Question / Help OBS Won't Use Dedicated Graphics Card

GeekAthair

GeekAthair

New Member
To start off I want to thank the community here for the incredible wealth of troubleshooting knowledge contained within this forum. I've read through about as many of the "I'm doing this on a laptop and getting a black screen" and other "i'm using two graphics cards and it's not working" as I can stomach but none of the steps seem to be working. I've been working with a friend who streams using OBS for a week or two now and neither of us can seem to get it working well.

My logs: https://gist.github.com/6cbdffe7997a87fb5b0a

Symptoms: Minecraft lags and the recorded/streamed video either freezes completely or is so choppy it isn't view-able. CPU usage hit 100% when both Minecraft and OBS are running.

Thoughts: I believe the two are directly tied. It looks like OBS is trying to run on my integrated card even though I've specifically said to run on the NVIDIA.

What I've done so far.

1) I've followed Twitches guide on optimizing the settings for streaming with their services. I don't plan to stream right now but that's something I want to do in the future.

2) Set OBS, Minecraft and Java to use the NVIDIA card in the NVIDIA control panel.

3) Reinstalled both graphic card drivers.

4) Configured the settings within OBS to use the NVIDIA (though the integrated card doesn't even show up as an option)

5) I get the same issues whether I launch the 32-bit or 64-bit versions and whether I launch the .exe directly or through a shortcut.

Things to note: I get a weird ghosting effect in the OBS settings where selecting the video adapter gives me two copies of the NVIDIA card and one Microsoft Default Adapter. I can't seem to replicate this in a consistent basis.


Any ideas? This has been driving me nuts. Though it IS a laptop it's far from a horrible one (Dual-core i7, 16GB of ram, a discrete graphics card and a brand new SSD).

Thanks!
 
dodgepong

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
Actually, it looks like in some of the later sections of that log, you got it to run on the correct adapter, oddly enough. The first try was on the Intel, but all the subsequent ones ran correctly. Was your computer performing poorly when testing with Hearthstone?

When you get that "ghosting" effect where it shows multiple video adapters, always just choose the top one.
 
D

dping

Active Member
GeekAthair said:
To start off I want to thank the community here for the incredible wealth of troubleshooting knowledge contained within this forum. I've read through about as many of the "I'm doing this on a laptop and getting a black screen" and other "i'm using two graphics cards and it's not working" as I can stomach but none of the steps seem to be working. I've been working with a friend who streams using OBS for a week or two now and neither of us can seem to get it working well.

My logs: https://gist.github.com/6cbdffe7997a87fb5b0a

Symptoms: Minecraft lags and the recorded/streamed video either freezes completely or is so choppy it isn't view-able. CPU usage hit 100% when both Minecraft and OBS are running.

Thoughts: I believe the two are directly tied. It looks like OBS is trying to run on my integrated card even though I've specifically said to run on the NVIDIA.

What I've done so far.

1) I've followed Twitches guide on optimizing the settings for streaming with their services. I don't plan to stream right now but that's something I want to do in the future.

2) Set OBS, Minecraft and Java to use the NVIDIA card in the NVIDIA control panel.

3) Reinstalled both graphic card drivers.

4) Configured the settings within OBS to use the NVIDIA (though the integrated card doesn't even show up as an option)

5) I get the same issues whether I launch the 32-bit or 64-bit versions and whether I launch the .exe directly or through a shortcut.

Things to note: I get a weird ghosting effect in the OBS settings where selecting the video adapter gives me two copies of the NVIDIA card and one Microsoft Default Adapter. I can't seem to replicate this in a consistent basis.


Any ideas? This has been driving me nuts. Though it IS a laptop it's far from a horrible one (Dual-core i7, 16GB of ram, a discrete graphics card and a brand new SSD).

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Use quicksync with window capture and compatibility mode. you'll have to add quicksync to nVidia Control panel for switchable graphics as well I believe

OR

use NVENC with game capture
See this guide but in this case, setup OBS in the nVidia Control panel as well
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/laptop-black-screen-when-capturing-read-here-first.5965/
 
dodgepong

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
The issue in his case though is that when he runs OBS on the integrated card, Game Capture captured Minecraft using Memory capture rather than faster shared texture capture, which is where the slowdown is. His x264 settings are low enough that there shouldn't be an overwhelming performance impact when things are running correctly.
 
D

dping

Active Member
dodgepong said:
The issue in his case though is that when he runs OBS on the integrated card, Game Capture captured Minecraft using Memory capture rather than faster shared texture capture, which is where the slowdown is. His x264 settings are low enough that there shouldn't be an overwhelming performance impact when things are running correctly.
Click to expand...

His mobile i7 is roughly equivalent to a i3 4130 in many ways so I treat it as such

@GeekAthair set scene buffering to 700ms
 
dodgepong

dodgepong

Administrator
Community Helper
Fair enough, but given that he was able to record Hearthstone without issue after getting the correct GPU selected, and given that memory capture performs poorly on Java applications when using the wrong GPU, that was the main cause of slowdown. Quicksync would ease up on load as well (and since he is doing local recording he can crank up the bit rate to overcome the quality issues associated with Quicksync), but the main problem was selecting the correct GPU. Everything after that is gravy.
 
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