Question / Help OBS is causing games to take a major FPS hit.

[k4ywalsk]

I'm running the latest 0.14.1 build, but it doesn't really matter because it has been happening on the previous versions for months.


It doesn't seem to matter what game, or what method I use to capture (game capture, window, monitor) no matter what, if streaming (or recording, actually) my games take a very noticeable framerate hit. The log I'm going to include was only at 720/30FPS, which should be pretty easy to do with my hardware.


Any help is greatly appreciated!



If my log doesn't upload, it can be found HERE

 

[Osiris]

Log doesnt contain a recording or streaming attempt.

 

[k4ywalsk]

Alright, I've finished work so now I am able to upload the correct log. Again, thanks for the help and sorry for the mistakes in log uploads.


I'm going to test OBS v0.657b as I've seen some threads in here that indicate that it might resolve the issue, but I would really rather use the studio version.

 

[Lain]

Does it happen when you're not encoding? Like for example when the program is idle and just capturing. If it does it could be a graphics-related bottleneck you're having somewhere. Reason why I say is because your encoding settings aren't particularly demanding for your system, even a weak 4-core machine wouldn't have problems with those encoding settings.

 

[sugarynugs]

Does it happen when you're not encoding? Like for example when the program is idle and just capturing. If it does it could be a graphics-related bottleneck you're having somewhere. Reason why I say is because your encoding settings aren't particularly demanding for your system, even a weak 4-core machine wouldn't have problems with those encoding settings.

i notice that the system only has 2gb ram reported in the log.

 

[Lain]

No, that's a misconception. He's running the 32bit version so it can only use a specific amount of RAM per program. You can safely ignore that.

 

[k4ywalsk]

Does it happen when you're not encoding? Like for example when the program is idle and just capturing. If it does it could be a graphics-related bottleneck you're having somewhere. Reason why I say is because your encoding settings aren't particularly demanding for your system, even a weak 4-core machine wouldn't have problems with those encoding settings.

I agree, with this CPU I should have absolutely no problems whatsoever. It happens if OBS is open, it doesn't need to be recording or streaming, just rendering the preview window does it, having it up on my second monitor gives me a huge FPS hit, but minimizing it will give me an extra 10FPS in-game, but the game is still taking a considerable performance hit.



I've tested it with OBS non-studio, and performance is just slightly better, but there are still issues. I'll upload a log from there as well, just so you guys can tell me how I've messed up my configuration :P


Some other info: I'm using a FuryX, with driver version 16.4.1, I am running 16GB of RAM in quad channel and I am running the game/OBS on an 850 Evo.

 

[Lain]

Ah, so it's likely some sort of GPU issue as I suspected. I actually don't think I've seen that particular AMD device in a log file before. Out of curiosity, is that a crossfire setup?

Also, it happens with every game? What games have you tested? I saw DS3 there which I'm guessing is dark souls 3, but I've tested that myself without issues so I'm doubting that the games themselves have anything to do with it.

 

[k4ywalsk]

Ah, so it's likely some sort of GPU issue as I suspected. I actually don't think I've seen that particular AMD device in a log file before. Out of curiosity, is that a crossfire setup?

Also, it happens with every game? What games have you tested? I saw DS3 there which I'm guessing is dark souls 3, but I've tested that myself without issues so I'm doubting that the games themselves have anything to do with it.

It's not a crossfire set up currently, and I've tried a multitude of games, some that are fresh in my memory are cs:go, enter thegungeon, and black ops 3. I didn't have any issues with the binding if Isaac though.

I don't know what else to try to resolve this issue, there was a time last year or so when I didn't have this issue with the same set up, so my suspicion is that it may be a driver issue. Any advice?

 

[Lain]

Are you on a 120 or 144hz monitor?

 

[k4ywalsk]

Are you on a 120 or 144hz monitor?

Yes, 144hz

 

[Lain]

Ah, I knew it the moment you mentioned CS:GO. Suddenly it's all starting to make sense. So basically your games aren't running at 144 fps while capturing? Not entirely unsurprising, it's a semi-common thing with 144hz monitors. There's probably a few options.

First, try turning on the "limit capture framerate" in game capture properties, curious to know what sort of results you get with that on a 144hz monitor, whether it helps or whether it changes anything in the output.

