it at 7 FPS the next.

EDIT: Forgot to add: by "high FPS," I mean 50-60 FPS, at least.

I did some more testing and it seems like Game Capture is unstable. CPU usage when recording at 5000bitrate (x264; faster; one pc) from 1440p to 720p is between 25%-35% on maxed out GTA V. The fps was 60fps, the way Game Capture should be displaying at. However, seeing how this issue has already happened, it's bound to happen again, as I didn't change a single thing to my settings or Game Capture. Just a random test afterwards and OBS ran properly.

Do you think it might be worth it to switch to OBS Classic? It would be trading active developer support for potentially more stable streaming software, but at the same time, if both game capture and screen capture are unstable in OBS Studio, that only seems to leave window capture as an option, and I'm not sure about that option's reliability, either.

 

[Bortward]

I was just briefly able to get the preview in OBS to run at 30 FPS after I switched my GPU from focused on meeting a power target to meeting a temperature target, but after a few more trials, the frame rate dropped back down to about 7 FPS, regardless of which target was being prioritized. After restarting OBS a few times, I was able to get it to stream to Twitch at 30 FPS for ten minutes, with no loss of frames and maybe 30% CPU usage, tops.

Log file from that stream: https://gist.github.com/e5dedb12299c2cce1713b5254d1ef39e

After further testing, I can say that the issue seems to be tied to PrecisionX OC. Any time it is running, my frame rate sticks around 7 FPS, whereas when it is not running, I get the desired 30 FPS. If PrecisionX is running while OBS is running and PrecisionX is closed, then OBS encounters an error and crashes. The problem with this is that when PrecisionX OC is not running, my GPU's fans do not seem to be running either. I'll need to test this further, to see if the fans actually don't spin up without PrecisionX, or if they just need to reach a certain temperature before they spin up. The bit of research I've just done seems to indicate the latter, but my personal experience with my last Nvidia card would indicate the former. I'll be testing this out soon, but for now I have to finish some homework.