Jumpy / Laggy Stream with high end PC

[3lementFisher]

Hello,

I'm 3lementFisher. I've seen some great support on this site and decided to sign up and ask for some advice from anyone with more tech knowledge regarding OBS.

My old PC which consisted of an i7 4960x and a GTX 1080 streamed better than my brand new PC which is the following specs:

Camera: SONY a5100 Mirrorless
Capture Card: Elgato CamLink 4k
Lighting: 2x Elgato Key Lights
Monitor 1: Asus ROG Swift 27" PG278Q 144Hz (2560x1440)
Monitor 2: DELL S2421HGF 24" 144Hz (1920x1080)
Case: Corsair Graphite 760T (Arctic White)
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000i
Motherboard: Asus Maximus XII HERO
Processor: Intel i9 10900k OC@ 5.1GHZ on 20 threads
Cooler: NZXT Kraken Z73 360mm AIO
Graphics: Asus ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC
RAM: Corsair Vengence Pro RGB 64GB @ 3600Mhz
OS SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVME PCIe 4.0 M.2
Game SSD 1: Samsung 850 PRO 1TB
Game SSD 2: Samsung 850 PRO 1TB
Headset: SteelSeries Arctis Pro GameDAC - Wired
Microphone: Blue YETI
Mouse: ROG Chakram RGB Optical 16000 dpi
Keyboard: Corsair k95 RGB Mechanical Cherry MX red
OBS Controller: Elgato Stream Deck

I often get rendering lag or encoding lag when i'm streaming at 1280x720 60 or 1664x936 60. I have all my sources set out to run as economically as possible. Using Web.m formats for animated bits and sources set to turn off when not visible. I have tried almost every resolution to test.

My OBS CPU usage is around 2-3% on my main gaming scene as it's very minimal to try and reduce CPU load. It runs amazingly in game, but the stream looks stuttery. GPU sits at a comfortable percentage and the CPU goes anywhere from 40 - 60% when using NVENC. I have been streaming for some time and it's driving me mad! Ive experimented with the 0.27beta and DX12 games were performing better but due to the chroma key and other bugs i switched back.

I mainly play PUBG and wanted to stream Warzone more but it's just too jumpy to do so. PUBG I can kind of get away with it but Warzone looks terrible!

I have submitted a log from my recent stream to pastebin at the end of this post to see if anyone could see a glaring issue with my settings that I may have overlooked. I have tried GAME MODE On and Off. All drivers are up to date as well as my Windows build. I've used DDU and reinstalled the drivers to make sure. I've experimented with Look Ahead OFF and also Psychovisual Tuning OFF. I spent hours and hours tweaking individual settings to no avail.

I game at 2560x1440p @144Hz and have tried at 120Hz to try and match the multiple from the output of 60fps. I've tried GSYNC OFF and it performs better on the stream with it enabled.

Any questions please just ask and i'll do my best to outline what i've done and assist further but for fear of giving too much info in the first post i'll await the replies :)

Thanks in advance and here is my LOG: https://pastebin.com/6v0LbTZu

Kind regards,

3lementFisher

 

[FerretBomb]

Use the Quality preset (NOT Max Quality!) and make sure that Psychovisual Tuning and Lookahead are both disabled.
These three are well-known to cause encoding overload even on systems where it should not be present. This is likely your main problem (you tested the two checkbox options, but did not swap off MQ too).

Switch back to the Partial color range. OBS is HARD-CODED to only ever stream in Partial, and you will have significant color-skew. Full is for local-recording ONLY with an end-to-end Full RGB production workflow, with the necessary precautions taken to compensate.

OBS is not compatible with GSYNC or any other adaptive-refresh technologies. You will get a tearing-line if it is on, which makes the already-pointless 936p "divisible by 8" resolution even moreso.

 

[3lementFisher]

I did experiment with Q instead of MaxQ but I'll revert back to that again and try again.

Are you advising game mode be on now after the windows update? If you think 936p is pointless you recommend 720p? I get transcoding so I'm not too worried but I get that 720 will have a better image at the higher bitrate. I will keep GSYNC off and probably turn on Vsync in the NVCP instead of the game and see if that makes a difference. I will switch back to partial colour as suggested.

 

[FerretBomb]

I did experiment with Q instead of MaxQ but I'll revert back to that again and try again.

Are you advising game mode be on now after the windows update? If you think 936p is pointless you recommend 720p? I get transcoding so I'm not too worried but I get that 720 will have a better image at the higher bitrate. I will keep GSYNC off and probably turn on Vsync in the NVCP instead of the game and see if that makes a difference. I will switch back to partial colour as suggested.

Make sure all three are off at the same time. Having any one of them on (MQ, PVT, LA) can still cause problems.
Official recommendation is Game Mode on, but I leave it off myself.

720p will give you a cleaner downscale from 1440p as it is full-integer scaling; each block of 4 pixels becomes one pixel. No weird sampling interpolation artifacts. One reason 4K (2160p) is a good choice for streamers, as it offers full-integer downscales to both 720p and 1080p. The cleanest is still native-resolution if possible, but as you're going to Twitch, that'd be hard to pull off with the bitrate support they provide.
It could be worth considering playing locally at 720p, if your stream quality is paramount. Removing all downscaling/rescaling possible is THE way to get the best quality possible, and what I do for several more-demanding games, even though I am a Twitch Partner.

 

[3lementFisher]

Thanks for getting back to me. As soon as I'm back I'll do all of this and see how it goes! :) if I have any more issues I'll come back with fresh logs and see if there's anything else! Thanks!

 

[3lementFisher]

OK so trying this in Warzone. Looks great in recording. Same as PUBG but when doing a test stream it's just very jarring. Hard to put it into words but it's just jumpy and hard to watch. It's at 6000 bitrate cbr and the same settings as before but on quality and PV LA OFF. Surely that's down to the bitrate on twitch's side? Frustrating as this is the only time I've got Warzone looking good for recording but streaming is still looking nasty at 720p

 

[3lementFisher]

Make sure all three are off at the same time. Having any one of them on (MQ, PVT, LA) can still cause problems.
Official recommendation is Game Mode on, but I leave it off myself.

720p will give you a cleaner downscale from 1440p as it is full-integer scaling; each block of 4 pixels becomes one pixel. No weird sampling interpolation artifacts. One reason 4K (2160p) is a good choice for streamers, as it offers full-integer downscales to both 720p and 1080p. The cleanest is still native-resolution if possible, but as you're going to Twitch, that'd be hard to pull off with the bitrate support they provide.
It could be worth considering playing locally at 720p, if your stream quality is paramount. Removing all downscaling/rescaling possible is THE way to get the best quality possible, and what I do for several more-demanding games, even though I am a Twitch Partner.

Hello! I just wanted to give an update to a fix I've found which 100% fixed everything stutter wise which might help other people who you reply to. In the NVIDIA control panel in adjust desktop size and position, both of my screens were set to "aspect ratio" and not "fullscreen". I stumbled across this by accident trying to fix the screen dipping to black on my second monitor when tabbing in and out of a game and by setting both to "fullscreen" there is now no stuttering and no rendering or encoding lag. I don't understand how this could affect it so substantially but its something you may want to suggest to others with stuttering issues running dual monitors. Thanks for your help and advice. No one ever gets back to the forum to say what worked and what didn't so i am doing my part for the community! Peace :)

 

[3lementFisher]

Also just to add both of my monitors are running at the same refresh rate. Not sure if it would help on 144hz and 60hz as I haven't tested this.