Question / Help Low FPS when streaming Game

[Shackahn]

Hi All,

I am sure I am missing a simple step somewhere but I have tried various suggestions and still having no luck.

Whenever I try and stream a game the FPS drops down to less than 10fps. I know is a software problem as Shadowplay runs just fine, but I would prefer to use OBS.

I have an i5 6400 running at 4.2Ghz 16GB ram and a GTX 1070.

I have my Base resolution set to 2560 x 1440p (Native) and output at 1280 x 720 capped at 30FPS. Bit rate is set to 3000.

There is no bandwidth issue or dropped frames.

Any suggestions would be great.

 

[SumDim]

Your GTX 1070 is just fine
16GB just fine.

But your i5-6400 is too slow for encoding and playing games at the same time. Go get another motherboard and CPU. Go to Passmark and get something that has at least a 11000 rating. That will solve your problem.

You can also try to use NVENC to off load your CPU but I doubt that's going to help much since you are playing games on that CPU.

Also, check your upload speed. If you aren't pushing over 4Mbps on a hard wired Ethernet line, you aren't going to get anywhere.

 

[Shackahn]

Hey thanks for the reply.

If the 6400 was holding me back then surely it would also be an issue for streaming on Shadowplay as well? When I am getting the low FPS the CPU is barely being utilised at around 6%

 

[SumDim]

If find the 6% CPU usage hard to believe. OBS Studio alone runs at least 5% sitting idle. You have a game that runs as well. Surely it keeps the CPU active to add to the total.

The FPS you are citing is the number of frames generated per second for your game. What is the FPS when you don't have OBS running with those same exact resolution settings to give us a sense of whats "normal"?

 

[Shackahn]

Hi Thanks again for the reply.

I mean OBS is saying to generate the 11FPS or so it using approx 6% of my CPU. My overall CPU usage is much higher.

My in game FPS is around 70 - 100. If I use OBS to capture my desktop then it will happily stream at 30FPS but when I try to stream my game it drops to 11 or so FPS.

I will try and post a screenshot of what is happening when I get home from work tonight.

 

[SumDim]

Streaming your desktop and streaming your game are two entirely different things. There is a lot more processing needed to encode while you are playing a game because there is a lot more motion and changes. With the desktop, everything is pretty much static, except for mouse movement.

To understand why, lets take an example.

Bring up Task Manager and the Performance tab.
Launch notepad
Start recording with OBS.
Watch the CPU utilization number. Do nothing, not even move the mouse. Sit for 10 seconds.
Next, click on the title bar of notepad and drag it around
Notice the CPU utilization starts to go up steeply.

So what is going on here? When you record a desktop, there is no changes in whats going on in the screen. The CPU is not taxed to do processing because there is no changes in whats being captured on the screen. However, when you start generating changes with movement, the CPU utilzation rises because encoding takes place with more differences in frames.

Capturing what is going on the screen is what OBS does. It has to take that raw screen data and then compress it based on differences in changes from one time interval to the next. The faster it can do that, the more fluid things look. 11FPS is not very good, especially when you are playing a game. Depending on the game, you really should target 60FPS. In order to do that, you need a really powerful computer. At 1080@60FPS, you are going to need a more powerful computer than at 720@60FPS.

Your system is not capable of delivering 60FPS. You need to upgrade your motherboard and CPU.
If you want 720@60fps using that nice GTX 1070 card you have, I would suggest a Ryzen 1600X with an AM4 Motherboard and 16GB DDR4 2933Mhz RAM.

 

[Shackahn]

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

I understand that try to stream a game is more demanding than the desktop but even streaming the game OBS does not seem to utilise much of my CPU its like I have a setting wrong or something. I would love to go buy a Ryzen or i7 processor but for my requirement - streaming at 720p 30 FPS it would be overkill at this stage.

As Shadowplay is able to comfortably stream my game at 720p 30FPS I would imagine OBS can do exactly the same but for some reason it doesn't and again I suspect it is my settings that are wrong.

 

[Shackahn]

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I am still having the same issues now with an i7 7700.

The CPU utilisation on OBS never goes very high yet its dropping frames regularly. I think I have managed to post an OBS log.