Question / Help Trouble working out settings.

[Thret]

Hello all. I'm trying to get into streaming and I have heard nothing but good things about OBS from my friends. I downloaded OBS about a week or two ago and I've been messing with the settings and figuring out how things work.

My problem is this: When I'm streaming (Primarily Dota 2), my framerate ingame drops to unplayable levels unless I turn down all of my graphics options to the lowest they will go and even then the best fps I can get is a bout 11-13 or so. My laptop will be 2 years old in December but I still feel that it has the power to be able to stream; I could be wrong however.

I'm hoping I can get some help. I don't know if I'm delusional thinking that my computer is capable of streaming or maybe I have a setting wrong that I'm unaware of. Regardless, I can't figure it out. Thank you in advance to everyone that replies!

Edit: I know it's lower in the log but I usually have my video scaled down to 1280x720. I was testing to see if a smaller compression would help but this one did not.

 

[FerretBomb]

Streaming is extremely demanding on a system; in conjunction with gaming, it's one of the most system-intensive tasks which you can attempt.
OBS uses some power of the graphics card to composite the scene, handle scaling and so on. The rest is up to the CPU... encoding video in real-time is a VERY CPU-intensive task. It appears your i5 just doesn't have the 'oomph' to stream at the resolution you're asking it to, while also running the game. Gaming alone? It's got enough perk to work. But not with the ten-ton-anvil of video encoding added into the mix.

I tend to describe 'gaming laptops' as 'the tallest midget'. They tend to suck at both halves of the description.

I'd recommend downscaling further, to a 540 or 480p stream, and try again. You may also want to try dropping to 25fps, or bumping to a faster encoding preset.

 

[Thret]

Fair enough. I haven't had a chance to try the settings but would overclocking my CPU improve the performance? I'm not super tech savvy and about the best I've done is defrag the hard drive.

 

[FerretBomb]

It would, but that's distinctly less than feasible on a laptop. They have a limited thermal envelope, and you can't really put on an upgraded aftermarket cooler to compensate.

It's also not something to do, unless you know what you're doing... there are a lot of 'guides' out there that boil down to 'throw it all at the wall and see what sticks', from self-purported "experts" who really don't know what they're doing. Which sometimes works, with today's processors (and their built-in thermal shutdown safeties), but more often than not just ends up with a less reliable, crashier, and shorter-lived system for minimal gains.

 

[Thret]

Alright. Well, thanks Ferret! I guess I'll have to wait several years or so.