Question / Help Obs cutting/closing out CPU cores?

[C-Face]

Got myself a nice PC rig and hoped i can stream with it but i only have problems. Games are lagging even tho i try to stream at 720p/30fps (tried every possible set up even 1440p thats what my monitor has). I noticed that my CPU cores are not being used let me explain more. When i start the stream for the first 10sec or so everything seems fine in the ResourceMonitor every CPU Core is in use after that only CPU0 is at 100% and every other Core is at 0% CPU Usage even after shuting down the stream and closing obs the game still lagging and CPU 0 is only in use still after restarting the game it goes back to normal.
I have no clue whats going on hope somebody can help gonna upload my last logs maybe somebody can find something i did wrong or if thats just obs fault.

https://gist.github.com/3e5e98ad414e18fb0b7939424d800c98

 

[Fenrir]

You are maxing out your GPU, that is why you're having issues:

00:00:21.636: Output 'simple_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 999 (8.6%)

Cap FPS in your games to avoid letting them max out the GPU.

 

[C-Face]

Capping the FPS doesnt do anything and its not the problem i have like i said something with obs is wrong because after some time my CPU 0 is at 100% and every other core at 0%

Im gonna link some screens from the CPU Resource Monitor just to show u what i mean.

First is CsGo without streaming. Overall CPU Usage is at 20-30%
https://gyazo.com/57a6b5c42401bd791c0fe5bfbbe96ccb

And that is when i start streaming. Overall CPU Usage is also at 20-30%, but the other Cores are not beeing used properly.
https://gyazo.com/7e5f25293770e08c9740a91a808bd3ba

 

[C-Face]

Ok i thing i know what causes the CPU cutoff i often tab out on the second monitor and when i try and go back ingame i just click into the screen, when im back ingame then the CPU 0 overloads and the others cores do nothing i need to properly tab back into the game then he uses all other cores.... So i figured that out but i still cant stream properly 720p/30fps seems like the encoding from obs still only uses single core i tried even ENVEC it is better but its still laggy at times.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/907d2a95cf5ee3018590d33b3953264f

 

[jakobmiller]

Ok i thing i know what causes the CPU cutoff i often tab out on the second monitor and when i try and go back ingame i just click into the screen, when im back ingame then the CPU 0 overloads and the others cores do nothing i need to properly tab back into the game then he uses all other cores.... So i figured that out but i still cant stream properly 720p/30fps seems like the encoding from obs still only uses single core i tried even ENVEC it is better but its still laggy at times.

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/907d2a95cf5ee3018590d33b3953264f

Doesn't sound unreasonable at all. Nice one. Lets see if we can get a fix soon.

 

[C-Face]

Are there Options/Settings/Config files or maybe Programms to check if obs is using multi threading?

Edit: The weird thing about the tap-out CPU cutoff is it only happens when obs is running

 

[R1CH]

Sounds like you have some 3rd party software running that is randomly re-assigning CPU affinities. Check task manager "Set affinity" on the obs64.exe process to confirm this.

 

[C-Face]

Sounds like you have some 3rd party software running that is randomly re-assigning CPU affinities. Check task manager "Set affinity" on the obs64.exe process to confirm this.

All Cores are selected from the "Set affinity" Window, i dont use or see(in the Task-manager) any 3rd party software that could re-assigns CPU affinities.

I´ve been playing around a little bit with the "Set affinity" on obs64.exe process and it seems like it only uses CPU0 even tho its unchecked. tried it also with various games and softwares and it worked for everyone without problems but only obs doesnt seem to respond to the affinity settings.
And i also noticed the Tab-out CPU cutoff also only happens when going back from OBS into the game (only with the mouse not Tabbing in). tried the same with other windows and software but the cutoff only happens from OBS to Game.

I tried many stream settings and its always bad quality/laggy or stream is buffuring all the time and when i use higher settings it always comes down to the Point where OBS says "encoding Problems" becouse it only uses CPU0 to encode

Sry for the late response i was at work

 

[2FU4You]

I have The Same Problems after Win 10 Update

 

[C-Face]

So i was out of ideas what to do next so i´ve tried to reinstall Win7 and nothing changed same problems no solution. Got myself a Win10 key and now it works just fine. No idea what the problem was, but im gonna throw a guess out and say it had to do something with the win7 ultimate version.

I have The Same Problems after Win 10 Update

foo you i would say try reinstalling obs if that dont works try reinstalling win10 and if that doesnt work sry i couldnt help

 

[jumpinspider]

I am running Windows 10 and I am having this same exact issue. When I tab out of my game and then back in again by clicking, only CPU0 is in use and maxed out. My overall CPU usage is below 50%, OBS is using less than 10% and I get high encoding in obs. If I alt+tab back out, and then alt+tab back into the game, the CPU usage goes up to 85%, OBS is using 20-30%, CPU0 is no longer maxed out, and there are no encoding issues.

This issue just started for me today and it occurs even when I set my obs processor priority to high.

 

[trigga]

I've been using obs for months with the same settings since the beginning and this started a couple days ago, i can't stream anymore because it simply isn't watchable...

 

[ImNatho]

Sounds like you have some 3rd party software running that is randomly re-assigning CPU affinities. Check task manager "Set affinity" on the obs64.exe process to confirm this.

I have tried to set affinities with OBS, but it refuses to use anything other than CPU 0 (like the other dude was saying)
Even if CPU 0 is not checked in affinities!

 

[SickMotion]

Made an account just so i could reply to some of these to hopefully get something figured out. I have been trying fixes and work arounds for almost 8 hours now with Natho and still nothing. The problem seems to be caused by obs refusing to use anything other than CPU 0. I set affinities to only have 6 and 7 checked and it still defaults to overload CPU 0. The only thing that i have found to stop this from causing issues is turning all of your settings to very low on obs (fastest encoder, low bit rate, low output resolution) in order to make the CPU resource requirement less than what will over load 1 core (CPU 0). This obviously makes your stream/recording look like garbage and is not a real option but further displays the fact that the issue is coming from overloading the 1 core. I am not sure why it would be doing this out of no where because nothing has changed. I have not updated my graphics drivers since before it started, windows update was last done in 2016. I even tried installing obs 18.0.2 and 17.0.2 and it happened with both of them as well. It did it with OBS classic as well. I am hearing that people are having similar issues encoding with shadowplay as well? I have no idea what is causing it. Is there some way that multithreading with OBS has been forced off?

Also I will note that sometimes the issue will stop, maybe 1 in 100 tries of starting stopping recording. When the issue is not happening the load seems to be balanced across cores. As soon as it does happen again all the load is back on CPU 0. Normally my OBS CPU usage is around 25-35 but since the problem has started it will not go above 10-12 (which makes sense i guess if its only using 1 core). When the issue went away briefly and more cores were being used, that usage was back to the normal 26-29 range and then when the issue was back it was right back down to 10-12. Also, when I change the focus window from whatever game I am on back to obs, OBS usage spikes to 80-100 for a few seconds and all cores also spike to 100 during that time. Its like it was behind on the encoding and as soon as the game is not focused and OBS is the focus window it forces it through all at once.

 

[Fenrir]

The fact this is happening with OBS Classic further solidifies that this is very unlikely to be an issue in OBS itself. We're still gathering data, but this is probably going to be a pain to track down.

 

[Fenrir]

Hey folks, since we have a ton of duplicate threads on this issue, please move all discussion over here: Encoding Overloaded (no problems yesterday)

Check my linked post, and provide the info so we can start looking for commonalities.

Going to lock this thread to keep discussion on this in one place. Thank you for everyone who is reporting this.