

Picking the wrong encoder will result in choppy, laggy, and crashing streams.

This is what hardware encoding allows you to do.

What if you could share the load of the rendering across your system and send the rendering process to your GPU instead of your CPU? Your CPU is already handling standard system processes plus other open applications, so sending the rendering encoding to your GPU will free up a lot of space on your CPU. Rendering video takes up a lot of CPU, and for some older systems, it might be too much and cause a crash. This is because the encoding of that information is an intensive process, and the software alone does not have the memory requirements to perform the action.įor example, say you are rendering a video in Premiere Pro. In this case, particular data must be encoded by a specific hardware part of your computer, usually your processor or graphics card. Usually, users will turn a blind eye to encoding settings because they seem complicated, but knowing exactly what that setting does can improve the user experience.Įssentially, hardware encoding refers to the processing of data on your system. There is no one size fits all.Hardware encoding is a term that you will see dotted around computers in general, not only in OBS Studio.

Every single game will have its own best encoding settings. But, you have to try both and compare for yourself.Įvery game handles encoding differently. You should be able to use NVENC and have it look just as good as a x264 stream - probably looking better than what your hardware could push out using x264. Taking all that into account, NVENC handles MOBAS like LoL very well. It needs a higher bitrate (6K minimum) to match the quality of x264 on Fast at approximately half the bitrate. FPS) it will not produce the quality that x264 can. On games with backgrounds that change quickly (i.e. NVENC: dedicated hardware encoding on the GPU, needs high bitrate You'd probably be able to stream at 720p60 at Fast or Very Fast. Once you've stacked all those programs up, and they're all vying for the processor, you'll hit a wall quickly. You only have 6 cores / 6 threads to throw at what ever game you are playing AND voice programs AND encoding software AND overlays and the actual encoder running. It comes down to what you are streaming and how high a bitrate you can push out.
