Question / Help Please point me in the right direction

[Cgadgetz]

I need help. I've searched, researched, watched videos and attempted to follow along with guides but i'm not having any luck...

I want to be able play games at a high graphic level and stream at the same time from one PC and if not I have a second PC that has been and can be used as a stream PC

I'm very exhausted with spending more time troubleshooting than I am playing games...

Gaming PC:
I have a i7-7700k and a RTX 2080 with 16GB of ram with my games installed on a SSD.

Streaming PC:
I have a i5-6600k and a GTX 970. Prior to black Friday I used this as my stream pc using a HD60 and HDMI downscaler in order to play games on my gaming pc at 3440x1440 and send a 1080p signal to the streaming pc. This worked well but was cumbersome to remember to configure correctly prior to stream and the picture quality was dull.

Monitors:
I use a dual monitor setup on my gaming PC one Alienware 3440x1440 monitor at 144hz and LG 2560x1080 at 75hz. I have dropped it down to only having the Alienware monitor connected and the results is still consistent with the bad performance I'm experiencing

OBS/PC settings:
Gamebar off
Game mode off
Game DVR off
Nvidia overlay on
Nvec new
Keyframe 2
Bitrate 6000 kps
preset Quality
Base canvas 1920x1080
Output 1280x720
FPS60
Psycho visual tuning checked

Cross roads:
On black Friday I upgraded to the elgato 4kHD60 card and was so excited I forgot that the cheap motherboard in my streaming PC only supports one PCI slot so in order to use it I'd have to remove my GTX 970. This means I can no longer use NVEC and have to use x246 as my encoder. In my experience the i5 can't handle the stream even when I lower it to 720p it struggles to keep consistent frames and causes my stream deck to be unresponsive when I attempt to scene switch and use replays


Scenario:
When I play Destiny 2 on my gaming PC without OBS open I get 100+ FPS if I open OBS and do nothing else after opening it my frames drop to the 30-40 range. I understand that destiny is tricky and does not allow game capture and you must use display capture. The performance is the same in other games as well. If i play halo reach without obs open I get the rock solid 60 FPS which is the max for that game. Once i open OBS the game runs about about 45-53 FPS and is very choppy with spikes


Questions:
Should I be able to have better performance on my gaming PC or am I limited by the i7-7700k?
Where can i find a mini ATX motherboard with 2 PCI slots so I can install the 4kHD60 and also use the GTX 970 for Nvec encoding?
Is there something wrong with my configuration/settings that is causing my issue?

 

[Narcogen]

OBS operation is not free. OBS renders frames when in operation (when running, not just when streaming/recording). So if Destiny is running uncapped and then you launch OBS, your framerate will drop.

FTL sessions are bad for judging performance, is it possible you could do an RTMP session and post that log?

I understand what you want to do with your setup, the ironic thing is that the 2080's encoder chip is much better than the 970s, so much so that it makes a lot of sense to use it for encoding-- even if the game looks less good to you, the encoded content at a given bitrate will look noticeably better coming out of the 2080 than the 970.

 

[Cgadgetz]

Thank you for your response. I can do a RTMP test like you suggested once I get home. I do have destiny 2 capped at 120fps in most areas I get that if OBS is not open.

 

[Cgadgetz]

Here is a OBS log that is from a stream using RTMP

 

[Narcogen]

22:56:07.446: Output 'adv_stream': Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 10 (0.1%)
22:56:07.447: Video stopped, number of skipped frames due to encoding lag: 13/14135 (0.1%)

Not much in the way of rendering or encoding lag, but that does mean that at least a tiny portion of the time, you're hitting your GPU's limits in terms of resources.

Capping Destiny 2 at 120 stops it from running away with everything and starving OBS of resources entirely, but...

14:22:09.017: Game Mode: Off

You should have that ON now. With one patch of Windows it was broken, but in yours it works and you should have it on. However, even with it on, it may be helpful to cap Destiny 2 at 60fps so that you get a consistent framerate both for gameplay and the stream.

I've run D2 on CPUs older than yours, so I'm not convinced you are CPU-bound.

 

[Cgadgetz]

I appreciate your help. I really don't get why I struggle when other folks with similar hardware do not. I just tried again with FPS capped at 60fps but I can't even hit 60 with OBS open. This is also a fresh install of OBS I used revo uninstaller to try to nuke it from my system before I posted on here. Here is a log with the frames capped at 60fps. Game mode is turned on as well.