If that doesn't help, then hm. Not entirely sure what approach to take. Does display capture do the same?

So yea, the 144hz thing might be what's going on. 144hz is definitely going to be more susceptible to capture interference just due to how fast it has to render.

 

[k4ywalsk]

Ah, I knew it the moment you mentioned CS:GO. Suddenly it's all starting to make sense. So basically your games aren't running at 144 fps while capturing? Not entirely unsurprising, it's a semi-common thing with 144hz monitors. There's probably a few options.

First, try turning on the "limit capture framerate" in game capture properties, curious to know what sort of results you get with that on a 144hz monitor, whether it helps or whether it changes anything in the output.

If that doesn't help, then hm. Not entirely sure what approach to take. Does display capture do the same?

So yea, the 144hz thing might be what's going on. 144hz is definitely going to be more susceptible to capture interference just due to how fast it has to render.

Alright, I liked your theory so I did some testing, for whatever reason Limit capture framerate didn't seem to make much of a difference, though I decided to just try setting my monitor to 60hz and that seems to have basically solved the problem.

 

[Jgr9]

This might be unrelated, I'm not sure. Using the old NVENC in TF2 (and others), I would get occasional sharp performance spikes and maybe a more consistent framerate at times (though the latter may just be TF2 because TF2 is TF2...).

But trying out the new NVENC in Simple mode this time, the sharp performance spikes were much more frequent.
The only thing I am aware that I changed, other than going from Advanced to Simple mode, with everything else being the same or default is changing the audio bitrate from 128 to 320 which was dropped to 160 by the enforcer.

Old NVENC in Advanced:
Profile - High (not even sure if that does anything if I didn't make my own presets or something?)
Keyframe interval - 2
CBR
Bitrate 3500
Low Latency checked
other advanced settings at default - 2, 1, 51
audio at 128

New NVENC in Simple mode:
3500
Audio at 320 but lowered to 160 by the enforcer
High Quality


Maybe the High Quality is what's doing it?
Doesn't it say higher uses less CPU?

This is all 1680x1050 at 30fps

Sorry, I don't have much more info yet. Though it did seem to make my computer (and my room) rather toasty, but I have no legitimate confirmation of that because I don't have any GPU monitors running. Also can't see the CPU info on OBS live on one screen.

I don't see anything useful in these logs either, but I don't know...
There's more, but I'm having trouble uploading them...

 

[Lain]

Jgr9 - yea, that's completely unrelated. You may want to make a separate thread about that. I'll take a look however.

The only difference I can see is that the older version is low latency, and that the newer one isn't in low-latency mode.

 

[Jgr9]

So if I were to use Simple, try setting it to Low-Latency High Performance?

I guess I'm just not sure where the issue is happening when it says higher = less CPU. I guess my GPU can't handle the highest setting very well?

I guess I'm forgetting that "High Quality" does more processing and actually tends to make my streams look worse than Low-Latency does (at my bitrate at least). I took a look at it now, now that it's done processing.

I have no idea what the new advanced settings do...

 

[Lain]

Sorry about the "higher = less CPU" thing, that was actually meant for x264 settings originally, and I haven't changed the text there, so disregard the text.

 

[k4ywalsk]

Sorry about the "higher = less CPU" thing, that was actually meant for x264 settings originally, and I haven't changed the text there, so disregard the text.

Well I've come to confirm that what Jim suggested worked, for anyone having a similar issue. I used the "Limit Capture Framerate" setting like Jim suggested, and also just set my monitor to 60hz and now I can record and steam normally.


https://www.twitch.tv/k4ywalsk/v/63228013 Results there.



Now I just have to find out how to get better quality. How do you suppose 1080 @ 60FPS with 5K bitrate will look?

 

[Jgr9]

Ok, back to the thread question/solution, does the "Video" framerate setting not do this? Limit capture framerate might help? I mean my Video setting is set to 30, though my TF2 doesn't have much of a restriction. (monitor is 60 though)

(wait a minute... crap... Where did my "Media Foundation" NVENC disappear to in Advanced? I was going to try that to see if I could get my performance spikes to chill out again... :( )