OBS Recordings are not crisp or sharp enough

[nhmanage]

Before anyone tells me to increase my bitrate, I'm fairly certain that it's not my bitrate. My OBS recordings look a bit blurry in the sense that the video quality is too smoothed out that the details kind of blend in with the background. I have tried many different settings, but I can never achieve crisp quality. I have a large 4K monitor (3840x2160), but I mostly play games in windowed mode in 1440p (2560x1440) and record in 1080p (1920x1080). I'm not sure if this is a downscale filter issue, but I've tried every scaling filter option (bilinear, bicubic, lanczos) and still can't get the quality sharp.

Below, I am comparing OBS' video quality to Mirillis Action's. I kept settings as similar as possible on both recorders. Action's setting is simpler than OBS because it doesn't have these confusing downscale filters. I have always praised Action for its sharp video quality, but how can OBS achieve this?

My words probably can't describe the quality that well, so take a look at my test recordings:
OBS (NVENC encoder, 1080p 60fps, 12k kbps CBR, 29.48 MB) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovm6t3x8pc0
Action (NVENC encoder, 1080p, 60fps, 12 kbps CBR, 31.06 MB) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGodtOSl_G0
Raw files (Just click "play" no need to download anything) - https://gofile.io/d/YlgI66

Zoomed in screenshot of crosshair (First is OBS, second is Action)

Zoomed in screenshot of Afterburner's overlay (First is OBS, second is Action)

The colors on OBS also look washed out/faded away maybe because it's blending way too much.

Here are my OBS settings:

 

[Harold]

First problem: You're scaling
Second problem (probably bigger problem): you're using CBR as your rate control while recording.
External future problem: you're saving directly to mp4 and ignoring the warning about the file format being unsuitable for recording.

Set your settings as follows:
Under Settings - output:
Output mode: Simple output
Recording Quality: Indistinguishable
Recording format: MKV
Recording encoder: Nvenc.

 

[Suslik V]

It is not known what is better in quality, here.

Try this test in both programs:

Question / Help - White lines on certain .PNGs?

Hello there! Before I begin I just want to applaud the devs on their fantastic and amazingly-still-free product, I know you guys have put in a lot of hard work to get it to where it is now and wish you only the best of success for the future. With that being said, however, I do feel it is...

obsproject.com

Interesting to see the results...

 

[koala]

Even if you're downscaling, you will make the image slightly blurry. It stays crisp and sharp only if you record exactly the same resolution you're playing your game and not scaling at all.

 

[PaiSand]

Also depends on the video card you have. 20xx and 30xx uses a better encoder (hardware) than the 10xx or 16xx (not sure about the 1660)
And as Harold said, use simple output mode.

 

[Ayther]

Hi, I know this is an old post but did you ever manage to fix your issue?