RX 7000-series - 1080P 60fps encoder?

[wheresmycar]

How well does the RX 7000 series hardware encoder compare to RTX with a 6000 bitrate 1080p 60fps broadcast target in mind. I understand when gaming and streaming simultaneously previously Nvidia cards simply did it better with NVENC enabled. Has AMD caught up?

 

[Chrispy_]

No. It's the same x264 and HEVC encoder as previously. It's "good enough" that there's no point redesigning it from scratch.

IMO it's fine, but you need about 30% higher bitrate at sub-20Mbps to match NVENC on quality. Kind of irrelevant unless you have piss-poor upload speeds, or you're livesteaming on the regular with bitrate limits like on lower tiers of Twitch or something. If you're recording at >25Mbps then you're going to find that the quality losses from your hosting platform are likely to be the limiting factor of the end-result.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

RX 7000 has the AV1 encoder. Not a streamer so no personal experience, but the initial tests put it close to nvidia.

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 AV1 encoder is almost on par with Intel Arc and Nvidia's RTX 40 series

Streaming expert and YouTuber EposVox published a performance preview of AMD's new AV1 encoder, found in its RX 7000 series GPUs, and found the encoding quality to...

www.techspot.com

 

[wheresmycar]

No. It's the same x264 and HEVC encoder as previously. It's "good enough" that there's no point redesigning it from scratch.

IMO it's fine, but you need about 30% higher bitrate at sub-20Mbps to match NVENC on quality. Kind of irrelevant unless you have piss-poor upload speeds, or you're livesteaming on the regular with bitrate limits like on lower tiers of Twitch or something. If you're recording at >25Mbps then you're going to find that the quality losses from your hosting platform are likely to be the limiting factor of the end-result.

AV1? like Super Firm Tofu suggest?

RX 7000 has the AV1 encoder. Not a streamer so no personal experience, but the initial tests put it close to nvidia.

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 AV1 encoder is almost on par with Intel Arc and Nvidia's RTX 40 series

Streaming expert and YouTuber EposVox published a performance preview of AMD's new AV1 encoder, found in its RX 7000 series GPUs, and found the encoding quality to...

www.techspot.com

Thanks for the techspot link... this epos guy seems like he's on the ball on this sort of stuff. I'm actually clueless about streaming... but got someone interested in either going 7900XT/XTX or 4070/4070TI with hardware encoding being factored in. So, according to EposVox 7000-series pretty much matches RTX in this department, both trading blows depending on captured scenes/environment/etc.

Other than ray tracing/performance in general/power consumption/price, purely looking at gaming and streaming simultaneously are there any other factors worth considering which favours one card above the other?

 

[Chrispy_]

AV1? like Super Firm Tofu suggest?

I've not seen or read a single review that says anything bad about AMDs AV1 encoder, and most of them say that AMD and Nvidia's AV1 encoding quality is basically indistinguishable, even though not identical.

IMO it's a non-issue. NVENC is the clear winner for x264 but only Twitch has such low bitrate caps that it's an issue on AMD. I record in HEVC (x265) on my AMD GPUs and quality is (obviously) so much better that it's no longer even a talking point.

If you stream on Twitch, get Nvidia. Twitch are dragging their heels and stuck in the past on x264.

RX 7000 has the AV1 encoder. Not a streamer so no personal experience, but the initial tests put it close to nvidia.

AMD's Radeon RX 7900 AV1 encoder is almost on par with Intel Arc and Nvidia's RTX 40 series

Streaming expert and YouTuber EposVox published a performance preview of AMD's new AV1 encoder, found in its RX 7000 series GPUs, and found the encoding quality to...

www.techspot.com

Hmm, good video.
It's nice to see that AMD's x264 quality has improved, but it's still worse than NVENC so I'm not sure it will change the mind of anyone who uses Twitch or deals with a lot of x264.

 

[wheresmycar]

I've not seen or read a single review that says anything bad about AMDs AV1 encoder, and most of them say that AMD and Nvidia's AV1 encoding quality is basically indistinguishable, even though not identical.

IMO it's a non-issue. NVENC is the clear winner for x264 but only Twitch has such low bitrate caps that it's an issue on AMD. I record in HEVC (x265) on my AMD GPUs and quality is (obviously) so much better that it's no longer even a talking point.

