What is really preventing me from recording with OBS at higher res?

[Perenista]

I have an outdated PC which I need to replace everything, yet I was wondering what would really make a difference when it comes to using OBS:

https://obsproject.com/

To record/capture PC games.

Well, first of all, this is my current setup:

- Core i7 4770
- MB: H97M-D3H, Gigabyte
- Windows 10-64 bit, 16 GB of RAM
- Video card: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...n-r7-265.c2558

- SSD 1 TB
- Old monitor: LG W2452V

And this is how OBS is configured to make these recordings:

https://i.postimg.cc/3xcXVwPm/XU1.png

Audio bitrate is 320 and sample rate 48 Khz, stereo.

Also:

https://i.postimg.cc/sghxfDMp/XU2.png

As you can see, if I record this game here (Resident Evil, 1996, PC):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERsaiwb1Fc0

At 1280x960 (more or less 720p) no problems. OBS creates a MP4 file with no slowdowns or any hint of any issue.

However if I change both resolutions from the previous image to 1920x1200 which is the max for my system, then the entire video created will be useless, freezing 100% of the time.

That of course indicates anything higher than 720p is more than this system can handle.

That includes recent PC games, however in this case as you can see I am trying an old one that is much less demanding.

To answer my question, there are 4 possibilites:

a) A change in CPU + mobo + RAM and using Windows 10 will be all I need. Regardless of using the same video card.

b) Even if the same system remained, a newer video card would make all the difference. That means the bottleneck here is the video card, meaning that even if I remained with this old CPU/ram/motherboard, buying a new one would prevent this freezing at a higher resolution such as 1080p or even higher than that, say, 4K. At least for this game, not recent ones.

c) Even my current system would be able to handle these recordings, the problem here is the configuration used for OBS.

Or d) you need to replace a) and b) together.

So which is it?

- New CPU + MB + RAM
- New video card
- Both
- Or just configuring OBS correctly?

My guess is new CPU, perhaps this recording isn't so GPU dependent.