Any way to keep OBS from tanking Monster Hunter World frame rate?

[Walrus Beard]

Honestly this is absurd! I have a 1080 Ti, a core i5 4690k (old but not out yet), and 16 GB of RAM.

Now I've heard Monster Hunter World is CPU heavy. Okay cool. Most of the time I get close to 60 FPS running the game maxed in 2k resolution, but as soon as I fire up OBS my FPS goes down to around 30. When OBS idles it uses around 3% of the CPU. So what, that 3% is enough to tank the entire game??? This happens even if I'm not streaming or recording. Why does OBS's mere existence cause the game to have fits? Does anyone know how to fix this?

[arthelys]

Streaming can take a toll on some games, I'd suggest trying to lower the resolution to like 1080p see if that helps, since I'm assuming it has to render a 2k stream on top of the game being rendered. Might also just be something with OBS settings

[arthelys]

Having just tested it myself, I'd say it's most likely an issue with your system, drivers maybe?
I've got a GTX 970 with a Ryzen 2600x and 16gb of ram too so it's not like it's a beefy machine.
What version of OBS you using?

[Lumen]

Sure, buy a better cpu or a capture card.

[Vandals[UK]]

Originally posted by venom:

Having just tested it myself, I'd say it's most likely an issue with your system, drivers maybe?
I've got a GTX 970 with a Ryzen 2600x and 16gb of ram too so it's not like it's a beefy machine.
What version of OBS you using?

It is a beefy machine compared to i5 4690k

i5 4690k is 4 core 4 thread 6yr old 22nm technology. Your one is 6 core 12 thread 1yr old 12nm technology.

[Walrus Beard]

I did an experiment. When I am simply running OBS, it tells me in the bottom right that it is only using around 3% of CPU, but when I bring up task manager, it says OBS is using 15-20% of the CPU. Since Monster Hunter World already sucks up 70-80% of the CPU, OBS and MHW are constantly fighting for resources.

I may have to look into a capture card. A capture card means I don't have to run OBS on my streaming PC at all right? And Venom I'm on the latest version of OBS.

[Lumen]

In short a capture reduces the cpu/gpu load as the video encoding is done on the card instead of your cpu/gpu (setting based) however a extrenal capture device will completly get rid of that.
However you won't be able to use obs on standalone external capture devices.

If you haven't tried yet set the encoder in obs to NVENC usually runs better on most pc configurations. And for the CPU/GPU load monitoring from windows, it ain't that exact and really take it with a grain of salt.

[Stronk]

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

Honestly this is absurd! I have a 1080 Ti, a core i5 4690k (old but not out yet), and 16 GB of RAM.

Now I've heard Monster Hunter World is CPU heavy. Okay cool. Most of the time I get close to 60 FPS running the game maxed in 2k resolution, but as soon as I fire up OBS my FPS goes down to around 30. When OBS idles it uses around 3% of the CPU. So what, that 3% is enough to tank the entire game??? This happens even if I'm not streaming or recording. Why does OBS's mere existence cause the game to have fits? Does anyone know how to fix this?

That CPU is not powerful enough to stream/record using OBS on this game. It's borderline for MHW without any extra CPU load from OBS, you're for sure bottlenecking the crap out of that 1080ti on this game.

Honestly, I recommend using Nvidia shadowplay instead, it uses GPU resources, and is way more user friendly than OBS is. You'll get desirable results on your recordings with minimal configuration. You got more GPU resources to spare than CPU resources, so use software that uses resources you got to spare.

[Abi Normal]

OP, what are your encoder settings?

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Abi Normal:

OP, what are your encoder settings?

What specific settings are you wanting to know about?

[Abi Normal]

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

Originally posted by Abi Normal:

OP, what are your encoder settings?

What specific settings are you wanting to know about?

nvenc? new nvenc? x264 very fast/fast/med? Anything since we only have your hardware specs.

[Walrus Beard]

So I figured out what's going on. Monster Hunter world takes up most of my CPU resources just running on its own.

OBS takes a surprising amount of CPU resources just to render what it is seeing at 720P 60fps.

Basically Monster Hunter World takes almost all of the CPU resources, and OBS struggles to take what is left. The two begin fighting each other.

I found out that if I lower the FPS in OBS to 30 FPS, Monster Hunter world runs almost as well with OBS running as it does without it running.

I knew my CPU was getting old and that it is potentially a limiting factor going forward, but I felt it would still be fine for 2K gaming at least for a little while.

Honestly I think most of the blame is on Monster Hunter World here. It's known to be an unoptimized title and very CPU vs GPU heavy.

I don't have this problem with any other game. Well, except Nier Automata, but the game runs fine when OBS is running. It's just the streams and recordings themselves that end up looking crappy.

[Seamus]

You could mitigate the issue with a non-cpu based encoder. Which is why Abi Normal is asking what they're asking.

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Abi Normal:

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

What specific settings are you wanting to know about?

nvenc? new nvenc? x264 very fast/fast/med? Anything since we only have your hardware specs.

I'm using the NVENC New. My understanding is the other two encoders are more CPU heavy, so it makes sense for the card to have aw much of the burden as possible I think.

Someone suggested the quick sync encoder though. How does that free up both CPU and GPU? One of them has to do the encoding right?

[Walrus Beard]

Originally posted by Stronk:

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

Honestly this is absurd! I have a 1080 Ti, a core i5 4690k (old but not out yet), and 16 GB of RAM.

Now I've heard Monster Hunter World is CPU heavy. Okay cool. Most of the time I get close to 60 FPS running the game maxed in 2k resolution, but as soon as I fire up OBS my FPS goes down to around 30. When OBS idles it uses around 3% of the CPU. So what, that 3% is enough to tank the entire game??? This happens even if I'm not streaming or recording. Why does OBS's mere existence cause the game to have fits? Does anyone know how to fix this?

That CPU is not powerful enough to stream/record using OBS on this game. It's borderline for MHW without any extra CPU load from OBS, you're for sure bottlenecking the crap out of that 1080ti on this game.

Honestly, I recommend using Nvidia shadowplay instead, it uses GPU resources, and is way more user friendly than OBS is. You'll get desirable results on your recordings with minimal configuration. You got more GPU resources to spare than CPU resources, so use software that uses resources you got to spare.

Shadowplay would be great if I could set up all of my alerts on it. I stream on Twitch mainly. I rarely record.

[Seamus]

Originally posted by Snarfblatt:

Originally posted by Abi Normal:

nvenc? new nvenc? x264 very fast/fast/med? Anything since we only have your hardware specs.

I'm using the NVENC New. My understanding is the other two encoders are more CPU heavy, so it makes sense for the card to have aw much of the burden as possible I think.

Someone suggested the quick sync encoder though. How does that free up both CPU and GPU? One of them has to do the encoding right?

Quicksync uses the igpu built into the cpu, which would normally just be sitting there with its thumb up its ass.

Not a bad idea to try, honestly.