OBS 28.0.2 CPU stats do not match Windows 11 CPU stats

rob215x

rob215x

New Member
I noticed something odd the other day and I actually don't know if this was happening in OBS 27 or not. In Windows 11, OBS v28.0.2, the CPU use reported by OBS is completely different than the CPU reported by Windows. Here's a clip from a live stream where you can see exactly what I mean...

www.twitch.tv

Twitch

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I'm building an IRL CAM rig with a very small computer (I have a separate thread about it) so the CPU usage while streaming is very important to me.

It would be nice to know which is the accurate number. (or if OBS is calculating it in a different way than Windows so it has a different meaning??)

thanks!
 
PaiSand

PaiSand

Active Member

Analyzer | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.
obsproject.com obsproject.com
 
rob215x

rob215x

New Member
PaiSand said:

Analyzer | OBS

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding.
obsproject.com obsproject.com
Click to expand...
The log I posted is simply for hardware and software reference.

I already ran a number of different logs through the analyzer. It didn't tell me anything about the question in this post.

I am fully aware of the hardware limitations for my specific application. You may want to see my other thread: https://obsproject.com/forum/thread...-can-i-run-it-on-a-surface-pro-an-sbc.159200/

thanks!
 
L

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
One thing to consider (and I'm not part of OBS Studio dev team, so just guessing here) that OBS stats is reporting main OBS thread and that is all?? OBS Stats is definitely NOT reporting overall system CPU usage, which for many is a more important measure...
A complication is plugins, and where those are separate OS threads so what is OBS Stats reporting?? I'm sure there is an answer if I went looking for it... but in my use case, how much CPU the OBS app is consuming has never mattered to me..
How much CPU the overall environment is consuming did, so I keep an eye on CPU using Windows Task Manager (and/or Resource Monitor).. depends on what you are looking for and how much detail you need. I have not had a need on my OBS PC to get to SysInternals Process Explorer level of investigation
 
bcoyle

bcoyle

Member
I had a similar problem with win 10. Obs reported correctly the main obs thread, but did not report the cpu usage from the browser .exe.s. Win 7 did not have that problem. I ended up setting the browser setting (source) to disconnect from the web if not visible. On a slow laptop, each active browser exe was taking 10% cpu usage which made obs run close to 100 percent sometimes depending on obs streaming and recording. You can see all this in the win task manager.
 
rob215x

rob215x

New Member
Thank you everyone for the comments so far. I'm still investigating. As I mentioned before, my use case is very specific as I am trying to build a portable streaming system with a tiny computer running OBS. I'm not doing any gaming, I simply want to stream a DSLR capture card and a small webcam, with a couple of JPG or PNG overlays in OBS.

I did a recent, SUCCESSFUL live stream, where Windows Task Manager was showing 85 to 100% CPU use for most of the stream. However, the stream didn't drop or degrade. So was I really at 100% CPU?? This is what I'm trying to figure out.
 
L

Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
A CPU occasionally spiking to 100% is not outside normal OS operation, and depending on which process(es) caused the spike, may or may not impact other processes. So, yes you could see 100%, even sustained for a little bit, and not degrade a stream... BUT... unexpectedly, you also could easily see an impact at less than 100% CPU utilization (maybe not this time, but you'd be mistaken to assume that would always be the case). it depends.. no hard and fast simple rule.
Personally, I'd be anxious about a production system sustaining 85% CPU utilization, even more so on a laptop that could easily thermally throttle (which is harder to monitor)... basically CPU usage will go down, but system (BIOS) is throttling CPU and not allowing it to run at full speed.
When thermal throttling takes place, asking a question of 'was it really 100% CPU?" gets to be tricky to answer... it is NOT a simple yes/no answer, and the answer can vary, even for a fixed workload... as CPU top capability itself will be varied. The issue is 100% of what? maximum CPU capability when not throttled? or 100% of throttled limit (lower performance) at a given moment? or ?? And then it depends on which monitoring tool you are using, and what it is reporting, relatively to throttled maximum (and whether aware of throttling)... ugh... not simple
 
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