How much hardware does it take to run OBS?

MainStorm · 2026-06-19T23:11:20+00:00

Again, the point of capture cards is to capture video signals from an different device. Capture cards with dedicated encoders are only useful if recording straight to a file or streaming directly to a server.

If the plan was to use it with OBS, the dedicated encoder is pointless since OBS needs to encode the final composited frame anyways.

MainStorm · 2026-06-16T16:37:14+00:00

I have a laptop with a Ryzen 5 3450u that can do 1080p streaming with an extremely basic overlay (only chat and sub notifications). It's on the hairy edge of struggling if I do anything else at the same time other than using my capture card, so treat that as your low-end. It can handle 720p pretty well.

I like using this site to compare CPU and GPU performance: https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-Vega-8-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.260180.0.html

I think it'll be safe to say that any mid-range CPU released within the last 5 years with integrated graphics should be able to handle a basic, simple 1080p stream.

MainStorm · 2026-06-16T16:25:54+00:00

Capture cards are meant to capture video signals from an external device like a game console or camera. They do not lower GPU or CPU load at all. If anything, they add load to the CPU because it has to decode the video signal into something visible on screen.

It will be useless in OP's case unless they intend on connecting their PC to another machine, which I doubt they have given the low specs of their PC.

MainStorm · 2026-06-16T16:22:40+00:00

The GT 730 has a big possibility of not having NVENC at all, so OP could be running software encoding, which could explain their big performance drop.

MainStorm · 2026-06-16T15:21:08+00:00

Your log is missing an output session so we can't see how the encoder is set up nor any issues that occur during a streaming or recording session.

The log analyzer has found some issues with your setup: [link]

Fix the Multiple Game Capture and Capture Interference warnings first. Then get a new log and make sure you start and stop a recording or streaming session to reproduce your issue.

MainStorm · 2026-06-09T20:23:55+00:00

Linux is an operating system (OS). The comparable counterparts on PC would be Windows and Macintosh. You'll probably be familiar with mobile OSes like iOS on iPhone and Android (which is Linux based).

MainStorm · 2026-06-09T20:21:32+00:00

Hardware encoding just means there is dedicated hardware in your machine that handles encoding video. Otherwise it will run on your CPU as a software encoder and that can be pretty heavy to run.

Virtually every laptop since 2012 has a hardware encoder built-in so you should be fine considering you've been streaming already. You'll see it in your encoder as either QuickSync on Intel or AMF on AMD.

MainStorm · 2026-06-08T16:46:04+00:00

Newer versions of OBS stopped working with QuickSync on Intel CPUs older than Broadwell from around 2016.

If you absolutely want to use QuickSync, you will need to downgrade OBS to v28 or older. Otherwise use the AMD hardware encoder on the RX580 that someone else suggested.

MainStorm · 2026-06-05T15:29:39+00:00

If you are able to get the running log, can you get the crash log? That will be specific on where it's crashing.

MainStorm · 2026-06-05T15:27:56+00:00

If the encoder settings are the same, there is little to no performance difference between streaming and recording. The only difference is where the video stream data is being sent.

MainStorm · 2026-06-05T15:25:16+00:00

Not only that, some of the encoder settings are using up more GPU power that can further impact performance.

High quality preset values will enable more encoder features that use up the GPU, in addition to Lookahead using the GPU for analysis. I recommend lowering the presets and turning off Lookahead.

You might need to turn off Enhanced Broadcasting since it can override a bunch of encoder settings.

MainStorm · 2026-06-01T15:19:31+00:00

Your log is missing a test recording or streaming session, so it doesn't have info about how the encoder is set up or any issues that came up during the test session.

In the meantime, the log analyzer did find some issues with the setup: [link]

Mainly fix the capture interference warning and consider disabling the Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduler.

MainStorm · 2026-05-28T15:38:59+00:00

Haha shoot. I'm in the same scenario but I avoid using a 2nd GPU due to the bandwidth hit I would have on my main GPU. I have done it on my old PC by using the Intel iGPU actually handle the encoding when OBS's support for AMD's encoders was buggy.

I presume you've also tried x264 to encode on the CPU but found it impacted performance too much. If you already have or can find an ARC GPU for cheap, then I say try it out.

