OBS 7 New NVENC Presets Quality Comparison (BONUS! with x264 comparison)
New OBS Update for NVENC, now you can choose 7 presets for your video streaming and recording.
P1: Faster (Lowest Quality)
P2: Faster (Lower Quality)
P3: Fast (Low Quality)
P4: Medium (Medium Quality)
P5: Slow (Good Quality)
P6: Slower (Better Quality)
P7: Slowest (Best Quality)
WATCH THIS VIDEO IN 4K!!! (I hope YouTube will serve you the 4K version)
PC SPEC
Intel i9-9900k
Z390 Aorus Master
G.Skill FlareX 32GB (4x8GB 3600 CL15)
RTX 2070 Super
Samsung 860 EVO (2x512GB)
ASUS PG279Q
METHODOLOGY
I recorded this video in 1080p 60fps using 1080p resolution & 60Hz refresh rate in my 1440p monitor resolution with no scaling set in NVIDIA Control Panel so it could replicate the scenario when using the actual 1080p 60hz monitor.
Then I ran the GTA V benchmark 5 times before recording to remove any shader compilation so there will be no stutter when recording. (I just installed GTA V on my PC).
I set the rate control to CBR with 3000Kbps bitrate in OBS for all NVENC presets and x264 Medium.
I deliberately choose 3000Kbps to make sure the video encoding not hitting the diminishing return due the high bitrate so we can easily pinpoint the quality difference between presets.
For more information about other settings like profile, keyframe, tuning and etc. will be shown in the beginning of video.
After recording I edit the footage with Shotcut in 4K resolution and upload it to YouTube to make sure YouTube don't mess with the quality.
And also 4K is the exact integer-upscale of 1080p. (1x1 pixel in 1080p = 2x2 pixel in 4k).
I choose x264 with medium preset and CRF = 20 to export resulting 27 min video duration with 6.64GB in file size.
This takes 3 hours to edit and 8 hours to render (I think I should choose NVENC to export instead of x264 (CPU) to make it faster to render).
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Spec
00:10 NVENC Settings
00:17 x264 Settings
00:24 P1
02:21 P2
04:19 P3
06:15 P4
08:13 P5
10:09 P6
12:06 P7
14:04 x264
16:00 P1 vs P3
17:57 P3 vs P5
19:54 P5 vs P7
21:51 P1 vs P7
23:48 P3 vs P5 vs P7
25:44 P5 vs x264 vs P7
EXTRAS
I upload the raw footage (unedited) version of full benchmark 3.5 minutes each. But it's in 1080p resolution so expect lower quality due 1080p compression from YouTube (they're using AVC instead of VP9 or even AV1 for my 1080p videos since I'm not a big creator).
P1 • P1
P2 • P2
P3 • P3
P4 • P4
P5 • P5
P6 • P6
P7 • P7
x264 • X264