Is x264 encoding possible with a GPU?

[WhiteSkyMage]

I find that all encoders for x264 use CPU. Why is that? Won't a GPU do a better job for that?

[spartaman64]

yes gpu have an on board h.264 or h.265 nowadays encoder built in. OBS have options to use them

[WhiteSkyMage]

Just now, spartaman64 said:

yes gpu have an on board h.264 or h.265 nowadays encoder built in. OBS have options to use them

This is strange... Why can't I find CUDA anywhere on OBS Studio?

[WhiteSkyMage]

Dang it why is this posting double posts... some bug...

[spartaman64]

Just now, WhiteSkyMage said:

This is strange... Why can't I find CUDA anywhere on OBS Studio?

it isnt called cuda its called NVENC or something and its in the encoder options

[WhiteSkyMage]

Just now, spartaman64 said:

it isnt called cuda its called NVENC or something and its in the encoder options

 but that's not x264 encoding. That's Nvidia's encoder that is worse quality/bitrate when compared to x264. I try to avoid using it. I wanna use x264 using my GPU, not my CPU.

[spartaman64]

3 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

 but that's not x264 encoding. That's Nvidia's encoder that is worse quality/bitrate when compared to x264. I try to avoid using it. I wanna use x264 using my GPU, not my CPU.

when i use it the quality is the same and it is x264 or x265 depending on your gpu

edit: h.264 or h.265 not sure whats the difference

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, WhiteSkyMage said:

 but that's not x264 encoding. That's Nvidia's encoder that is worse quality/bitrate when compared to x264. I try to avoid using it. I wanna use x264 using my GPU, not my CPU.

Depends on the specific usage case, but if you're just encoding or transcoding a video, and not live streaming, then I usually find CPU encoding good enough. My old Xeon w3520 (i7-920 equivalent) could transcode a 1080p uncompressed Blu-Ray rip into a compressed h.264 1080p file in something like less than 20 minutes. My current 4770K would likely be even faster. Your i7-5820K should be really good at h.264 encoding.

[WhiteSkyMage]

17 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Depends on the specific usage case, but if you're just encoding or transcoding a video, and not live streaming, then I usually find CPU encoding good enough. My old Xeon w3520 (i7-920 equivalent) could transcode a 1080p uncompressed Blu-Ray rip into a compressed h.264 1080p file in something like less than 20 minutes. My current 4770K would likely be even faster. Your i7-5820K should be really good at h.264 encoding.

Well, thing is, it is actually about the streaming more that I am looking into. I just set my OBS options, well for YouTube stream, and 4mbit/s(720p60). I am sure it can handle more, but here is where all my worries come in - what about in-game FPS?

If my game (in this case Star Citizen) requires and uses 4 cores, then I got 2 cores left for the stream.

If I want to stream at 1080p60 with the best quality/bitrate, i need to put my encoding for x264 to "very fast" or "fast" or perhaps lower, which in turn would use more CPU resources = loss of FPS. So I also heard that people would use a separate computer for just encoding...Now since ShadowPlay uses the GPU, but with the Nvidia's NVENC encoder, it has very little hit, but when you compare the quality between ShadowPlay's and that of a x264 on CPU, it is the CPU that wins. So basically x264 is really made for only CPU... Too many articles and forums say that and most users streaming with OBS use x264 rather than NVENC,