Question / Help Settings for streaming and gaming with i7-8700k with no performance hit on the game?

[Ranimen]

Hi guys,

I'm new to streaming so excuse me for my lack of knowledge on the matter. I would like to play Rainbow Six Siege and PUBG at 1080p 144hz on a 2k monitor and stream them at 720p30fps and maybe 60fps. However, my game would have micro stutter (generally not as smooth as not streaming) and my stream is very pixelated. I have an i7-8700k so I thought I could at least stream without any performance hit with lower obs settings but it seems like I cannot.

Since I have a 2k monitor but play at 1080p, I set the base canvas res in video settings to 1080p and output scaled res to 720p. I also use bicubic sharpen scaling. OBS process priority is on high. I would like to keep my consistent 144fps without having the stream looking too terrible. My in game settings are pretty much the lowest possible on everything except texture on medium. I have seen some people claim that they crank the preset all the way to medium but if I do that my games would be unplayable with crazy stuttering and sometimes they even freeze for a bit.

Here's my full specs:
i7-8700k overclocked at 4.7GHZ
EVGA 1070 SC 8GB
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200MHZ
Asus Rog Strix Z370-e
Samsung EVO 960 NVMe M.2 500GB
Seagate 8TB BarraCuda Pro HDD

Internet: Download 93Mbps Upload 4Mbps

Here's my log files for streaming PUBG: https://obsproject.com/logs/begDgXxnuumdBjwf

I have watched many tutorials and read many threads on OBS Settings but all of them pretty much suggest the settings similar to what I have right now. Even if this does work, I still wonder if my cpu can handle streaming a higher quality stream at 720p60fps. Please help!

 

[carlmmii]

Just try it, there's no harm in it.

If you want to test without streaming, just set your recording options to use your stream encoder, and just start a recording. Open your stats window to get real-time feedback as far as what's going on with the render and encode. You'll want to watch CPU usage, in-game framerate, and most importantly, lost frames due to encoding lag.

 

[Ranimen]

Just try it, there's no harm in it.

If you want to test without streaming, just set your recording options to use your stream encoder, and just start a recording. Open your stats window to get real-time feedback as far as what's going on with the render and encode. You'll want to watch CPU usage, in-game framerate, and most importantly, lost frames due to encoding lag.

Thanks for the fast reply. Very good tip. I never thought of it. I will try this out but so far I have task manager on every time I stream and the CPU usage rarely goes beyond 80%. My in game frame rates would varry from 130-144 fps while streaming in contrast with a constant 144fps when not streaming. Which is not a big loss but the stuttering and even a little bit of screen tearing bug me so hard when playing fast paced stuff.

I also forgot to mention, I already capped my fps with RivaTuner.

 

[Ranimen]

Hello? Anyone else?

 

[tj warner]

probably wont matter much but your log says your cpu is at 3.7ghz not 4.7ghz. and your cpu is more than capable at streaming at medium preset.

 

[carlmmii]

The first line of the OBS log just refers to the cpu ID, which is just going to say the base speed of the cpu. The 2nd line shows the actual current clock speed. This will change afterward depending on how he has the overclock set up (specifically if turbo is still enabled -- it won't boost up until there's an actual load that needs it).

 

[Ranimen]

*Update*
I just started playing GTA V yesterday since there is a sale on steam. The game just crash randomly every 5-10 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes if I'm lucky. I wasn't even streaming and it's not like there was any crazy stuff going on or anything, just randomly when driving, walking around, cut into cutscenes, etc. Everything perform fine, temps are fine, fps always 100+. Don't know if this have anything to do with my system given all the stuff I ran into concerning it performing not as expected for a pretty beefy one.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

When you run your game without an fps limit (or one that is way higher than 60fps), you increase GPU and CPU load from the game.
Without an fps limit, there will be always a performance hit as soon as OBS is running (and an additional hit, when it is streaming/recording), that's absolutely normal.
If (for example) you play the game with a capped framerate of 60, the CPU and GPU load will not run as high, as they can (before one of those components will bottleneck the other one) and therefore you might not even feel any difference between just playing the game and playing + streaming the game.

Just out of curiosity, because you have a 2k 144Hz monitor: Do you plan on updating to 2x RTX2080 or at least one 2080TI?
Besides games like Minecraft, CS:GO and these sort of stuff, almost no serious triple A game title will run with high (and most importantly "constant") frame rates on the GTX1070 in 2k.

I use a GTX1070 as well on a 2k Monitor and depending on the game type, I see theses results.
GPU demanding game like Monsterhunter World, ARK, Destiny 2, The Division = GPU bottleneck way before getting stable 100fps+
Not very GPU demanding games will eventually be CPU bottlenecked on my system, as the Ryzen 1700x@3.8GHz with CL14-16-16-30 DDR2933 Dual Rank with optimized subtimings will slightly bottleneck my GPU in some games/situations.
As I'm playing at 60Hz with capped fps, it's not a problem, but if I would consider swapping over to the 144Hz (or higher) camp (while keeping the nice DPI of 1440p resolution), I would need a new CPU and at least a 1080TI.

 

[Ranimen]

When you run your game without an fps limit (or one that is way higher than 60fps), you increase GPU and CPU load from the game.
Without an fps limit, there will be always a performance hit as soon as OBS is running (and an additional hit, when it is streaming/recording), that's absolutely normal.
If (for example) you play the game with a capped framerate of 60, the CPU and GPU load will not run as high, as they can (before one of those components will bottleneck the other one) and therefore you might not even feel any difference between just playing the game and playing + streaming the game.

Just out of curiosity, because you have a 2k 144Hz monitor: Do you plan on updating to 2x RTX2080 or at least one 2080TI?
Besides games like Minecraft, CS:GO and these sort of stuff, almost no serious triple A game title will run with high (and most importantly "constant") frame rates on the GTX1070 in 2k.

I use a GTX1070 as well on a 2k Monitor and depending on the game type, I see theses results.
GPU demanding game like Monsterhunter World, ARK, Destiny 2, The Division = GPU bottleneck way before getting stable 100fps+
Not very GPU demanding games will eventually be CPU bottlenecked on my system, as the Ryzen 1700x@3.8GHz with CL14-16-16-30 DDR2933 Dual Rank with optimized subtimings will slightly bottleneck my GPU in some games/situations.
As I'm playing at 60Hz with capped fps, it's not a problem, but if I would consider swapping over to the 144Hz (or higher) camp (while keeping the nice DPI of 1440p resolution), I would need a new CPU and at least a 1080TI.

Yeah I get what you are saying but I play my games at 1080p when I stream and my graphics settings are turned way down low. Some games like Rainbow six doesn't even use a third of my Vram when I do that. So from what I understand is, a fully capable cpu and a gpu with a lot of head room some how can't keep the performance nor the stream running smooth. I mean I would expect it to be able to do at least one of those thing. I honestly would sacrifice some performance if my stream isn't nasty looking.

I honestly am considering getting the 2080ti but people grab them as soon as they are restocked. Last time I checked they were in stock on Amazon for less than 10 minutes.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

VRAM usage says nothing about the GPU load. Maybe monitor your GPU load while gaming+streaming with GPU-Z (as the Windows Taskmanager GPU monitoring shows bullshit).
If the GPU load is hitting over 95%, it might become the bottleneck.