Will Streaming Affect FPS? – Causes and Fixes

How to Fix In-Game Framerate While Streaming

1. Stream at a Lower Resolution

   9/10 times, depending on your hardware and its capabilities, your drop frames will be due to the workload you are putting on your PC with streaming at the same time as you are playing a game. Quite often you are able to fix the issues you are having by just lowering your stream output settings to from 1920 x 1080 60fps, to 1280 x 720 30fps. However, it is worth noting that it is not possible to reduce the resolution of your live stream whilst you are live.

2. Lower In-Game Graphics Settings

   If you would prefer to keep your resolution at a higher quality, you might even be able to take pressure off of your PC by reducing your in-game graphics settings. Sometimes, even turning off things like light bloom can make all the difference to your frame rate without taking away from the quality of your content. Is realism of a game the reason people click your stream? Not really. Just go through your settings and adjust what you are happy to lose. Better yet, change overall graphics quality from high – medium, I’m sure you’ll notice a difference there!

3. Dual PC Setup

   Probably the most effective way to reduce the workload on your PC while streaming, is to use a dual PC setup. A dual PC setup, for those of you who may not know, is as it would imply where you will have the PC’s setup to run your live stream – one for gaming which is connected to your second PC, via a capture card, which is used to handle OBS only. This is a very effective way to have a lossless stream, though it can be very expensive to fund a second PC and might create issues elsewhere if your internet is not the best.

4. Update Your PC’s Graphics Drivers

   Lastly, and sometimes the easiest fix, ensure you have the most up-to-date drivers for your graphics cards installed, if you are using one. If you are not sure how to do this, you can either use the Nvidia Geforce Experience application which will prompt you when a new game ready driver update is available every time you launch the app, or if you are using a Radeon card download Radeon Software application.

Why Streaming Affects FPS

Streaming affects your FPS for one simple reason, and that is the amount of resources required for streaming. Not only is it resource intensive on your GPU, but it can be quite a struggle for your CPU, ram and even your harddrive. When you are playing a game off stream your computer is pushed to its maximum capabilities most of the time, streaming requires to push it that little further which a budget pc just does not have the capabilities for.

Conclusion

Though streaming will affect your FPS, it is possible to make minor changes without taking away from the quality of your content to fix your issues. Try not to stress too much about it and always test your computer’s limits if there is a game you know you want to try to stream before you go live. A huge drop in frames for a long period of time, could also have a negative effect on that particular live stream in terms of interactions and growth.