Basically what the title says. I've been trying to stream my races lately (not that they're anything spectacular, except maybe spectacular fails sometimes ) and while my somewhat aging PC (i5 2500k at 4.3 GHz, GTX970, 16 GB) manages to run R3E perfectly fine when I play normally, while streaming, I sometimes come fairly close to 100 % CPU. So, any tips on how to get a bit more headroom? Any tips on settings I can lower that could have lowered my CPU usage a bit? Can't say I'm exactly thrilled about trying every single option to see what (if any) impact it has on the CPU, so I was hoping someone could perhaps have some tips. BTW note that I'm pretty much only speaking about online racing. Thanks.
Not running any additional software helps (crew chief, voice attack, etc.). Or lower your resolution/fps/bitrate settings of your stream. I've also been getting pretty good results by using the OBS NDI plugin: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-ndi-newtek-ndi™-integration-into-obs-studio.528/ You need a second PC for that though.
Well, getting a dedicated streaming PC would of course help, but that's really not an option for me at this time (nor do I think it's worth it for my kind of streaming anyway). And the main CPU hog for me is R3E anyway, I've optimized the rest the best I could. I was thinking I could maybe lower some settings to lower the CPU usage in R3E, as R3E alone can easily eat 75+ percent of my CPU with random spikes to almost 90 percent even without streaming (pretty much the highest CPU usage of all the sims I regularly play, except maybe AC at times) - the other software running only really consumes a few percent on top of that. But yeah, I've done a few tests in the meantime and it does indeed seem like most of the R3E settings don't have a noticeable CPU usage impact. Still, thank you for the answer, appreciated. And the NDI stuff is definitely interesting, even if it's not really applicable for me.
I tried to stream R3E once, couldn't get it at a smooth rate even at 720, 30fps. i5 3570k, 16GB DDR3 and a 980.
I'm streaming more or less fine at 1080p 60 using NVENC. I'd just like to get a bit more headroom and thought it might be possible to perhaps lower some more CPU intensive options a bit.
Hello mate, how high is your bitrate? I stream with OBS on an i5 6500 using the NVENC H.264 codec, 60fps in 1080p, 15000 bitrate, quality is fine and CPU never really goes above 10% usage on OBS. If you've updated OBS recently, check your settings again, mine has a habit of reverting back to the CPU bound x.264 codec and default settings which just doesn't work for an i5
I'm usually streaming at around 7000. Doesn't look all that great, but I can't do more reliably. And yes, OBS is using NVENC and is using as little CPU as reasonably possible. Like I've said, the main CPU hog here is R3E - it has fairly high CPU usage for me even when not streaming at all.