Question / Help Getting good quality from AMD H264

[Thebigcheese]

I have been streaming (and recording) with x264 with no problems, but I recently decided that I wanted to try recording locally while streaming and ran into a bit of a snag. I game and stream from the same computer, so when I am trying to game AND stream AND record, the stream suffers quite noticeably by way of lag and dropouts. As soon as I turn off recording, everything is fine. So, for reference, here are the settings I have been using for each:

Stream (on Beam):
Encoder - x264
Bitrate (CBR) - 3500
Keyframe interval - 1
CPU preset - veryfast
Profile - high
Tune - zerolatency

Recording:
Encoder - x264
Rate control - CRF
CRF - 11
Keyframe Interval - 0
CPU preset - ultrafast

I get a pretty good looking stream out of this and really nice recordings (practically lossless) out of this, but when I do both, OBS hits 50%+ CPU usage, which is, I suspect, why the stream is suffering. I was trying an experiment today to see if switching to the AMD H264 encoder would help, and, as far as consistency goes, it really does. CPU usage drops very dramatically and I get a smooth stream. But the stream looks noticeably worse, as do the recordings (which also take up more space). So maybe I just need some help with the settings. I set the preset to Twitch, but changed the keyframe interval to 1 and went into advanced to change the profile to High. Everything else was left at default, including the 3500 bitrate. I would really like to be able to use it so that I can get a good stream AND high quality local recordings, but at present the quality is so much worse that it's just not doable. I am not familiar with all the advanced settings, though, so I am hoping that someone here might have some suggestions.

 

[JhoNConners]

use x264 for stream, then setup an h264 codec for recording. If you use Nvidia or AMD you can just select Nvidia Nvenc or AVC encoder respectively, or if you want to use the integrated gpu inside your cpu (if you have one) you can download the driver and use it.

H264 is always going to be better than x264. You just don't have the right settings.
What AMD GPU are you using?
When you talk about h264 being bad quality, is that after uploading to YT/Other sites or rendering?
If it's the raw file, and you just use presets, it should look indistinguishable.