Is my LapTop to Slow for OBS?

extrafirmpillow

New Member
Goal: Record GeoGuessr ( Browser Game ) gameplay at passable quality without gameplay lag. Not Streaming.

Problem: The game lags as soon I use OBS to record.

Attempted Solutions: I have tried adjusting settings to the bare minimum. As seen lower in this post. I have tried all 3 encoder settings and on all 3 I get the "Encoding overloaded! Consider turning down video settings or using a faster encoding preset" message. Have tried monitor and browser capture. I don't have any programs running besides OBS and the Game.

Computer Specs: Cheap Laptop - Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz | 8GB RAM

Relevant Settings:
settings.png
settings2.png


Question: Is there anything I can do short of buying a new computer to make this work? I can invest in hardware upgrades if that's even an option for a laptop. Buying this laptop I knew I could never stream games in 1080p but I'm frustrated that I can't even properly record video in 480p.

Log File
 

FerretBomb

Active Member
Unfortunately, both x264 Ultrafast and QSV are skipping frames at 852x480. You aren't really going to be able to go much lower than that.
The CPU you have is not an i5. It's a U-variant i5. U-variants dramatically sacrifice performance in favor of battery life. Realistically, it likely wouldn't even be able to out-process a non-U i3.

You will need a more capable machine, I'm sorry to say.
You could try lowering the framerate to 20fps or 15fps, or downscaling the video, but it's... not going to really be worth it, speaking frankly.
 

deFrisselle

Member
Run as Admin
Set Game Mode to Off
Encode using the iGPU

Might not have the horse power if that doesn't work
More cores and a better GPU would help greatly
 
Last edited:

NickSteel

Member
Curious, what is about the cheapest (used) laptop suitable for OBS. I am currently using Windows 10 with an X230 i5, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB (7.70 GB usable).
 

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
One thing to consider is making sure you have (properly) optimized the operating system to minimize processes/settings that consume unnecessary resources (CPU, RAM, disk I/O, etc). But.. beware snake-oil YT videos that can cause more problems than help. Win10 by recent default has turned on a lot features/eye-candy
And when trying to run OBS on an under-powered system, also expect to spend time learning the correlation between various OBS settings and CPU utilization.
 
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