New PC - Games dropping fps when OBS launched

[wonderwez]

Hello there - I recently upgraded my circa 2016 PC (i7 6700/16GB RAM/NVIDIA 970) to a newer model (i9 12900/64GB RAM/NVIDIA 3080), and everything is going well EXCEPT for running OBS. The transfer process of settings/scemes/profiles between the old comp and the new seemed to go fine and everything appears to be in order. But here's the issue: when I simply launch OBS (admin mode, not recording or streaming even), I've noticed my in-game frames go down anywhere from 70 to 100 fps! For what it's worth I mainly play World of Warcraft.

I've seen some older posts online regarding others with this issue, but haven't found any fixes that have worked for me. I've upgraded from the older 27 version I had been running pretty stably to 29. I've run the analyzer (https://obsproject.com/logs/eoiQjFM0bxiPw1O7), and while it has an info note of "0.6% GPU Encoder Overload", in task manager my GPU while recording isn't going above around 30% utilization. I've tried capping my frames within the game and tinkering some of the graphics settings down a smidge. I've tried paring down the scenes in my active collection. I've tried ensuring browser sources were not loading (and have since taken any browser sources OUT of my current testing scene collection). I've tried turning browser hardware acceleration both off and on.

I've got the most current NVIDIA driver, which I updated today to troubleshoot this. I've changed the OBS process priority from Normal, to Below Normal, to High. No change. I changed my encoder from the older NVIDIA NVENC ffmpeg that carried over from before to the NVIDIA NVENC H.264. Haven't touched my streaming settings just yet because I don't know what I'm doing with this upgrade just yet and haven't tried streaming anything anyways.

But I'll say it again - it's simply LOADING OBS that causes the in-game frames to lower dramatically. I'm not recording anything, not streaming anything, and my frames go from about 130-140 avg down to 30-50 avg. I've run out of ideas, and hope it's something obvious that I have setup wrong. I've attached a log file in case any of you pros wanna dig in. Thanks!

 

[wonderwez]

A little more information:
I transferred everything to the new computer back in Dec (dec 20th), and did some test recordings back then on the older version and everything went well. I didn't have these frame issues according to my previous tests. Then I swapped over my CamLink in early Jan and tested that sync and everything seemed to be alright with those records. It was when I tried again today on the WoW Public Test Realm that I noticed my frames were jacked in both the PTR and live versions of WoW and I went down this troubleshooting rabbit hole.

The only thing I can think of that may have changed were my in-game graphics settings. I believe the NVIDIA GeForce Experience may have optimized my game settings between my original install and now, because when I first loaded wow on my new PC I noticed that the optimizer wasn't showing WoW in its folders, and it was a known issue that it wasn't working with the current iteration of WoW. Sadly, I don't know what graphics settings, specifically, I was using during that interim period where everything seemed to be working well enough.

 

[sandrix]

The first thing to start with is to make sure this isn't happening due to your OBS settings. Download the Zip version of OBS and run it in portable mode. In the portable version, the settings are isolated from the installed version, which will help diagnose a number of problems.

OBS and OBS-Studio: Portable Mode on Windows

Running OBS/OBS-Studio in Portable Mode means all settings (Profiles and Scene Collections) are saved within the OBS main folder. You can copy the whole folder to a second PC or USB-Stick and use it wherever you want. Be aware, the File-Paths for...

obsproject.com

 

[sandrix]

- Set Windows to Maximum Performance Mode, NVIDIA Control Panel.
- Update Visual c++

Latest supported Visual C++ Redistributable downloads

This article lists the download links for the latest versions of Visual C++ Redistributable packages.

learn.microsoft.com

- Disable preview in OBS
- Disable in-game overlays such as Geforce Experience, Overwolf, etc. Anything that can interact with OBS.
- It is worth abandoning Nvidia Broadcast, Nvidia Ansel and other similar applications, because they can significantly reduce FPS in games.
- Enable Game Mode in Windows

There are not relevant links in your settings

13:12:44.941: Failed to open file 'C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/kodak5205fuji3510.png': No such file or directory
13:12:44.942: WIC: Failed to create IWICBitmapDecoder from file: C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/kodak5205fuji3510.png
13:12:44.942: gs_image_file_init_internal: Failed to load file 'C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/kodak5205fuji3510.png'
13:12:44.968: Failed to open file 'C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/filmstock.png': No such file or directory
13:12:44.968: WIC: Failed to create IWICBitmapDecoder from file: C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/filmstock.png
13:12:44.968: gs_image_file_init_internal: Failed to load file 'C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/filmstock.png'
13:12:44.968: Failed to open file 'C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/black_and_white.png': No such file or directory
13:12:44.968: WIC: Failed to create IWICBitmapDecoder from file: C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/black_and_white.png
13:12:44.968: gs_image_file_init_internal: Failed to load file 'C:/Program Files (x86)/obs-studio/data/obs-plugins/obs-filters/LUTs/black_and_white.png'
13:12:44.983: Switched to scene 'RECORDING-YT'

 

[wonderwez]

The first thing to start with is to make sure this isn't happening due to your OBS settings. Download the Zip version of OBS and run it in portable mode. In the portable version, the settings are isolated from the installed version, which will help diagnose a number of problems.

OBS and OBS-Studio: Portable Mode on Windows

Running OBS/OBS-Studio in Portable Mode means all settings (Profiles and Scene Collections) are saved within the OBS main folder. You can copy the whole folder to a second PC or USB-Stick and use it wherever you want. Be aware, the File-Paths for...

obsproject.com

Thank you for your replies! I'm starting this step by step. I've downloaded the portable version and running it in Portable mode, setup a simple scene with just my display capture and made a few other small settings tweaks like adjusting the encoder settings, recording fps from 30 to 60, etc.

With this, I saw NO drop in framerates and my short test recording experienced no missed or skipped frames, etc.

I then dove into a small next step that proved interesting: I have a simple scene collection with two scenes - one with just my main display in full screen with two optional image overlays (turned off, a logo, and anamorphic bars), and another with my facecam (elgato CamLink) source at full screen. I exported it from my original OBS and imported it into the portable OBS. Immediately experienced the frame drops. Thought I'd delete the full cam scene from the collection to start checking, and the frames shot back up.

I then deleted the scene collection and reimported it, thinking maybe it was because the facecam wasn't in fact turned ON (it's a mirrorless Lumix camera, so needs to be turned on at the camera), so I turned on the camera before initiating this next attempt. Frames still poor, plus the facecam wasn't showing in OBS anyways. Next, instead of removing the facecam, I deactivated it - frames shot back up.

Closed portable OBS, opened my original installation. Went into the camlink source and deactivated it. Frames all better.

So I think I've pinpointed the issue as a problem with my CamLink source. Looks like I'll be chasing that problem down now. If anyone has any tips on THAT I'd love to hear it, but for now at least recording my game seems to be working fine. Appreciate your help!