5900x vs Rtx 3080 for streaming

[Generic_Pessimist]

Decided to buy a 5900x to replace my 3700x since I felt the performance hit when streaming Valorant. Should I stick to using new NVENC (rtx 3080) or should I be okay to switch to x264? I was wanting to stream at 1080p with this upgrade but am curious about any insight. Thank you!

 

[Kraezy]

Since NVENC new provides almost the same quality for a fraction of the performance
(as 30x cards have their own onboard chip * to handle the encoding)

makes sense to run it off the GPU (I am myself and don't see any discernible difference between NVENC new / X264)

 

[FerretBomb]

RTX 3080. Modern NVENC provides a video encode quality on-par with x264 Slow, with zero in-game impact when correctly configured.

AMD's equivalent, AMF, is... very, very bad. Poor encode quality, uses game-rendering resources for the encode, misreports feature levels (so can just crash if something tries to use a feature it says it supports, when it doesn't).

(edit) I forgot that the 5900X is a CPU, not a GPU. Derp. Still, use NVENC. There's almost no quality gain from a software x264 encode as compared to modern NVENC, even at the most taxing preset levels. NVENC is why 2PC setups are effectively dead at this point.

 

[Generic_Pessimist]

RTX 3080. Modern NVENC provides a video encode quality on-par with x264 Slow, with zero in-game impact when correctly configured.

AMD's equivalent, AMF, is... very, very bad. Poor encode quality, uses game-rendering resources for the encode, misreports feature levels (so can just crash if something tries to use a feature it says it supports, when it doesn't).

(edit) I forgot that the 5900X is a CPU, not a GPU. Derp. Still, use NVENC. There's almost no quality gain from a software x264 encode as compared to modern NVENC, even at the most taxing preset levels. NVENC is why 2PC setups are effectively dead at this point.

Would the cpu upgrade help the stream experience at all then in this case provided I keep using nvenc?

 

[koala]

Probably not directly. Your CPU upgrade helps the game running better, so your stream will look better. Due to its huge CPU and bandwidth consumption, x264 is inferior to nvenc on a rtx 3080: it will push the CPU to higher usage for no visual improvement over nvenc, which will make your game run less optimal. Nvenc on the other hand has almost zero impact on the game, so your game will run almost as good as with no capturing and streaming at all.

 

[FerretBomb]

Would the cpu upgrade help the stream experience at all then in this case provided I keep using nvenc?

Not really, unless you were performance-bottlenecking on the old one. I mean, it'll give you more breathing room as far as the game you're playing, any advanced cpu-bound effects or filters/programs. But it won't improve your encode quality, since that's already being handled by NVENC at the equivalent of a VERY good software/cpu-bound encode.