Choppy gameplay while streaming

[PackYourBaggins]

So I just started streaming again after a while, and I have every thing set up. I just finished Dark Souls 3 on stream, and the entirety of that game was fine, but when I tried to play a couple other games, the gameplay was choppy. So the first game I tried after DS3 was Overwatch. I get into a match, and notice despite me having 160FPS, the gameplay was very unsmooth & delayed. It wasn't even FPS drops. It was just unsmooth at a high FPS. I checked CPU usage while still streaming and playing the game, and the usage was a little over 80%. Sure, that's pretty high, but not enough to cause what I was seeing, and because I wasn't dropping FPS, I can assume CPU usage wasn't the issue. So I gave up on Overwatch, and then tried Dragon Ball FighterZ, which is a pretty easy game to run in comparison to DS3 & OW, but even that game was choppy during gameplay (CPU usage only around 50%). I also tried changing my encoder to no avail. So after both of those games failed, I ended the stream.

 

Now would be a good time to mention my streaming software I use is Streamlabs OBS. Out of curiosity, I started Overwatch again after I ended the stream just to make sure it wasn't my PC, but I left Streamlabs OBS open. I went into the practice range to test, and sure enough, the gameplay was STILL choppy, and since I ended the stream, my CPU usage was only at 40-50% (Temps were fine also). So I tabbed out of Overwatch, closed Streamlabs OBS, then tabbed back into Overwatch, and voila! Butter smooth gameplay. 

 

So clearly there's an issue with Streamlabs OBS here, but it's still puzzling that I streamed all of Dark Souls 3 without issue, but I can't even stream Dragon Ball FighterZ without it being unsmooth. I'll leave my system specs, internet speeds & stream settings below.

 

INTERNET SPEEDS

Download: 400 Mbps

Upload: 20 Mbps

 

STREAMLABS OBS SETTINGS

Bitrate: 3300

Encoder: Software (x264)

Base resolution: 2560x1440

Output resolution: 1600x900

FPS type: Common FPS Values

Common FPS Values: 60

(If more settings are needed, let me know)

 

PC SPECS

CPU: i7 4770K @4.2Ghz

GPU: EVGA SC2 1080Ti

RAM: 32GB Kingston HyperX Beast 2400Mhz

Motherboard: ASUS Maximus VI Formula

Storage: 120GB SSD, 180GB SSD, 240GB SSD (All Corsair), 1TB WD Black HDD

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Try OBS Studio instead of Streamlabs OBS.

[PackYourBaggins]

7 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Try OBS Studio instead of Streamlabs OBS.

Just did a quick test stream and no dice. Same issue with OBS Studio.

[DirtyKeyboard]

8 minutes ago, RelentlessN7 said:

Just did a quick test stream and no dice. Same issue with OBS Studio.

Maybe you should upgrade your CPU, it does look pretty old.

[KarathKasun]

59 minutes ago, RelentlessN7 said:

CPU: i7 4770K @4.2Ghz

Here is your problem.

 

Streamlabs requires CPU power and the 4770k is going to struggle to game and render/encode your video.

 

You should be using the lowest possible encode settings if you are using software encoding.  Changing to a hardware (GPU) encoder should solve this, but your output quality will suffer.

[PackYourBaggins]

9 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Here is your problem.

 

Streamlabs requires CPU power and the 4770k is going to struggle to game and render/encode your video.

 

You should be using the lowest possible encode settings if you are using software encoding.  Changing to a hardware (GPU) encoder should solve this, but your output quality will suffer.

I already tried changing the encoder to my GPU. That also did not work. And if it is a CPU issue, does the usage not factor in? Cause again, even just having OBS running in the background made it choppy, and it uses little CPU while idling.

[KarathKasun]

How much CPU does it use while encoding?

 

Maybe add a CPU usage overlay with Rivatuner Stats/afterburner?

[PackYourBaggins]

Just now, KarathKasun said:

How much CPU does it use while encoding?

 

Maybe add a CPU usage overlay with Rivatuner Stats/afterburner?

By encoding, do you mean while streaming? I just had task manager open while testing it, and Streamlabs OBS was using about 25-30%. Would Afterburner be more accurate than task manager?

[KarathKasun]

1 minute ago, RelentlessN7 said:

By encoding, do you mean while streaming? I just had task manager open while testing it, and Streamlabs OBS was using about 25-30%. Would Afterburner be more accurate than task manager?

Depends on weather you run fullscreen or not.  I do know that software encoding wrecks performance on 4c/8t CPUs.

