Question / Help Is my setup underperforming?

sibladeko

New Member
So I haven't streamed in a very long time (two computers and who knows how many years ago); I've done some cursory settings research for OBS and Twitch/hitbox (no point in being on Twitch without partner is what I was told) but I can't help but think my setup is underperforming with the specs I have. The built-in analysis tool is pointing to settings that are "too high" as well. Please see the attached logs.

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dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
That log looks very unusual. It says you're only using Window capture, and Aero is enabled (which is correct) but for some reason, your scene preprocess time is through the roof. Are your video drivers up to date?
 

sibladeko

New Member
Yes I think so, I'm using GeForce 335.23 drivers, would something like Nvidia Inspector matter since it's a Window capture?
 

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
Possibly...at this point I would disable anything non-standard that interacts with your GPU in any way.
 

sibladeko

New Member
There's also this weird issue where sometimes I'll be streaming, and then OBS's lower right will suddenly spike to showing something absurd like 20000kbps and the stream FPS drops down to 1 frame, but it doesn't actually affect me playing.
 

sibladeko

New Member
Sorry to zombie this thread but a few things to followup and hopefully help others):
Nvidia Inspector destroys my particular setup. I'm not sure how others are able to use it while streaming at all, but particularly on mine it was the main source of preprocessing time and log errors.

Moving on though, even without Inspector I was unable to stream at 30FPS/3500kbps/480p and play certain games (Titanfall, Phantasy Star Online 2, Team Fortress 2, etc.) at a minimum of 60FPS/1080p, in-game frame drops (down to 40 and sometimes less) everywhere that wouldn't show up as problems in the OBS log files as well. This was rather confusing to me as I believe streaming to be a mainly CPU intensive endeavor, and the i5-4670K I had should have definitely been able to handle both streaming and playing the game. A GeForce GTX 760 should have been able to handle any GPU strain as well.

In the end, for some reason buying 8 more GB of RAM (increasing from initial 8 to 16) and a non-stock heatsink on my processor allowed me to finally stream Titanfall at 30FPS/3500kbps/480p while playing at 60FPS+.
I don't know why this is, all logic to me dictates either the processor or the GFX had to be the bottleneck in playing smoothly while streaming, but a heat sink doesn't exactly make my CPU go faster (I initially intended to overclock but I haven't gotten to it yet), and I didn't think the RAM increase would as well.

That being said, I still have the sometimes random issue where the bitrate listed in the lower right of the OBS window will jump to 10000-20000 kbps even though I have set a static CBR of 3500 at all times now, again this doesn't show up in the logs or get listed as "Frames Dropped" the frames in-stream just adjust themselves to 1 while the burst of bitrate happens.
 

Boildown

Active Member
Perhaps your CPU was throttling itself due to heat. The Ivy and Haswell lines are known to have pretty bad thermal interface material and that with a stock heatsink could explain what you said happened.
 

sibladeko

New Member
CPU throttling makes sense due to the temperatures I remember seeing.

Also, I'm starting to think the bitrate spikes are due to OBS's encoder somehow.
When I throw the game through DXTory (forced 30FPS), then into OBS as a source, the bitrate never gets out of hand and the stream FPS never drops below 30.
If I throw window capture through OBS, even with CBR at 3500, lower right will go crazy and randomly show up to 20000 and such (while never changing from green), and stream FPS drops to 1 or 2
 
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