CPU spike to 99% sometimes 100% when streaming

[brandonfar4one]

I have been trying to stream fortnite for the past couple months and everytime I stream I start stuttering and freezing up especially when in gun fights. My friend who has an i5 4590 and has the exact same gpu I have is able to stream fortnite without any stuttering totally smooth, no drops below 60 whatsoever. I thought it could be my drivers so I downloaded updated ones and not only did it not help it made it worse

My Specs:
CPU: i5-7600k
GPU: DUAL Asus gtx 1060 6gb
8gb ram
MOBO: GIGABYTE Z270X-ULTRA GAMING
Storage if that matters...
samsung 850 evo 250gb
BLACK WD 1tb

 

[k19_window_maker]

on google chrome ?

 

[brandonfar4one]

sorry I use obs to stream to twitch

 

[heshclub7]

Did you fully uninstall your GPU driver and then install the updated one? I had a similar problem and that solved it.

 

[Karadjgne]

You have a quad core cpu. Expect high amounts of usage when streaming and gaming. Fortnite is IPC dependent not core dependent, but it'll still suck down the juice.

To game and stream you really need an i7, Ryzen 1600 or better.

Streaming is thread dependent, more threads the better. With your 4c/4t cpu, you are going to throttle like crazy.

High speed is nice, high threads is far better.

 

[brandonfar4one]

You have a quad core cpu. Expect high amounts of usage when streaming and gaming. Fortnite is IPC dependent not core dependent, but it'll still suck down the juice.

To game and stream you really need an i7, Ryzen 1600 or better.

Streaming is thread dependent, more threads the better. With your 4c/4t cpu, you are going to throttle like crazy.

High speed is nice, high threads is far better.

I know but i just dont understand how my friend has an i5 4590 and can stream fort at a stable 60 fps and i cant plus i didnt buy my parts my parents did and im not trying squeeze all their money out just because i didnt do extensive research

 

[brandonfar4one]

also before i thought of getting that cpu i thought it only mattered about the single core performance which is what my friend told me and i talked to him about what he said that it only mattered about single core performance a couple days ago and he said single core is more for gaming performance which makes me mad since now theres no going back at this point unless i can somehow get the money to buy another one which is highly not likely since im not about to buy another cpu

 

[Karadjgne]

You need to read some more. Back in the day, several years ago, yes, single core performance was important for gaming. But thats back when dual core cpus were popular and quad core i5's were gaming kings. Nobody opted for the i7 since games only used 1-2 threads at best. Today, that's ancient history. Games like gta:V, Witcher 3, BF1, WoW, pubg, fortnite, overwatch etc are minimum 4 thread games, and can and do use upto 8. That older i5 barely meets minimum cpu requirements. 4 threads.

It's possible your friend is getting 60fps. It's also probable that your settings are not identical to his. If he is running medium settings and you are running high, his cpu isn't working near as hard. He could also have different isp, different speeds, different a lot of stuff, all making less work on the cpu. So it has more resources to stream. Is he even using the same program to stream? At 720p and you are pushing 1080p? Are your default global nvidia graphics set for quality, and his are set for performance?

Just because he gets 60, doesn't mean you will get 60 or better with a stronger cpu, just means he's had more time to tweak performance settings than you, to get that 60fps.

 

[brandonfar4one]

You need to read some more. Back in the day, several years ago, yes, single core performance was important for gaming. But thats back when dual core cpus were popular and quad core i5's were gaming kings. Nobody opted for the i7 since games only used 1-2 threads at best. Today, that's ancient history. Games like gta:V, Witcher 3, BF1, WoW, pubg, fortnite, overwatch etc are minimum 4 thread games, and can and do use upto 8. That older i5 barely meets minimum cpu requirements. 4 threads.

It's possible your friend is getting 60fps. It's also probable that your settings are not identical to his. If he is running medium settings and you are running high, his cpu isn't working near as hard. He could also have different isp, different speeds, different a lot of stuff, all making less work on the cpu. So it has more resources to stream. Is he even using the same program to stream? At 720p and you are pushing 1080p? Are your default global nvidia graphics set for quality, and his are set for performance?

