Great PC but Can't Record Smoothly

[sirud]

Hello all, this is my first ever post on the website. I'm here very often to fix other issues I've had, but can't find anything to solve this one.

Specs:
CPU: Intell i7-6700k 4.00GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
MOBO: ASUS H170
RAM: 16 GB (Forget exactly what it is)
Water Cooled

Anyway, I make videos on YouTube and occasionally stream. For a while, I had no issues with recording and streaming in 1080p 60FPS, until recently when I upgraded my 2 monitor setup to a three monitor setup. From what I remember, that's roughly when the problems started happening. I use OBS to do both, stream and record, but when I play a game like fortnite, OBS is only picking up around 20 FPS even when Fortnite itself is running at 120+. My CPU is getting maxed out at 95%+ when I play, while my friend who has a 1080 is only using 30% on max settings. I know the 1080 is better but it seems bizarre that there is that much of a difference.

In my task manager, Fortnite is taking up the most CPU usage with about 30% and the next highest is 8%. There is no way it is showing my everything because it adds up to be no where near 100%. To get OBS say that it is recording in 60FPS, I have to turn down the CPU usage to veryfast and turn my settings down in game and cap the frames at 60 FPS. The video still comes out a bit choppy.

I've changed a ton of settings in OBS and essentially tried it all. Bitrate, priorities, x264 vs NVENC 264, etc.. I haven't tried recording in 720p but I really don't want to knowing that I have a pretty solid PC.

I'm not sure if my motherboard is bottlenecking the rest of my pc. I know its not the best MOBO in the game (I don't even know if a mobo can bottleneck a build). I've considered overclocking, but not sure if that will fix anything.

Here are some images of my current settings that I'm using now.
Streaming: https://gyazo.com/8e1dc164afe931a5e26a4fb946ba98da
Recording: https://gyazo.com/55b76813b4e96de041bfde0eb310c8a5
Video: https://gyazo.com/5c4e764fc8c73524479422e1388c7135
Advanced: https://gyazo.com/5e8fa05078c6d2e1f8c693b265ef8544

I hope there is a simple solution, if not, I am considering buying a whole new PC and just scrap this thing... Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated! If I didn't include information that is needed please let me know, this is my first post so I probably didn't do it quite right.

Thanks so much,
Alec.

 

[sirud]

Wait, my OBS says its taking up about 40% of my CPU, that must be where the total of 100% is coming from.

 

[sirud]

Sorry for all these extra edits, but I just found out that even with my CPU processing set to veryhigh, which is the second lowest setting, it is taking up to 60% of my CPU

 

[asoroka]

Do your problems go away if you go back to 2 monitor setup?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

i7 CPUs are not powerful enough to perform all of the encoding on the CPU unless the settings are turned down, or you have a low frame rate that you're trying to encode. There's plenty of YouTube reviews about this. You can either use the encoding provided by your GPU, find some settings that are easy enough that your CPU has enough power to both run your game and encode your frames, or use a dedicated recording device.

As for the problems starting when you added the 3rd screen to your PC; is your encoding software trying to encode the extra frame information from the 3rd screen?

 

[sirud]

Do your problems go away if you go back to 2 monitor setup?

i7 CPUs are not powerful enough to perform all of the encoding on the CPU unless the settings are turned down, or you have a low frame rate that you're trying to encode. There's plenty of YouTube reviews about this. You can either use the encoding provided by your GPU, find some settings that are easy enough that your CPU has enough power to both run your game and encode your frames, or use a dedicated recording device.

As for the problems starting when you added the 3rd screen to your PC; is your encoding software trying to encode the extra frame information from the 3rd screen?

Havent tried going back to 2 screens yet, I'll try that tomorrow. And I thought that i7's were really good. Do you have a recommendation of what I could upgrade to?

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

i7 CPUs are good, but have hard limits. Intel's Hyper-threading, which is where 4 of the 8 threads in your i7 CPU are coming from, are only about 30 - 40% efficient, so it's easier to tap out your i7 than you might realize.

The last CPU encoding video I watched actually used a newer 6 core, 12 thread i7, and it was still struggling to do more than light CPU encoding.

When it comes to recording gameplay footage, CPU encoding can produce the cleanest, best results, but what usually ends up happening is, the CPU either uses too much power to encode the results, causing game play to suffer, or conversely, the encoding suffers while game play seems relatively non-impacted because the game is not leaving enough CPU resources to encode all of the necessary frames. Neither option is desirable.

