Question / Help Latest Win10 Update creating FPS loss

[Da Bloodbowl Hooligan]

I've been happily using OBS for a while now and learning more and more of just how to fine tune this.

Today the latest Win 10 massive update went in and I'm finding myself very angry with Microsoft.

I can set up a recording of the game Bloodbowl 2 as normal. And while I expect "some loss" of FPS it's never been anywhere near as bad as I'm getting now. Before it would handle the recording with little chop if any. But now after this Update I'm finding several times the recording REALLY drops down to even 12 to 19 FPS and it's endless chop...

...UNLESS I happen to have the game window NOT be the active window. If say I have a Mozilla browser window chosen as the "active window" while the recording is going I can see that suddenly it's working FLAWLESSLY with no loss FPS!

The instant I click back on the Game Window as the active window BOOM instantly there's serious FPS loss in OBS and we get all choppy in the recording again. (Game whole time is running smooth.) I select the Mozilla window to be the "active window" again and BOOM OBS is working flawless again.

This leads me to conclude there's "something" recently as an "added feature" in Windows 10 sucking the CPU processing away the instant I choose the active game window. Could be some "game recording feature" I never wanted nor can see either but it's there beyond my control ruining an OBS session. Instead I click the other window as the "active one" suddenly there's nothing using the CPU and OBS is purring along happy as a clam!

What the hell have they gone and done and is there any solution to this short of ripping the OS out and starting clean again with a non-Win 10 OS?

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Log file?
I suspect GPU overload by not capping fps ingame. When another Window is active, most games will limit/drop their fps to 30 or 60, so the GPU is not overloading.
Make a test recording/stream and check your log file. If there are lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls, you GPU is running with >90% load.

 

[Da Bloodbowl Hooligan]

Sorry forgot the log file, but your answer was genius as it got me looking in the right areas to sort it out.

Solution: What's happening with the Update to Win 10 is it's default setting up Broadcast DVR Server with it's X-box feature...even if you want it or not. And what this program is doing is "turning on" every time you click on the game itself.

I kept the Task Manager open and watched as this program Broadcast DVR Server "turned on" every time. Watching the GPU usage while "itself" it's not using it, what that program is doing is "borrowing for pending use" as it were. So sure enough, OBS drops frames no matter what I've assigned.

End Task? Nope...Win 10 the instant I clicked back on "auto turns on" this and we've got the drops in FPS again in OBS.

So went into the Settings and Games and toggled EVERYTHING in this App to "Off". Sure enough all of it by default was set to "On" thanks to the update. (This is the Game Bar that comes as a Feature with Windows 10)

Right try this again, load up Blood Bowl 2 and then the OBS. Watch Task Manager too.

Flawless FPS capture. Try it again, once more flawless. I'm seeing the same GRU values mostly as before, but now she's running clean with no stutters. Active window or not. And Task Manager isn't showing the Broadcast DVR Server at all running.


Summary: There's our culprit. The latest Win 10 update has the Game Bar as a "Default" on, taking up GRU without telling you it is. Go into the settings and games and toggle everything to "Off" for the Game Bar and it appears to have eliminated the stutter and I now have clean FPS capture in OBS with the Game as the Active window again.


Thank you for the follow up as it indeed got me looking in the right place.

 

[Zap]

What you're saying sounds exactly like what I need, but I don't have anything in the Gaming part of Windows Settings on.

I refuse to believe what any mod / active member says on here about capping fps, because 100000% it used to never be necessary. OBS would just take the resources it needed before anything else. Doesn't matter if you're using 100% gpu usage overall.

Do you have any other suggestions for me? Did you change anything else? It was probably GPU related for you by the way, not CPU.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

[...]OBS would just take the resources it needed before anything else. Doesn't matter if you're using 100% gpu usage overall.[...]

Maybe true for Win7 or first branches of Win10 but not with Creator and Creator Fall branch update.
Without fps cap you will end up with one of those options:
a) GPU limit
b) CPU limit (maybe if it's just the 1-4 threads that the Game uses)

 

[Zap]

Maybe true for Win7 or first branches of Win10 but not with Creator and Creator Fall branch update.
Without fps cap you will end up with one of those options:
a) GPU limit
b) CPU limit (maybe if it's just the 1-4 threads that the Game uses)

Do you know anyone/have hands on experience with OBS Windows 7 / Pre-creators update right now at this moment?
If I have to use those I will. Thank you for actually helping rather than trying to cement a bug by telling everyone to "cap ya fps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".

