Have you tried to stream while playing a game just to find out your game becomes unplayable? Let’s take a look at why this affects your games performance and what you can do to improve your Frames Per Second. You’ll actually be able to enjoy your game while streaming.
Will Streaming Affect FPS?
Yes, streaming uses a lot of resources on your computer. Depending on the game you are playing this can give you a significant drop in FPS. Sometimes even making a game unplayable as well as causing your stream to lag. Ultimately it will depend on your setup. If you have a powerful streaming PC you will see less of a drop in your FPS.
Why Does Streaming Affect FPS?
Streaming affects FPS because your computer is encoding your stream before sending it to Twitch. This uses resources on your CPU or GPU depending on your settings. If you don’t have enough power your PC will bottleneck, resulting in your dropping frames.
How To Improve FPS While Streaming
1. Adjust Game Settings
Even if you have a really good computer your game settings may be too high to play and stream at the same time. If you are playing your game in 1440p or 4k you should change it to 1080p. Most large Twitch streamers play their games in 1080p to get the best performance.
If you are still experiencing frame drops you can go into your games advanced settings and turn down some of the settings. I recommend searching on youtube for “best streaming setting for X game” to get the best settings for the game you are playing.
This will help significantly on reducing the load on your computer.
2. Lower Your On Stream Production
If you are using a program like Streamlabs or OBS to stream and you have lots of animations going on for Alerts, transitions etc this can significantly increase the resources required to stream.
If you are having problems with your FPS while streaming I recommend following the below for your stream:
- Have a simple overlay (Image with No Animation)
- Statics Alerts with no animation
- Avoid Animated transitions
- Single Camera
- Use as few sources as possible
- Have a simple overlay (Image with No Animation)
- Statics Alerts with no animation
- Avoid Animated transitions
- Single Camera
- Use as few sources as possible
Check out our best stream settings for low end PCs.
3. Update Graphics Drivers
Both Nvidia and AMD are always releasing new driver updates for their graphics cards. These updates usually update the card to be optimized for the latest games. If you don’t have the latest update this can significantly decrease how well the games runs, especially if it is a newly released game.
You can check for driver updates for you card below:
4. Close Any Unnecessary Applications
One of the biggest bottlenecks on low-end PCs is RAM. This can cause your game to drop frames if your RAM usage is maxing out. One of the biggest uses of RAM that most people don’t realise is Chrome. If you are using this I would recommend closing out any unnecessary tabs that you don’t need open. This will free up some resources that your game can use instead.
5. Upgrade Your PC
Last but not least is probably not what you want to hear but it may be necessary. If you are running on an older machine it may just be too outdated to run the latest games and stream. If that’s the case it’s maybe time to start thinking about an upgrade.
We just wrote an article on the Top 10 Pre-built Streaming PCs as well as the best Budget Streaming PC Setup.
It may not be the case that you need to completely replace your PC. You might be able to get away with just upgrading your graphics card to a newer model which is compatible with your PC.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, you now understand why your PC is dropping frames while streaming and what you need to do to fix it. The first step is toning down your in-game settings. If you try that and the other fixes mentioned you may end up grabbing a new machine. If that’s the case, health to game.
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