[PackYourBaggins]

4 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Depends on weather you run fullscreen or not.  I do know that software encoding wrecks performance on 4c/8t CPUs.

I run fullscreen on my games, and I was watching task manager on my 2nd monitor. And changing to hardware encoding did nothing, unless there was something else I needed to change in addition to the encoder change, but it did exactly the same thing. I suppose this ties into the fact that games are still choppy by just having the software open and not streaming.

[KarathKasun]

8 minutes ago, RelentlessN7 said:

I run fullscreen on my games, and I was watching task manager on my 2nd monitor. And changing to hardware encoding did nothing, unless there was something else I needed to change in addition to the encoder change, but it did exactly the same thing. I suppose this ties into the fact that games are still choppy by just having the software open and not streaming.

Are you adding overlays to your video?  If so, using hardware encoding can still result in bad performance.

[PackYourBaggins]

I do have a few actually. Didn't think they'd make that much of a difference though.

[PackYourBaggins]

3 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Are you adding overlays to your video?  If so, using hardware encoding can still result in bad performance.

I do have a few actually. Didn't think they'd make that much of a difference though.

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, RelentlessN7 said:

I do have a few actually. Didn't think they'd make that much of a difference though.

Think of them as running a wholly separate but low demand game on your system.  It has to render those overlays and then overlay them on the encoded video, which takes a non-trivial amount of GPU/CPU performance.

 

Try disabling the overlays and re-testing.

[PackYourBaggins]

1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

Think of them as running a wholly separate but low demand game on your system.  It has to render those overlays and then overlay them on the encoded video, which takes a non-trivial amount of GPU/CPU performance.

 

Try disabling the overlays and re-testing.

Should I try testing on software or hardware? Or both?

[KarathKasun]

Just now, RelentlessN7 said:

Should I try testing on software or hardware? Or both?

First, just disable video overlays and use hardware encoding.  That should, in theory, remove most of the extra load induced by streaming.

[PackYourBaggins]

3 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

First, just disable video overlays and use hardware encoding.  That should, in theory, remove most of the extra load induced by streaming.

So to save myself the trouble of removing my overlays from Streamlabs OBS, I used OBS Studio to test, which has no overlays at all. Still seeing the same issue on both software and hardware encoding.

[KarathKasun]

Hmmm.

 

Have you tried different GPU drivers at this point?  It could be the way that OBS is polling the framebuffer for capture not playing nice with the GPU driver.

 

Also, for the lulz, you could bump up the CPU clock to ~4.5ghz and see if that helps.

[PackYourBaggins]

10 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Hmmm.

 

Have you tried different GPU drivers at this point?  It could be the way that OBS is polling the framebuffer for capture not playing nice with the GPU driver.

 

Also, for the lulz, you could bump up the CPU clock to ~4.5ghz and see if that helps.

I could. I think my drivers are one version behind, so they're not super out of date, but I'll update tomorrow. And I'm all for OC'ing more, though I'm a bit of an amateur overclocker. Also having to run numerous tests to make sure it's stable can be a pain as well.

[PackYourBaggins]

16 hours ago, KarathKasun said:

Hmmm.

 

Have you tried different GPU drivers at this point?  It could be the way that OBS is polling the framebuffer for capture not playing nice with the GPU driver.

 

Also, for the lulz, you could bump up the CPU clock to ~4.5ghz and see if that helps.

So I updated my drivers, but as expected, it didn't help. So it would seem my only option is to upgrade, which I was already planning to build a new PC anyway, but I'm not totally settled on a CPU yet. Could an i7 8700K be enough to stream and game at the same time?

[KarathKasun]

If streaming is the primary use case, Ryzen 2700X may edge out the i7 8700k.  More cores = better streaming.

[PackYourBaggins]

5 hours ago, KarathKasun said:

If streaming is the primary use case, Ryzen 2700X may edge out the i7 8700k.  More cores = better streaming.

Well since asking that question, I'm considering going all out with an i9 most likely. I won't be weak for long.

[xAcid9]

Did you try unplugging your 2nd monitor?
Is it still the same if you disable OBS preview?

[PackYourBaggins]

17 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

Did you try unplugging your 2nd monitor?
Is it still the same if you disable OBS preview?

Oh my god... disabling the OBS preview seems to have completely alleviated my issue. At least in Overwatch it has, cause it's the only game I tested so far. I was easily able to disable the preview in OBS studio, but I can't seem to find the option to disable the preview for Streamlabs OBS?

[KarathKasun]

Not done a whole lot with streaming for awhile and I totally forgot about the preview window.