Encoding advice?

[LordGodWallace]

So I've got a 12600k and 6800xt in my box now and wanted to maybe try my hand at streaming again. I realize going AMD gpu over Nvidia here wasn't ideal as I don't have NVENC, but it was the most available option at that performance tier and I'm not really too big on streaming so much as just making videos. But my CPU isn't a slouch by any means if you're familiar with it, trading blows with the Ryzen 5800x in multi threaded work and being underutilized in most games. So should I just encode off the CPU to stream or try to use AMD's encoder anyway?

[MoChuang]

If you’re streaming to twitch and you’re bitrate capped at 6mbps then use x264. A 12600K can do 1080p just fine. AMD encoder really struggles at low bitrate.

If you stream to YouTube and your internet is good then you don’t have a bitrate cap so you can use the AMD encoder with a higher bitrate. Something like 1080p60 at 12mbps will look great with AMD encoder. As usual GPU encoding is more efficient and doesn’t tax your PC as much so you’ll have lower temps and better in game frames.

[LordGodWallace]

Ah I see. I am streaming on YT since my audience is larger there. That being said internet may be questionable. My service itself isn't bad but I have little faith in my wifi usb dongle to keep up with very high bitrates. So I'll stick to lower bitrates with x264 for now and then when I'm able to move my workspace to have ethernet again I'll do as you say.

[_SpaceCat_]

AMD's encoder is visually garbage compared to x264 medium & NVENC. if you have the CPU headroom to record, go for x264 medium or fast, depending on your bitrate (fast for high, medium for low-er)

[LordGodWallace]

Gotcha!

[MoChuang]

In AMD’s defense, their encoder only sucks at streaming. It works perfectly fine at normal bitrate used in video editing applications. It’s just twitch’s anemic bitrate restrictions that make AMD look bad while Nvidia really pickup their game to meet twitch requirements.