Question / Help Poor streaming quality after Windows 10 upgrade

[RyanYags]

Hi everyone, and thank you if you are even reading this.

I have been on Windows 8.1 up until just last week. The only reason I want to upgrade is because I want to play/stream Sea of Thieves, but Windows 10 is killing my stream. Fortnite (something that was streaming perfectly on 8.1) dips below 60 FPS a lot during a stream, and even when it says it is 60, it doesnt look as good as it did back on 8.1. Sea of Thieves is far worse, with framerates struggling to get to even 50 FPS and dipping and rising wildly all the time, unstreamable. Keep in mind, my actual game's performance is fine on my screen, it is just the stream that suffers. I noticed in my task manager that my GPU is either at 99% or pinned when streaming Fortnite, I assume that is part of the issue? I didnt really look at that number when streaming on 8.1, but that is becuase I never had any issues with it.
I have:

• Done a fresh install of Windows 10
• Disabled Gamemode via registry
• Disabled all the other Windows 10 gaming junk

Attached is the log from my 5 hour Fortnite stream tonight, thank you to anyone who offers to help!

 

[WizardCM]

Yes, if your GPU is pegged at 100%, that will cause OBS to struggle in its scene rendering.

This is shown by the following message in the log: Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 46551 (4.3%)

Running a game without vertical sync or a frame rate limiter will frequently cause performance issues with OBS because your GPU will be maxed out. Enable vsync or set a reasonable frame rate limit that your GPU can handle without hitting 100% usage. If that's not enough you may also need to turn down some of the video quality options in the game, something like render distance makes a huge difference.

 

[RyanYags]

Yes, if your GPU is pegged at 100%, that will cause OBS to struggle in its scene rendering.

This is shown by the following message in the log: Number of lagged frames due to rendering lag/stalls: 46551 (4.3%)

Running a game without vertical sync or a frame rate limiter will frequently cause performance issues with OBS because your GPU will be maxed out. Enable vsync or set a reasonable frame rate limit that your GPU can handle without hitting 100% usage. If that's not enough you may also need to turn down some of the video quality options in the game, something like render distance makes a huge difference.

Thank you Wizard, I really appreciate the time you took looking at my post, log and replying. This has been so helpful to me.

On Fortnite, I took your advice and set a FPS limit of 60, my GPU was not working nearly as hard and the stream looked great. One note I would like to make though is that I did not need to have a FPS limit and it streamed fine on 8.1.

For Sea of Thieves, I need to set my FPS limit at 30 to get the same result, which I am super unhappy with. Is my machine simply not powerful enough to stream Sea of Thieves in 60 FPS? I have attached the log from my Sea of Thieves stream today. But it should be noted I had my common FPS value set to just 30 FPS on in OBS. I have a 4790K and R9 280X.