Just because he gets 60, doesn't mean you will get 60 or better with a stronger cpu, just means he's had more time to tweak performance settings than you, to get that 60fps.

Answer to your first thing you said: My friend actually runs the game at the highest settings and I run it at the lowest it could possibly get at

Answer to the second thing you said: We live not even 4 minutes away from each other and both have the same isp SPECTRUM and the same speeds 30+ down 6+up

Answer to the 3 thing you said: We both use obs to stream

Answer to the 4 thing you said: I do stream at a base and output resolution of 1080p but my friend also streams at that to. ive tried going down to 720p but it still stutters like crazy.

Answer to the 5 thing you said: I dont know what that is so ill do some research on it

 

[sizzling]

Is your friend running 16gb RAM?

 

[brandonfar4one]

Is your friend running 16gb RAM?

yes he does have 16gb of ram clocked at 2133mhz

 

[sizzling]

Is your friend running 16gb RAM?

yes he does have 16gb of ram clocked at 2133mhz

I expect this is your problem, only 8gb. I expect you have high HDD/SSD usage too. Your cpu is probably shunting a lot of data between RAM and HDD/SSD which is putting extra load on your cpu.

 

[brandonfar4one]

My old specs:

radeon r9 270x
FX-6300
16gb of ram clocked at 1600

i dont know if it really matters if i tell you this but checking how much cores and threads it has i dont know if it is better at doing things than streaming because it has 6 cores and threads but a lower clock speed

 

[brandonfar4one]

Is your friend running 16gb RAM?

yes he does have 16gb of ram clocked at 2133mhz

I expect this is your problem, only 8gb. I expect you have high HDD/SSD usage too. Your cpu is probably shunting a lot of data between RAM and HDD/SSD which is putting extra load on your cpu.

i wanst paying attention to how much usage my drives were using so im going to in a couple minutes and see if it is being used a lot

 

[Karadjgne]

Change your settings, see what happens.

The cpu decodes game info at the same rate, whatever your cpu speed is. Graphics settings have nothing to do with that. With settings on low, you give your gpu a break, it doesn't work all that hard, so it has room to demand more from the cpu. Normally this would result in higher fps. However many times it doesn't. With high cpu usage already, if the gpu is capable of 200fps, it's going to demand 200 frames from the cpu, which is so taxed that it'll only give 160 frames. Result is stuttering as the gpu is basically tripping over its feet. By jacking the graphics up, you slow down the gpu demand, cpu catches its breath, things become more insync, less stuttering.

Just don't set graphics unilaterally. There are cpu bound settings which demand more cpu usage, such as viewing distance, AA, grass details etc. Keep those manually on lower settings, but anything graphical set high.

 

[Karadjgne]

Probably running into pagefile issues, windows using hdd as virtual ram. Yeah that'd put a dent in things.

Good catch.

 

[brandonfar4one]

Im seeing bout 75% of memory being used but disk usage seems to be at 3% usage most of the time. Also my cpu would sometime go to the 75% range and then spike up but now it just stays above 95%

 

[sizzling]

Total cpu usage doesn’t tell you much, are any cores hitting 100%?

 

[brandonfar4one]

Total cpu usage doesn’t tell you much, are any cores hitting 100%?

how do i check that

 

[brandonfar4one]

also could it be the reason my friend can stream without lag in fort is because the amount of ram he has is taking some of the stress off of his cpu? or am i wrong XD

 

[sizzling]

A program like MSIAfterburner is good for this.

 

[sizzling]

Could be RAM related. When you tested above were you streaming at the same time? If no go and do the rest again while streaming.

 

[brandonfar4one]

Could be RAM related. When you tested above were you streaming at the same time? If no go and do the rest again while streaming.

yes i was streaming

 

[brandonfar4one]

how do i setup afterburner to show all my individual cores usage?

 

[brandonfar4one]

ok ive changed my obs settings from 3000 bitrate to 2000 and ive changed output resolution to 720p and im still getting stuttering issues