High CPU usage while streaming fortnite with a i7 8700k OC to 4.7

[AyeeTrain]

I have insanely high cpu usage close to 100% and its just with discord, streamlabs obs and fortnite open. i drop from 160+ fps when not streaming to 50-90 fps. I have a gtx 1080, 16gb ddr4 2400 and the i7 8700k, is there a reason for my performance being this bad?

[XR6]

What display settings do you have set on fortnite? 

[Fasauceome]

What's your bitrate and other stream settings? Streaming is very CPU intensive so if you're pushing a really high quality stream it'll eat up CPU resources.

[AyeeTrain]

bitrate is 4500( was on 6000 and it worked fine before). and cpu usage preset is veryfast

 

[AyeeTrain]

4 minutes ago, 1kv said:

What display settings do you have set on fortnite? 

i use all low settings except view distance and i also play stretched at 1280x1080

[Cereal5]

Just now, AyeeTrain said:

bitrate is 4500( was on 6000 and it worked fine before). and cpu usage preset is veryfast

 

Resolution and FPS are also factors, as well as in game settings. That said, 4500 is still relatively high. Try bumping it down to 720p60 at like 3500 or 720p30 at ~2700.

 

Do you have any other background apps open? What streaming software do you use?

[Alex Atkin UK]

What do you mean by "it worked fine before", exactly the same hardware and settings?  Has Fortnite or the GPU drivers been updated that may have increased their CPU usage?

[AyeeTrain]

3 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

What do you mean by "it worked fine before", exactly the same hardware and settings?  Has Fortnite or the GPU drivers been updated that may have increased their CPU usage?

i didn't have such high drops in frames. i haven't changed any settings. 

 

[AyeeTrain]

4 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

Resolution and FPS are also factors, as well as in game settings. That said, 4500 is still relatively high. Try bumping it down to 720p60 at like 3500 or 720p30 at ~2700.

 

Do you have any other background apps open? What streaming software do you use?

I'll give that a shot and also just discord, I use Streamlabs obs and also did on my previous rig which was a gtx 970 paired with an i7 7700k

[cj09beira]

i would increase the in game resulution if you are playing with a lower than waht your monitor has, more fps translates to higher cpu load

[AyeeTrain]

1 minute ago, cj09beira said:

i would increase the in game resulution if you are playing with a lower than waht your monitor has, more fps translates to higher cpu load

i only play stretched because it looks better to me especially since i used to play csgo. But if it would help i'll suffer at 1920x1080

 

[Cereal5]

52 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

i would increase the in game resulution if you are playing with a lower than waht your monitor has, more fps translates to higher cpu load

This doesn’t really make sense to me... more load on the CPU from the game does not mean better encoding lol

[cj09beira]

14 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

This doesn’t really make sense to me... more load on the CPU from the game does not mean better encoding lol

did you even read what i said?

he was playing at a lower resolution meaning that he was probably cpu bound, thus putting more load on the cpu, by moving to 1080p he will move the load back to the gpu and thus reduce the load on the cpu, which in turn means more cpu power left for the encoding

[Cereal5]

18 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

did you even read what i said?

he was playing at a lower resolution meaning that he was probably cpu bound, thus putting more load on the cpu, by moving to 1080p he will move the load back to the gpu and thus reduce the load on the cpu, which in turn means more cpu power left for the encoding

Yeah I did read what you said. Raising resolution does put more load on the GPU, but the load on the CPU does not become “lessened” in any way. The CPU still has to send each frame’s info to the GPU, it doesn’t change just cause the GPU is loaded more. And just because it’s “CPU bound” doesn’t mean the load on the CPU is high, it just means that the CPU is the determining factor when deciding fame rates. The CPU will not jump to 100% usage just because the GPU is not under load. So don’t come yelling at me just cause you don’t get that.

 

side note - fortnite at 1080p low-medium (and likely high also) will still be “CPU bound”, especially on a 1080. It’s like saying in CSGO, 500 FPS on an 8700K vs 300 on a 2700X, yeah it’s CPU bound, but the game is not a CPU intensive game so it doesn’t matter

[AyeeTrain]

49 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

did you even read what i said?

he was playing at a lower resolution meaning that he was probably cpu bound, thus putting more load on the cpu, by moving to 1080p he will move the load back to the gpu and thus reduce the load on the cpu, which in turn means more cpu power left for the encoding

Moving back to native did not fix it btw.

 

[AyeeTrain]

either way i have an 8700k that cant stream while i play because the fps uis too bad

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

49 minutes ago, Cereal5 said:

Yeah I did read what you said. Raising resolution does put more load on the GPU, but the load on the CPU does not become “lessened” in any way. The CPU still has to send each frame’s info to the GPU, it doesn’t change just cause the GPU is loaded more. And just because it’s “CPU bound” doesn’t mean the load on the CPU is high, it just means that the CPU is the determining factor when deciding fame rates. The CPU will not jump to 100% usage just because the GPU is not under load. So don’t come yelling at me just cause you don’t get that.

