Hello! I've been having an issue, and this ones a real confusing one. So whenever I have OBS open, doesn't need to be recording or streaming, my game will tank in performance, with the framerate being cut in half. I've ensured that my GPU is nowhere close to being overloaded, both while recording and when not. Every cpu core is at 60% max, never goes above. Ram is at 50%, so I know that usage isn't the issue. I went ahead and made a new scene collection with just game capture to see if there's any issues with browser sources etc, but the issue still continues. I've ensured no other program is recording in the background, like GeForce Experience etc, however the issue still continues. I'm really lost on what to do, I've lowered in game settings down to like 720p low, and it'll still drop, even after closing OBS. It only goes back to normal if I restart the game. Does anyone know what would be a good way to fix this? I've attached my most recent recording log, the 45 skipped & lagged frames was just from me opening chrome. To be clear, OBS is running perfectly, with no inconsistent framerate, hitches, lagged frames etc. It's just in game that suffers in performance.
Question / Help OBS limiting GPU usage?
- Thread starter Robert M
- Start date
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Deleted member 121471
I'll post all issues or misconfigured settings in your log, related to your topic and those that might cause an issue later on:
1) Update your Windows 10 THEN turn on Game Mode, as all issue related to it have been fixed;
2) Run OBS as adminstrator;
3) Colour Space set to 709, as it is supported by most streaming plaforms and media players;
4) NVENC encoder, "Quality" preset, disable "Lookahead" and "Psycho Visual Tuning";
5) Switch recording format to .mkv, as any crash will make a .mp4 incomplete recording completely unrecoverable. You can use "File-->Remux recordings" to create the .mp4 file after your session is done.
Create a clean scene collection with only "Game capture" source, re-test.
If there are no issues, try your regular scene collection and re-test.
If you're still not having any issues, you can try turning on "Psycho Visual Tuning" but I've found you'll have to test every single game to decide whether the small image quality improvement is worth the time spent testing on every different piece of software.
1) Update your Windows 10 THEN turn on Game Mode, as all issue related to it have been fixed;
2) Run OBS as adminstrator;
3) Colour Space set to 709, as it is supported by most streaming plaforms and media players;
4) NVENC encoder, "Quality" preset, disable "Lookahead" and "Psycho Visual Tuning";
5) Switch recording format to .mkv, as any crash will make a .mp4 incomplete recording completely unrecoverable. You can use "File-->Remux recordings" to create the .mp4 file after your session is done.
Create a clean scene collection with only "Game capture" source, re-test.
If there are no issues, try your regular scene collection and re-test.
If you're still not having any issues, you can try turning on "Psycho Visual Tuning" but I've found you'll have to test every single game to decide whether the small image quality improvement is worth the time spent testing on every different piece of software.
I've gone ahead and updated to the latest 1903 build for windows 10. I ran OBS in administrator mode as well as changed the settings as you specified, however I'm still experiencing the issue. Clean scene collection with only game capture, so no browser sources that could be causing the issue. There doesn't appear to be any correlation when monitoring my hardware to the FPS drops, just out of nowhere the game starts tanking in performance. Thermals are fine, GPU and CPU are running at max performance so it's not like the GPU or CPU is idling or anything. I have no clue why it's doing this.
archlord2k3
New Member
ive had some problems myself on the 13-14th my stream was running perfect then yesterday i started to get some miss frames then downscaled to x264 then got a encoder error saying i needed to downscale again
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Deleted member 121471
Are you running multiple monitors? If so, which refresh rates on each monitor?
FerretBomb
Active Member
Test running them both at 60hz and see if the issue goes away.
Windows has a long-standing issue with disparate refresh rate monitors and GPU acceleration; normally it only affects OBS rather than the game itself. It's an OS-level issue so there's nothing OBS can do about it.
If the issue doesn't occur with all monitors running at 60hz (or another matched refresh rate between all of them) then that's the problem cropping up; the only fix is to have all monitors run at a matched rate. A workaround is to run OBS on the same monitor as the game, or to disable the Preview in OBS (right-click on it and Disable Preview)... not optimal, but that's why it's a workaround rather than a fix.
GSync won't help anything by the way. It's monitor-side sync tech, it doesn't affect anything on the PC end, will not limit framerates or avoid tearing. Solidly a consumer-side solution, and not advised for livestreaming purposes.
Windows has a long-standing issue with disparate refresh rate monitors and GPU acceleration; normally it only affects OBS rather than the game itself. It's an OS-level issue so there's nothing OBS can do about it.
If the issue doesn't occur with all monitors running at 60hz (or another matched refresh rate between all of them) then that's the problem cropping up; the only fix is to have all monitors run at a matched rate. A workaround is to run OBS on the same monitor as the game, or to disable the Preview in OBS (right-click on it and Disable Preview)... not optimal, but that's why it's a workaround rather than a fix.
GSync won't help anything by the way. It's monitor-side sync tech, it doesn't affect anything on the PC end, will not limit framerates or avoid tearing. Solidly a consumer-side solution, and not advised for livestreaming purposes.
Tried running at 60hz, and the issue is still present. It almost feels like OBS is reserving some CPU or GPU headroom which is causing my game to be limited from maxing out on my hardware. My FPS will begin to drop at only 60-70% GPU usage, or 70-80% CPU on a single core. The game previously wouldn't be hindered in any way and would only slow down the fps if it were maxing out either my GPU or CPU, but currently it's not. I don't know what the issue could be, as both OBS logs and my hardware monitor is saying there is no issue.
An update on what I have discovered. The game in particular I was having an issue with was Overwatch, and after searching and searching, I came across a reddit post detailing about how RAM frequency can have a huge impact on performance and can be a bottleneck. My ram speed was 2400MHZ, which is okay but not ideal when paired with a 7700k and a 1080. I went ahead and overclocked my ram to 3200MHZ, and suddenly the issue was gone. My assumption was that the game was already close to being bottlenecked at 2400MHZ, but with the addition of OBS it caused the game to begin to lag severely. I'm not sure exactly why it was so severe. I didn't notice any high RAM usage, or OBS causing my RAM frequency to throttle, however it seems to be running the way it should. I will report any other findings I have, or issues but after running an intensive simulation in game for an hour and having no frame drops except for a few minor due to a GPU usage spike, I think it's safe to say the issue is for the most part resolved.