Severe performance impact

L

LilJur

New Member
So I use OBS on a regular basis for both streaming and recording videos for youtube.
In the past I already had issues with OBS and streaming Fortnite to Twitch, which would make the game lag on a regular basis. And last weekend I was running a professional stream where we connected people live through Discord, which occasionally dropped frames as well. But what happened today is beyond my comprehension.

We all know recording/streaming a game will be more tasking than playing it without doing so.
But besides Fortnite, until now all other games ran rather fine. Mostly a 5 fps lower.
Today Watch Dogs: Legion got released and I decided to record it for my youtube channel. The game automatically set the graphics to very high. But I just stopped recording at some point; the game was unplayable, even at the lowest graphics with an FPS going anywhere between 20 (especially when driving) and 30.
At first, I blamed the game developer. Because the game is poorly optimized. But than I started to run some of benchmarks:

Medium settings, Raytracing enabled, no OBS:
Min FPS: 28
Max FPS: 67
Average: 47

Low settings, no Raytracing, no OBS:
Min FPS: 36
Max FPS: 89
Average: 61

Low settings, no Raytracing, with OBS (preview turning OFF)
Min FPS: 21
Max FPS: 69
Average: 38

Low settings, no Raytracing, with OBS (preview turned ON, how I recorded the video):
Min FPS: 16
Max FPS: 59
Average: 33

The difference between running the game with and without OBS were staggering, not just in numbers but also in practice.
I do record my videos in 3840x1080 because this way I have both my camera and gameplay fullscreen, so I can imagine this is tasking for the system. But even without preview enabled, it doesn´t come close to performance without OBS.
Even when I´m not recording and only have OBS open (this is how the benchmarks were done).
Most of the time, OBS only uses 20% of my CPU. And an i9-9700k, 16RAM and RTX2070, I'd assume it should run without too much issue.
What is happening here? What am I doing wrong? Why is OBS having such an impact on my games?

Attached the last log from opening OBS. Hoping someone can help.
I do need to mention; OBS appeared to be running slightly smoother on my laptop, with the same specs. I build this pc myself a month ago.
 

Attachments

Alright, this is without a doubt an issue caused by OBS.

I just tried recording videos via other means.
Gameplay through nvidia shadowplay and my camera through either ManyCam or the native AVerMedia recorder (which is the capture card I use).
I recorded for over 2 hours, on HIGH settings with 40-50 FPS, Raytracing turned on.

I'd rather use OBS to record because I don't have to sync anything afterwards and the filesizes are reasonable.
But it looks like I'll need to drop OBS for my recordings...
 
There's no streaming/recording session in that log.

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...
obsproject.com
 
Volfield said:
There's no streaming/recording session in that log.

Please post a log with your issue! Here's how...

OBS Studio creates a log file each time you run it which contains very useful diagnostic information. Without a log file, it's much harder for any support volunteers to figure out problems and your post may be ignored. To upload a log file, go to the Help menu > Log Files > Upload Last Log...
obsproject.com
Click to expand...
Because it's not recording/streaming that wrecks my FPS.
Simply having OBS running is enough to half my FPS which is very worrying since clearly other recording software doesn't
 
I also experience the same phenomenon. OBS does have a 2-3% impact on CPU/GPU usage and this translates to a 10-15 FPS loss in Legion equating to about 20-25% of the overall possible frame rate with it off.

Edit: Turns out it actually starts to eat 40-50% of my GPU. This would make the FPS drop make sense.
 
Last edited:
Looking at this more, Windows reports 0 GPU usage in Legion when I am playing it with OBS open. If I close OBS, the usage is then attributed back to Legion. There is something I do not understand about the hooking method.
 
I have the same problem. I did a test by changing the graphics to as low as possible and OBS was still dropping frames so its not the game. Its got to be something to do with OBS not having enough resources, but then again even if you try and record Legion through the CPU it lags.
 
I have the same problem.
I also have OBS 26.0.2 installed and just try to mirror the monitor to another one.
As soon as I start the game, the FPS go down.
OBS usually has between 5 and 40 FPS during playback. The default setting is 60.
The phenomenon is possibly caused by the security update 2020-10 from Microsoft on Windows 10.
All I know is that I installed it yesterday and before that everything was working.
The game runs on highest graphic settings in 1440p with about 100-200 FPS.

Tested game: Art of Rally
PC:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
RAM: 32GB
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700XT
SYS: Windows 10 Pro

It gets even worse when I run the game in windowed mode.
In full screen I usually have 40FPS instead of 60.
 
LilJur said:
Because it's not recording/streaming that wrecks my FPS.
Simply having OBS running is enough to half my FPS which is very worrying since clearly other recording software doesn't
Click to expand...
To clarify this a bit more:
Recording works perfectly fine at a constant 30 fps without barely any skipped frames.
I am not having a problem with the recording itself. I am having a problem with the impact OBS has on the framerate of my game.

Just experienced the same with a heavily modded version of Skyrim.
Without OBS, I run a constant 60 fps. With OBS I run 30-35 FPS. Which is more playable than Watchdogs. But still, the fact that any graphical heavy game loses 40-60% of it's FPS when OBS is running (not even recording) is a serious issue, especially since other recorders don't do it.
 
LilJur said:
Does anyone know of Streamlabs OBS has the same impact on performance when running?
Click to expand...
I would assume that it does since it's literally the same thing under the hood. The only difference is that it's running an older version - I think OBS 24.
 
I fiddled with things and installed NDI instead of OBS. Its capturing caused the same issue so this is probably less about OBS and more about capturing in general. Only way to avoid it is perhaps a capture card.
 
this is my experience:


i tested both obs and streamlabs on 2 computers , on both computers just having either application open reduces frames in games , for example i ran the division 2 benchmark with and without obs studio and stream labs open and i got lower fps when the app is running, on my desktop
without tobs running benchamark scored 130 fps and with obs running i got 115, on my laptop without the obs it scored 92 and with obs 88
i noticed obs studio performance impact is lower than streamlabs obs so i think ill stick to obs studio, mind you my desktop is 10900k with a 3070 32gb ram and laptop is a clevo with 9900k / rtx 2080 16gb ram and all of these tests where made just by having obs studio open (not streaming or recording)
 
panamaniacs2011 said:
this is my experience:


i tested both obs and streamlabs on 2 computers , on both computers just having either application open reduces frames in games , for example i ran the division 2 benchmark with and without obs studio and stream labs open and i got lower fps when the app is running, on my desktop
without tobs running benchamark scored 130 fps and with obs running i got 115, on my laptop without the obs it scored 92 and with obs 88
i noticed obs studio performance impact is lower than streamlabs obs so i think ill stick to obs studio, mind you my desktop is 10900k with a 3070 32gb ram and laptop is a clevo with 9900k / rtx 2080 16gb ram and all of these tests where made just by having obs studio open (not streaming or recording)
Click to expand...

I am so glad that I had found this thread. Built a brand new PC (11700K/RTX2060) and have noticed this same issue. Has there been more research into this and a possible fix (not workaround)?
 
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