 

[Nullifer]

Well it's not like he's wrong. OBS would just take the resources it needed instead of dropping a crap ton of frames, pre creators update.

 

[Charlie Pryor]

This is identical to my problem, and it is definitely not the result of my hardware being maxed out. 8700K at 4.8ghz, and a GTX 1080 that's only using 2.5GB of it's VRAM in a 1080p vanilla Fallout 4. In-game is butter smooth. Nothing I do dips it below 60. OBS is showing me less than 20% utilization for x264, and outputting 25fps to file. Unacceptable.

I got this CPU so that I never have to deal with that again... now OBS is acting like it doesn't wanna use what I have for it to use.

 

[Charlie Pryor]

UPDATE: for anyone that finds this... no idea why this did it, but if you have Nvidia inspector from Guru3D, open up nvidiainspector.exe and search for (INSERT YOUR GAME HERE) in the presets. Check and see if Triple Buffering is on. If it's not, turn it on. Apply the changes, and then check to see if your issue is gone. I'm now playing Fallout 4 at 1440p60 locked fps, outputting stream at 900p locked at 60fps as well, and my CPU is frequently being utilized 100% by the system, and often 70% by OBS with s stable output now. I also limited my FPS in nvidiainspector to just under 60, because that's all Fallout 4 will stably run anyways. That's all I changed

 

[BK-Morpheus]

This is identical to my problem, and it is definitely not the result of my hardware being maxed out. 8700K at 4.8ghz, and a GTX 1080 that's only using 2.5GB of it's VRAM in a 1080p vanilla Fallout 4. In-game is butter smooth. Nothing I do dips it below 60. OBS is showing me less than 20% utilization for x264, and outputting 25fps to file. Unacceptable.

I got this CPU so that I never have to deal with that again... now OBS is acting like it doesn't wanna use what I have for it to use.

Remember you ALWAYS will have a bottleneck when playing without fps limit or ingame engine fps limit.
If you have a Titan XP or 1080TI and a 8700k@6GHz you still will create a bottleneck.

If your GPU load is ~99% the GPU is limiting fps and if GPU is <90% you are at a CPU limit.
You will not be able to recognize a CPU limit based on CPU load. Only by checking GPU load, you can identify a CPU limit in games.
Destiny 2 for example has some areas in the game with many players, where my fps dip down to 55fps while maintaining under 85% GPU load.

Because of HyperThreading / SMT and Windows threat management, you will not see a core/threat at max load, but if I force Destiny2 to run only on Core 0, 2, 4, 6 (which are real cores, not SMT cores) I can see that those cores are loaded quiet heavily with spikes up to 100%.
Destiny 2 is only using 4 threads, but allowing it to run an all my 16 threads will hide the fact that there already is a CPU limit in some scenes.

CPU bottleneck in a game is fine, if the game is not utilizing all available cores, as a bottlenecked game will still leave some headroom for OBS, when you have 6 or more cores.

UPDATE: for anyone that finds this... no idea why this did it, but if you have Nvidia inspector from Guru3D, open up nvidiainspector.exe and search for (INSERT YOUR GAME HERE) in the presets. Check and see if Triple Buffering is on. If it's not, turn it on. Apply the changes, and then check to see if your issue is gone. I'm now playing Fallout 4 at 1440p60 locked fps, outputting stream at 900p locked at 60fps as well, and my CPU is frequently being utilized 100% by the system, and often 70% by OBS with s stable output now. I also limited my FPS in nvidiainspector to just under 60, because that's all Fallout 4 will stably run anyways. That's all I changed

FPS limit via nvidia inspector will help a lot, even without fiddling with triple buffer.
I had the best results with FPS limit v2 @60fps while altering my monitor refreshrate with the tool "CRU" to get it to run with real 60Hz and not 59.4Hz which nvidia control panel will declare as "60Hz".
As soon as you connect your monitor with HDMI or Display Port, windows might use 59.4Hz, even if you set it to 60Hz.