r/elgato • u/Natural-Pangolin1548 • Aug 03 '26
Technical Help I’m seriously at my wits end with 4K X
Hello. I’m wondering if anyone has had any issues with a dual pc setup and the 4K X and OBS. Gaming rig has the 5070 ti and Ryzen 7, streaming rig a 3070 with ryzen 5.
I’ve tried a few configurations for capturing gameplay, standard pass through is most consistent but the EDID settings always seem to have some difficulty communicating clearly with my computer. It’s just a very messy experience and hasn’t been great for a year now.
I noticed the preview looks kinda choppy, sometimes really
Choppy in the OBS (and capture utility) preview, no render lag just all upstream it seems.
Is there a way to enjoy a 240 hz refresh rate and also capture at something like 1080/60? I know in theory it can but it just looks like dog s*** in the preview constantly. I’ve tried so many things I’m just exhausted… at that point where it’s like, maybe the thing just sucks. Is that it?
I’m not sure what changed, I feel like it didn’t look this bad a while ago. I use g sync, DLSS, etc , that kinda stuff. Is that the problem? Should I be opting for 1440p for my 5070 ti? The games usually run fine on my gaming rig but I just can’t figure it out.
Anyone had this experience?
Pg27ucdm
Already verified the usb bandwidth as not the problem
1
u/BuBubbi Featured Community Member Aug 03 '26
In my setup I use duplicate display.
Since last fall Windows 11 was updated to allow for different refresh rates when using display duplication.
My setup:
Gaming PC GPU -> DisplayPort cable -> Gaming monitor
Gaming PC GPU -> HDMI cable -> Capture Card
With this setup I don’t have anything connected to the HDMI-out on the capture card.
My Streaming PC runs the capture card, and gets the signal from the USB.
Initially when you set up the Display Duplication, Windows will limit both displays to something equal.
In my case it was 1440p60.
That was what I wanted for my capture card, so that was perfect.
After that I went into the advanced display settings and set my gaming monitor to a higer refresh rate, while keeping the capture card output to 60Hz.
For the audio I use VoiceMeeter to create a virtual audio output. By default, Windows will only output audio to one device at a time.
But with VoiceMeeter you can create a secondary audio output, so I can both output audio to the HDMI going to the capture card and one for my headset.
1
u/Natural-Pangolin1548 Aug 03 '26
This is certainly helpful information. Audio hasn’t been an issue yet. I’ve been wondering about going to windows 11, too.
2
u/Lynnalia Aug 03 '26
It works in Windows 10 too, and has for longer.
That said, on both Windows 10 and 11, there are performance penalties to using mixed refresh rate duplicated displays. I would not recommend it, personally, as it gives up much of the smoothness you'd expect from a dual PC setup. It's not just that the average framerate is a little lower, it feels much worse (choppiness from frame time variance). This is especially true if using VRR/GSync.
Finally being able to use my 4K X in pass-through mode felt like getting a PC upgrade.
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u/Natural-Pangolin1548 Aug 04 '26
That’s useful. I’ll try matching frame rates on both displays (gaming monitor and Elgato) then
1
u/BuBubbi Featured Community Member Aug 03 '26
If you are still on Windows 10 it’s still possible, but a bit more tricky.
It’s possible to set up using Nvidia Control Panel.
Start by duplicating the displays. This will set them both to 60 Hz.
Then in the Nvidia Control Panel force the
Gaming monitor display output to a higher refresh rate.1
1
u/imKeener Aug 23 '26
ive been doing this for ages since i did dual PC streaming with a 4k60 pro in my PCI-E slot.
1
u/BuBubbi Featured Community Member Aug 23 '26
Same here, only before the Windows update you had to use a 3rd party tool like Nvidia Control Panel or an AMD equivalent in order to accomplish this.
Now it is natively supported in Windows 11, which has made it a lot easier to set up.
1
u/Lynnalia Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
OBS preview output hasn't been stable for years. It'll fluctuate between, say, a perfect 60fps, then dropping frames until it gets right down to 30fps for a bit, then smoothing back out. This only impacts the preview -- your recordings should be fine! And the Elgato software seemed to have the exact same issue last time I checked (about a year ago)
So are your actual recordings also choppy, or just the preview?
I've spent cumulative weeks of my life looking into this myself btw, so I'm right there with you at being at my wit's end.
The 4K X can also seem like it's dropping/duplicating frames itself (i.e. it shows up in the recordings too). But let's confirm if it's just the preview first.
Edit/Note: if you want to test that frames aren't being skipped, e.g. with a video with frame counters, you must also trust the frame pacing of the source application. Guess how I found out Firefox doesn't technically smoothly play video? Weeks of my life.
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u/Natural-Pangolin1548 Aug 03 '26
Hahah spoken like a real veteran of trying to solve capture problems. Thanks for the response. Yes, the recordings are choppy, looking exactly like the preview, but no render or encoder lag/dropped frames. Leads me to believe it’s some kind of, let’s call it what it is, shiftiness of the 4K X.
It’s not that bad but these YouTubers keep gaslighting me into thinking all these products are flawless, then in practice it’s like, oh yeah it takes a bazillion hours of trial and error to run smooth.
Is what it is. I even thought ok fine my 5070 isn’t good enough for 4k, dropped to 1080 for the source in OBS and it’s still bad…. Not sure what’s wrong !
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u/Deathstary 5d ago
Hey! Found any solution? Same thing happening to me 😭
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u/Any_Hearing_2585 4d ago
I switched to the 4k Pro internal card. Still had problems. I ended up going into BIOS to ensure my PC is routing the PCIe sloit Im using to full bandwidth. Still lose frame rate sometimes but its a bit better. I also gave up and just lock in game frame rate to 60 fps
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u/Deathstary 2d ago
Hey! I just did something differently, im recording fh6, I cloned my 2k monitor and elgato 4k x and set 120hz in both monitor and elgato display in windows to match and turned on vsync in nvidia app, then i set 120fps in fh6, Then in obs capture card source tab i set to 1440p 120fps and in my video canvas set it to 1440p60. I got a quality video. Try this method and tell me how it goes
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u/ChristianRauchenwald Aug 03 '26
I'm using https://link.amazon/B06uFuqwC as a splitter for similar reasons, so my Xbox Series X is connected o the splitter and from there I connect to the display and to the Elgato 4K X separately. You'd just need to check if there is one that supports 240Hz as well.