Why it issues: AMD’s new AV1 encoder and totally unlocked encode periods will enable Radeon RX 7000 collection GPUs to compete straight in opposition to Nvidia RTX GPUs and Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs within the streaming area. Permitting players and content material creators to recreation, document, and stream prime quality video all on the similar time on a single graphics card.
Streaming professional and YouTuber EposVox printed a efficiency preview of AMD’s new AV1 encoder, present in its RX 7000 collection GPUs, and located the encoding high quality to be surprisingly good for capturing gameplay. In apply, the encoder was in a position to get very near Nvidia’s RTX 40 collection NVENC encoder and generally outperform Intel’s Arc Alchemist counterpart, which is one thing AMD has not been in a position to accomplish in years.
EposVox particularly examined with a Radeon RX 7900 XT in a number of titles, together with Apex Legends, Battlefield 2042 and CSGO. In these video games, he says encoder efficiency sits in-between Nvidia and Intel’s AV1 implementations, with AMD’s AV1 encoder trying the worst in Battlefield 2042 and Apex Legends, however trying higher than Intel’s AV1 encoder in some conditions as properly.
Though AMD’s AV1 encoder would not outright beat its opponents, it’s significantly better than AMD’s H.264 encoders which have been sitting behind Nvidia and Intel’s on a constant foundation. As of late, AMD’s AMF H.264 encoder can output good high quality movies, due to updates from AMD, but it surely’s nonetheless extensively considered a final place resident when in comparison with its opponents.
AMD’s new RDNA3 media engine options the primary AV1 {hardware} encoder the corporate has ever put in a shopper GPU. Earlier generations, together with the RX 6000 collection, have been in a position to decode AV1 movies, however did not have the right {hardware} to allow AV1 encoding for recording and streaming movies. AV1 is the trade’s newest video codec that’s able to retaining very excessive picture high quality, with a small file dimension compared to codecs like H.264.
It needs to be talked about nonetheless that the encoder is just supported in OBS Studio right now and it is nonetheless in an immature state. As an illustration, EposVox says AMD’s reviewers information calls for using a number of FFmpeg choices and to manually implement them to get essentially the most out of AMD’s AV1 encodes, which is one thing OBS ought to be capable of do for you inside the software program itself. Efficiency additionally presents points, with AMD’s prime quality video preset being unusable at 4K / 60 FPS output. However these are issues that might be improved with future software program updates.
One function the place AMD is ready to outperform Nvidia is on the quantity of encode periods the engine is able to supporting, which seems to be a vast quantity, in accordance with EposVox, in comparison with simply three on Nvidia’s RTX 40 collection GPUs. That is one thing that may be extensively wanted by content material creators because it permits a number of video recordings or streams to be lively on the similar time. That is helpful for streaming to a number of platforms like Twitch and YouTube, in addition to recording streams regionally to create shorts at a later date.
As soon as AMD irons out all of the kinks with its AV1 software program implementation, AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 seems to be to be a really succesful answer for recording gameplay, with the flexibility to get very near Nvidia’s AV1 answer and output extra encode periods on the similar time, however solely time will inform if this turns into true.