If you stream on Twitch, get Nvidia. Twitch are dragging their heels and stuck in the past on x264.


Hmm, good video.
It's nice to see that AMD's x264 quality has improved, but it's still worse than NVENC so I'm not sure it will change the mind of anyone who uses Twitch or deals with a lot of x264.

I take it both AMD/NVIDIA use 2 methods of hardware encoding? AV1 and x264? Does one method work better or do we have 2 settings for encoding because client softwares vary in which encoding practice is used?

I'm also understanding when enabling NVENC on RTX cards this is x264?

If it helps i just asked the inquirer what he will be using to broadcast/stream. He's using OBS and streaming to twitch but wanted to keep the YT option alive too. So i guess the question is does twitch support AV1?

Or in your opinion, for best performance would you recommend just opting for a Nvidia card (seeing NVENC has proven great according to various reports).

BTW, appreciate you taking the time to explain this sort of stuff!

 

[Toothless]

I stream, sometimes..

I've been able to record at 3440x1440/60 with like, a 15000 bitrate perfectly fine on the AMD HEVC side. However I do quite enjoy NVENC from NVIDIA too for the same reasons.

Edit: On a 6950XT. 7xxx series should be the same or better.

 

[Chrispy_]

I take it both AMD/NVIDIA use 2 methods of hardware encoding? AV1 and x264? Does one method work better or do we have 2 settings for encoding because client softwares vary in which encoding practice is used?

I'm also understanding when enabling NVENC on RTX cards this is x264?

If it helps i just asked the inquirer what he will be using to broadcast/stream. He's using OBS and streaming to twitch but wanted to keep the YT option alive too. So i guess the question is does twitch support AV1?

There are three distinct codec groups. h.264/x264, HEVC/x265, and AV1. Each codec has some fixed-function hardware on AMD/Intel/Nvidia's GPU silicon. Software just hooks into the driver to encode on that fixed-function hardware - whether that's OBS, Shadowplay, ReLive!, Twitch etc. It's not 100% fixed-function, but all three vendors have logic blocks in silicon for each of the three codecs.

NVENC is Nvidia's brand name for their hardware+driver combination.
QuickSync is Intel's brand name for their hardware+driver combination.
VCE is AMD's brand name for their hardware+driver combination.

IIRC, Twitch is stuck on x264. I don't actually use twitch but IIRC they refused to change to HEVC because it has higher compute requirements.
YouTube uses mostly HEVC/x265 but is also transitioning to AV1 as of 2023 whilst still supporting HEVC for the immediate future.
Realistically it's only the big-budget streaming services that are really leveraging AV1 - Netflix and Amazon.

One thing worth mentioning is that AV1 is still (too) new. Support for hardware-encoded AV1 in OBS is shaky-stage beta, DaVinci doesn't support it yet and was still software-only last time I checked. Quickly looking at a few other tools it's hit-or-miss at this early stage. Realistically, hardware-decode of AV1 is important for lower-end devices but hadrware-encode probably doesn't matter much unless you're using a streaming platform that supports AV1 streams and is reliable doing so.

 

[wheresmycar]

There are three distinct codec groups. h.264/x264, HEVC/x265, and AV1. Each codec has some fixed-function hardware on AMD/Intel/Nvidia's GPU silicon. Software just hooks into the driver to encode on that fixed-function hardware - whether that's OBS, Shadowplay, ReLive!, Twitch etc. It's not 100% fixed-function, but all three vendors have logic blocks in silicon for each of the three codecs.

NVENC is Nvidia's brand name for their hardware+driver combination.
QuickSync is Intel's brand name for their hardware+driver combination.
VCE is AMD's brand name for their hardware+driver combination.

IIRC, Twitch is stuck on x264. I don't actually use twitch but IIRC they refused to change to HEVC because it has higher compute requirements.
YouTube uses mostly HEVC/x265 but is also transitioning to AV1 as of 2023 whilst still supporting HEVC for the immediate future.
Realistically it's only the big-budget streaming services that are really leveraging AV1 - Netflix and Amazon.