The best consumer CPUs currently available for CPU encoding are the Ryzen 7 series. You have to sacrifice the overall maximum frame rate achievable with the Intel i7 CPUs if you go with a Ryzen 7 CPU, but frame rates are usually more than adequate (except in high FPS gaming,) and it fares far better encoding frames on the CPU.

Your other alternative if you don't want to settle for NVIDIA Shadowplay or AMD ReLive, and can't decide on low enough settings that your CPU can handle with the games you're playing is a dedicated encoder device. These can be internal or external to a PC, but usually use a PC to store the recording on. Here's an article detailing many of the available capture devices currently available. There are many more than listed, so don't limit yourself to what's in the article.

Capture devices go up in price significantly when you move from 30 FPS capture to 60 FPS.

 

[superserbtv]

Hello all, this is my first ever post on the website. I'm here very often to fix other issues I've had, but can't find anything to solve this one.

Specs:
CPU: Intell i7-6700k 4.00GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
MOBO: ASUS H170
RAM: 16 GB (Forget exactly what it is)
Water Cooled

Anyway, I make videos on YouTube and occasionally stream. For a while, I had no issues with recording and streaming in 1080p 60FPS, until recently when I upgraded my 2 monitor setup to a three monitor setup. From what I remember, that's roughly when the problems started happening. I use OBS to do both, stream and record, but when I play a game like fortnite, OBS is only picking up around 20 FPS even when Fortnite itself is running at 120+. My CPU is getting maxed out at 95%+ when I play, while my friend who has a 1080 is only using 30% on max settings. I know the 1080 is better but it seems bizarre that there is that much of a difference.

In my task manager, Fortnite is taking up the most CPU usage with about 30% and the next highest is 8%. There is no way it is showing my everything because it adds up to be no where near 100%. To get OBS say that it is recording in 60FPS, I have to turn down the CPU usage to veryfast and turn my settings down in game and cap the frames at 60 FPS. The video still comes out a bit choppy.

I've changed a ton of settings in OBS and essentially tried it all. Bitrate, priorities, x264 vs NVENC 264, etc.. I haven't tried recording in 720p but I really don't want to knowing that I have a pretty solid PC.

I'm not sure if my motherboard is bottlenecking the rest of my pc. I know its not the best MOBO in the game (I don't even know if a mobo can bottleneck a build). I've considered overclocking, but not sure if that will fix anything.

Here are some images of my current settings that I'm using now.
Streaming: https://gyazo.com/8e1dc164afe931a5e26a4fb946ba98da
Recording: https://gyazo.com/55b76813b4e96de041bfde0eb310c8a5
Video: https://gyazo.com/5c4e764fc8c73524479422e1388c7135
Advanced: https://gyazo.com/5e8fa05078c6d2e1f8c693b265ef8544

I hope there is a simple solution, if not, I am considering buying a whole new PC and just scrap this thing... Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated! If I didn't include information that is needed please let me know, this is my first post so I probably didn't do it quite right.

Thanks so much,
Alec.

So i had this issue when i plugged my second monitor in which was a 60hz monitor and my main being 240hz. What my GPU did was run my games and stream at my lowest Hz monitor settings and i wasnt able to change that in Nvidia control panel since they removed that option so what i did is got another 240hz monitor and my issue went away. if you're third monitor was the lowest Hz thats proably why. now im able to stream 1080p60 at 6000 bitrate and have 0 issues compared to the unholy lag and stutters i experienced when adding the second 60hz monitor.

my specs:

CPU - I7 6700 @ 3.4 GHz,
Mobo - Asus Prime B250m a
GPU - EVGA GTX 1080 TI
RAM - Corsair Vengence 2400MHz DDR4 (2x8GB)
SSD - Samsung 860 Evo 250GB
HDD - 2TB 7200RPM 6Gb/s Hardrive

 

[TerryLaze]

My CPU is getting maxed out at 95%+ when I play, while my friend who has a 1080 is only using 30% on max settings. I know the 1080 is better but it seems bizarre that there is that much of a difference.

Fortnite only uses a very small amount of CPU for 60FPS but if you have it on unlimited it uses unproportionaly more CPU.
Also fortnite is very sensitive to other software running on the same system,it's not really made for multitasking,this is a problem with the game not your system.
Here, 32% usage for 60FPS but almost 70% usage for 73FPS