 

side note - fortnite at 1080p low-medium (and likely high also) will still be “CPU bound”, especially on a 1080. It’s like saying in CSGO, 500 FPS on an 8700K vs 300 on a 2700X, yeah it’s CPU bound, but the game is not a CPU intensive game so it doesn’t matter

If you are running without vsync then the CPU load will increase according to the frame rate as its dumping out frames as quickly as the GPU can handle.  Bottlenecking on the GPU reduces the frame rate (as the CPU will be idly waiting for the GPU to finish between frames) which can in turn reduce the CPU load, as long as you haven't enabled functionality on the graphics that hits the CPU as much as the higher frame rate did.

Personally I NEVER run without vsync and I would imagine doing so is problematic when streaming anyway as the frame rate will not multiply into the fixed streaming frame rate equally.  I'm honestly not sure how people who game and stream competitively typically handle that issue as even using a second PC for the streaming runs into the same limitation.

[Cereal5]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

If you are running without vsync then the CPU load will increase according to the frame rate as its dumping out frames as quickly as the GPU can handle. 

I know. But an 8700K will not ramp up to 100% usage just to pump out frames. Even when completely unlimited by the GPU, at most it might see 30% usage from the game. I would know, I have both an 8700K and Fortnite.

 

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Personally I NEVER run without vsync and I would imagine doing so is problematic when streaming anyway as the frame rate will not multiply into the fixed streaming frame rate equally

V-sync has it's own set of problems, and plenty people do not use it because of that. Most games also have a custom frame rate cap, and I know Fortnite does, and this would be a much better way of limiting frame rates than v-sync (yes, there is a difference).

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm honestly not sure how people who game and stream competitively typically handle that issue as even using a second PC for the streaming runs into the same limitation.

While using a second PC alleviates pretty much every problem, minus the one on the wallet, light games like Fortnite shouldn't be taking up that kind of CPU usage, and streaming at 30 fps and lower bitrates doesn't either, I have experience in both. If I wasn't in the folding month competition right now I would fire it up for a test run to see how the 8700K handles it all. I will say that it has little impact on my CSGO frame rates when streaming 720p30 @ 2800kbps.

 

All in all I think streaming at 4500 kbps is completely unnecessary for any streamer that is not a partner (affiliates don't count), max should be 3000, maybe 3500, and I can tell you why I think that separately if you so choose. OP was probably also streaming at 60 fps, and that plays a factor into it as well. All settings in OBS have to be taken into consideration and they all play a different part in determining how hard the CPU has to work at rendering the game. So just turn the bitrate down is the only real solution.

[AyeeTrain]

15 hours ago, Cereal5 said:

I know. But an 8700K will not ramp up to 100% usage just to pump out frames. Even when completely unlimited by the GPU, at most it might see 30% usage from the game. I would know, I have both an 8700K and Fortnite.

 

V-sync has it's own set of problems, and plenty people do not use it because of that. Most games also have a custom frame rate cap, and I know Fortnite does, and this would be a much better way of limiting frame rates than v-sync (yes, there is a difference).

While using a second PC alleviates pretty much every problem, minus the one on the wallet, light games like Fortnite shouldn't be taking up that kind of CPU usage, and streaming at 30 fps and lower bitrates doesn't either, I have experience in both. If I wasn't in the folding month competition right now I would fire it up for a test run to see how the 8700K handles it all. I will say that it has little impact on my CSGO frame rates when streaming 720p30 @ 2800kbps.

 

All in all I think streaming at 4500 kbps is completely unnecessary for any streamer that is not a partner (affiliates don't count), max should be 3000, maybe 3500, and I can tell you why I think that separately if you so choose. OP was probably also streaming at 60 fps, and that plays a factor into it as well. All settings in OBS have to be taken into consideration and they all play a different part in determining how hard the CPU has to work at rendering the game. So just turn the bitrate down is the only real solution.

Honestly, Thank you. You didn't give me some sarcastic answer and you also tried to actually investigate the situation. I figured out that my pc would start lagging when just opening OBS not only when streaming. Tiime for me to Troubleshoot more

[Mick Naughty]

Have you tried shadow play? 

I’d mess with the obs settings some more. Perhaps watch some YouTube videos on it for single system streaming. 

 

I use a second rig so I can’t really say how my system would react to stream and play. 

[Cereal5]

OBS Studio and Stream Labs OBS do the same for me. I don’t know why (my 8700K is at 5.1 and still does it). That is probably an issue you should bring up on their forums so they can get it fixed