OBS Software vs Hardware Encoder (x264 vs NVENC h.264) | Best OBS Settings for Streaming Low End PC

This OBS Software vs Hardware Encoder (x264 vs NVENC h.264) | Best OBS Settings for Streaming & Recording Low End PC tutorial guide covers the best video encoder settings for live streaming on Twitch (software vs hardware) along with the best optimization tips and tricks for achieving the best OBS streaming settings for quality and performance in OBS Studio on Windows 11/10 PC & Laptops. Multiple stream output resolutions are compared (1080p / 936p / 864p and 720p 60fps) to give you the best OBS Twitch settings for smooth, crisp, stable and high quality CS2, Valorant, Fortnite, Warzone, DOTA 2, Tf2, PUBG, Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, RDR2, FiveM, Rainbow Six Siege and Call of Duty (COD) streams on a variety of hardware encoders, such as NVIDIA NVENC, AMD Advanced Media Framework (AMF), Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) and Apple VideoToolbox (VT). This tutorial was made for Twitch partners and affiliates in mind. If you've experienced frames missed due to rendering lag or skipped frames due to encoding lag, the information in this #shorts video will help you troubleshoot and eliminate lag, frame drops and stuttering whether you're on a low, mid or high end PC setup for a smoother experience. Thanks for watching!

Bitrate, Resolution and Framerate
Encoding is all about compressing images. A smaller image requires less compression and it keeps more of the quality. While the same applies for framerate, a viewer can really notice a drop in FPS but not so much in resolution, so stream at 60 FPS

Twitch's Encoding Guide:
Encoding Performance
Encoding can be taxing on your system. x264 will utilize a lot of your CPU, resulting in lower FPS. Alternatively, GPU encoding (e.g. NVIDIA NVENC) utilizes a dedicated encoder in the GPU, allowing you to play and stream without compromising game performance. If you use x264, start with veryfast, and experiment with the other encoding presets

Encoding Quality
x264 offers a wide range of presets that change quality significantly, and presets above Faster require CPUs with 6+ cores. NVIDIA NVENC offers consistent quality based on the generation of the encoder. The updated NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) on Turing-based NVIDIA GeForce GPUs (RTX 20-Series and GTX 1660/Ti) will typically produce superior quality than x264 Fast and on par with x264 medium. While the older generation (Pascal, Kepler) are similar with veryfast/faster quality

Nvidia's overview of the ouput settings:
Encoder: Allows you to choose between hardware / software encoding
Rate Control: This determines the rate at which frames are going to be encoded
Bitrate: Enter the bitrate appropriate for your Upload Speed
Keyframe Interval: Most streaming platforms require a setting of 2
Preset: Select Quality
Profile: Set to High. Profile determines a group of settings in the H.264 Codec. It doesn’t impact performance and gives access to a set of features that are key to streaming, so this should always be set to High
Look-ahead: This allows the encoder to dynamically select the number of B-Frames, between 0 and the number of B-Frames you specify. B-frames increase image quality, but they consume a lot of your available bitrate, so they reduce quality on high motion content. Look-ahead enables the best of both worlds. This feature is CUDA accelerated; toggle this off if your GPU utilization is high to ensure a smooth stream
Psycho Visual Tuning: This enables the Rate Distortion Optimization in the encoder, which greatly optimizes the way you use bitrate, improving image quality on movement
GPU: 0. If you have 2 GPUs in your system, you can select which one is used to encode. This is not recommended
Max B-Frames: If you uncheck the Look-ahead option, use 2 B-Frames

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