Question / Help OBS using >40% CPU, games too laggy to play

[thornless_rose]

Hi all. I'm not the best when it comes to the technical aspects of computers, but I really want to give streaming a go. I've been trying countless methods to speed up my computer to stream. I followed the posted guide, and even tried this method to use my laptop to help carry the weight of streaming, but couldn't get it to work. I've been taking care to watch the task manager as well and have manually closed any programs that were using too much memory. Also, I cleaned the inside of my PC less than a month ago, so I don't think there are any issues of dust/overheating.

Here is the log of my most recent attempt to stream Rimworld (which usually runs perfectly fine). As soon as I started playing the game, the CPU usage of OBS went from about 5% to 40%, and it was too laggy to continue. I believe all my computer specs are in that log, but if not, I'd be happy to find those as well. My PC was custom built around 3 years ago - I'm open to the idea of upgrading some parts, but I wouldn't know where to start with that.

I would greatly appreciate any and all advice!

 

[Fenrir]

You're getting encoding lag with NVNEC, which is very atypical, and usually a sign that there is some kind of hardware issue with your graphics card. Can you get me a screenshot (the camera button in the program and select upload to free image hosting) of the main tab in GPUz? Download: https://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

 

[thornless_rose]

Thanks for your quick response, here is the image. I hope that's what you meant! Funny you should mention the graphics card - I've been having some issues with it. I had tried to install updates on the drivers and it would endlessly tell me that it couldn't install them for no apparent reason. I ended up reinstalling all the drivers from their website (instead of updating via the program on my computer) which eventually seemed to work. Not sure if that's related at all.

 

[Fenrir]

There could be some issue with the drivers, but the GPU looks to be running in the correct mode (which is good).

This this guide here to do a clean GPU driver install and see if that helps: http://obsproject.com/forum/resources/performing-a-clean-gpu-driver-installation.65/

 

[thornless_rose]

I've downloaded DDU and the correct drivers from NVIDIA, however I can't follow the guide properly as my computer won't let me enter Safe Mode. I've been restarting it and pressing F8 which successfully gives me the option to select Safe Mode, but once I click that, it only stays in safe mode briefly before reverting back to normal with no option to stop this. Do you have any idea what I can do to stop it from cancelling safe mode?

 

[Fenrir]

I am not sure on that one, I have never heard of a PC not booting properly into safe mode.

 

[thornless_rose]

I managed to get it into a loop of safe mode just now where the computer would continue to boot to safe mode and then restart as soon as it presented me with the screen to log in, but I can't get any farther than that. I'm hesitant to run DDU without safe mode as it warned me not to, so it seems like at this point I'll need to bring my PC in to a shop somewhere for help if I want to stream. Thank you very much for your assistance and patience.