Question / Help Is a GPU required for any kind of streaming?

[Vinterbird]

Hi,

I'm using OBS to stream webinars at my place of work, but performance is not at a place where I really want it to be. We have a i5 inside the computer, but no GPU and performance is rather bad when we try to use all three of our Blackmagic capture cards at once. We're pushing 1080/30 out to YouTube Live at a bitrate of 6000.

I've read in a few threads that a GPU for streaming with OBS is needed, but is that within the context of streaming games that are running on the same computer as OBS is, or is it needed in general to get decent performance out of OBS?

 

[H4ndy]

Integrated GPUs are fine as long as you do not have super complicated/filled scenes which need rendering.
I think your i5 might be overloaded with having to handle 3 high resolution capture cards plus encoding 1080p which is already on the upper limit of an i5. You might try QuickSync to push out the final stream.

 

[Vinterbird]

Integrated GPUs are fine as long as you do not have super complicated/filled scenes which need rendering.
I think your i5 might be overloaded with having to handle 3 high resolution capture cards plus encoding 1080p which is already on the upper limit of an i5. You might try QuickSync to push out the final stream.

Scenes are mainly plain video, with a lower-third graphic or two video sources in one scene (picture in picture).

Would lowering the encoding to 720 be better for this setup at this point in time, until I can get the computer upgraded (what is recommended for this type of streaming?). OBS seems to chuck a bit in a 3 capture card setup right now.

 

[H4ndy]

You should attach a log, this helps to make sure we can find the bottleneck. But you can try 720p30 in the meantime if it works better.