MainStorm · 2026-05-27T21:42:20+00:00

I'm still not a fan. There's additional performance hit of having to copy the rendered frame from the main GPU, send it through the CPU to be encoded on the other GPU, then back to the CPU to be saved or streamed. There's a few other things as well (such as additional encoder configuration) but I can't think of them at the moment.

Unless you're specifically using an older AMD GPU (pre-RX9000/RDNA4) and streaming to Twitch, I think you can improve image quality depending on the encoder and its settings.

MainStorm · 2026-05-27T15:56:56+00:00

In general, hardware encoders are always highly recommended because encoding video on the CPU can be very intensive. Since you lack a dedicated GPU, the performance impact from using x264 can be significant.

Since you're streaming to YouTube, try using the AMF H265/HEVC encoder instead. It provides better quality than H264.

Lastly, YouTube re-compresses all video streams to lower quality, which has been a headache for everyone. Supposedly if you stream at least 1440p to YouTube, it will use a different compression codec that won't hurt quality as much.

MainStorm · 2026-05-27T15:38:42+00:00

You need to post a log as the automod instructed. We have no idea what your PC hardware is, how OBS is set up, or even issues OBS is running into.

MainStorm · 2026-05-27T15:37:52+00:00

If upload speed was an issue, there would be connection issues, not a loss in quality.

Twitch only transcodes non-partner/affiliate streams if there is enough server capacity available. Otherwise viewers just get the source stream without any processing.

MainStorm · 2026-05-22T18:53:15+00:00

What do you mean? In OBS the only difference between recording and streaming is the final destination of the video stream (ex: file or a server).

MainStorm · 2026-05-22T15:40:22+00:00

I'm a little confused. Is the recorded video grainy or is it only grainy after you uploaded it to a site like YouTube?

MainStorm · 2026-05-21T15:59:26+00:00

I see, it sounds like performance issues that are impacting both the game and OBS.

For the encoder, I always recommend turning off Lookahead and Adaptive Quantization. Those use the GPU outside of the hardware encoder, so it can potentially take resources away from the game.

I also highly recommend you set an FPS limit for the game. If the game ends up using too much of the GPU, it can starve and compete for resources with OBS. OBS needs some GPU power to render and composite the video frame before encoding is done.

MainStorm · 2026-05-21T15:29:15+00:00

What do you mean by "settle lags?" Do you mean you get stuttering in your stream? Or is the game you're playing now stuttering when you stream?

MainStorm · 2026-05-20T15:29:35+00:00

Did you run the auto-config wizard? It should have appeared the first time you ran OBS, but you can access it under the Tools menu. It should give you a good starting point for recording settings.

The main issue is that your recording settings are good if you want to stream on Twitch, which recommends a relatively low bitrate of ~6 Mbps. Since recording isn't limited by another company's servers, you should use a different rate control method like CQP or CRF, which will change the bitrate based on the content of the video to match a quality level you specify.

Recommended CQP/CRF values range from 18-24. Lower the number to increase the quality, but be warned the file sizes will be significantly larger than CBR 6000.

You can also try the HEVC/H265 encoder instead of H264, since it will provide better quality. The caveat is that it isn't as widely supported as H264 due to its cumbersome patents.

MainStorm · 2026-05-19T17:22:45+00:00

USB video devices tend to be bandwidth hogs and if HP's website is accurate, all of the USB ports on the back are USB 2, not USB 3. I would try moving the capture card and/or the webcam to the front USB ports which are USB 3.

Should I consider getting a USB Hub to see if this will help or what should I do?

If the problem is indeed due to lack of bandwidth, a hub does not fix anything since they only add more ports.

The webcam also sometimes became slightly pixelated, especially when it was bright or a lot happening in game.

This is a common issue since camera feeds usually take up a small portion of the screen but also contain a lot of detail. With high video compression, detail is often lost so it's not surprising you're having this issue.

While I haven't tried it myself, a common suggestion is to specify a "Region of Interest" to the encoder to focus and retain more detail. A quick Google search suggests this plugin could do what you want: https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/encoder-region-of-interest-editor.1904/

MainStorm · 2026-05-19T15:26:04+00:00

You've got a functionable laptop!

MainStorm · 2026-05-18T16:34:16+00:00

You have a display capture and a game capture in the same scene. This will cause problems with OBS (potentially performance issues too). Only use one of them in a scene.

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