One thing worth mentioning is that AV1 is still (too) new. Support for hardware-encoded AV1 in OBS is shaky-stage beta, DaVinci doesn't support it yet and was still software-only last time I checked. Quickly looking at a few other tools it's hit-or-miss at this early stage. Realistically, hardware-decode of AV1 is important for lower-end devices but hadrware-encode probably doesn't matter much unless you're using a streaming platform that supports AV1 streams and is reliable doing so.

Great! i'm finally beginning to wrap my head around all the different labels (eg. NVENC, QS, VCE and their coding groups h.264/x264, HEVC/x265, and AV1)

So both AMD and Nvidia are offering somewhat similar performance with AV1 but its not twitch supported. Would i be correct to recommend a Nvidia card for overall improved twitch x264 encoding performance?

 

[Chrispy_]

Great! i'm finally beginning to wrap my head around all the different labels (eg. NVENC, QS, VCE and their coding groups h.264/x264, HEVC/x265, and AV1)

So both AMD and Nvidia are offering somewhat similar performance with AV1 but its not twitch supported. Would i be correct to recommend a Nvidia card for overall improved twitch x264 encoding performance?

Yes.

Within the specific niche of "must be x264 and cannot be over 6Mbps" that is Twitch streaming, Turing NVENC looks better. IMO the current NVENC at x264 6Mbps looks about the same as AMD's VCE at 8-10Mbps. If you're going lower, like 2.5Mbps, then NVENCs advantage gets even bigger. NVENC at x264 2.5Mbps is more like 6Mbps on VCE.

AMD's x264 encoder is about as good as the one Nvidia had in Pascal. Some Turing cards (1660 Super and upwards, I think) got the improved encoder, so when people say "Turing NVENC" this is what they mean. The 4090 has "Turing NVENC" even though at this point the 4090 has nothing to do with Turing GPUs. Nvidia are just using the same NVENC hardware that they introduced with the 20-series.

If you're recommending them a 30 or 40-series GeForce, then all of those have the latest, better NVENC version. If they are on a strict budget and looking at 16-series, check carefully as some of the lower models use older Pascal NVENC. I'd like to say it's a clean split that "anything below 1650 Super should be avoided", but Nvidia and their partners love to mix and match silicon to different models at the low end, so the 16-series needs research on the specific model.

 

[wheresmycar]

Yes.

Within the specific niche of "must be x264 and cannot be over 6Mbps" that is Twitch streaming, Turing NVENC looks better. IMO the current NVENC at x264 6Mbps looks about the same as AMD's VCE at 8-10Mbps. If you're going lower, like 2.5Mbps, then NVENCs advantage gets even bigger. NVENC at x264 2.5Mbps is more like 6Mbps on VCE.

AMD's x264 encoder is about as good as the one Nvidia had in Pascal. Some Turing cards (1660 Super and upwards, I think) got the improved encoder, so when people say "Turing NVENC" this is what they mean. The 4090 has "Turing NVENC" even though at this point the 4090 has nothing to do with Turing GPUs. Nvidia are just using the same NVENC hardware that they introduced with the 20-series.

If you're recommending them a 30 or 40-series GeForce, then all of those have the latest, better NVENC version. If they are on a strict budget and looking at 16-series, check carefully as some of the lower models use older Pascal NVENC. I'd like to say it's a clean split that "anything below 1650 Super should be avoided", but Nvidia and their partners love to mix and match silicon to different models at the low end, so the 16-series needs research on the specific model.

He's looking at either a 4070/4070 TI or 7900XT. The XTX was also an option if by some divine intervention the card dropped by £200 in price but as things stand its a no-go.

So most likely a 4070 TI!

 

[Gica]

He's looking at either a 4070/4070 TI or 7900XT. The XTX was also an option if by some divine intervention the card dropped by £200 in price but as things stand its a no-go.

So most likely a 4070 TI!

4070 Ti -> 4090 have integrated two NVENC modules. They are capable of 8k@60FPS without affecting performance in games.
The RTX 4070 (or weaker) has only one.
Turing and Ampere use the same generation, but ADA has improved hardware. The exception is the 3070 Ti Mobile, which has integrated the latest generation encoder, but without support for AV1.

 

[Chrispy_]

I'm also not sure on whether Twitch is moving to AV1 or not. There are murmurings that it's happening in beta but I don't really follow anyone on Twitch.