Status of AMD hardware encoding?

[Fast Draw]

I'm looking for a new GPU and the options are Nvidia and AMD. From personal experience, I know that Quick Sync (QSV) as well as NVENC work very well in OBS. What about AMD?

Is it true that the AMD encoder (Advanced Media Framework) for OBS is not maintained at this time? How well does it work (in Windows 10)?

 

[koala]

AMD hardware encoder is working well with OBS, but the image quality is a bit inferior in comparison to Quicksync and vastly inferior in comparison to Nvenc. It's also not as stable as Nvenc, because it isn't a dedicated circuit like Nvenc, so if your AMD GPU is fully loaded, encoding might lag, while Nvenc would not lag in the same load situation.
If you look for a GPU to buy and intend to do hardware encoding, choose a Nvidia GPU for Nvenc. Preferably a GPU with the Turing chipset (RTX 2xxx and 3xxx, as well as GTX 16xx SUPER (not the non-SUPER ones)). Turing is able to get a quality on par with x264 medium preset.

 

[Fast Draw]

the image quality is a bit inferior in comparison to Quicksync and vastly inferior in comparison to Nvenc. It's also not as stable as Nvenc

That’s unfortunate but it is AMD’s fault, OBS has nothing to do with it, if I understand this correctly. Perhaps AMD can improve this with the RX 6800/6900 GPUS. I guess we’ll see. If it is inferior to NVENC and QSV that is not good. I’m currently using QSV and sometimes NVENC with a GeForce GTX 1050. Now I’m looking at the RTX 3070 and Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT.

 

[koala]

The image quality is a hardware thing, OBS is just calling a driver API for all of the hardware encoders.

 

[frederic1]

The GeForce RTX 20xx cards are awesome, the only drawback compared to the AMD RX 5000 series is that they consume more power. Energy being an important criteria for me because my PC stays on 24/7 and that energy is very expensive here in France, I bought the AMD RX 5500 XT rather than the GeForce GTX 2060 despite its formidable encoding quality.

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT Idle consumption : 5W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Idle consumption : 10W

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT multi-monitor consumption : 19W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 multi-monitor consumption : 15W

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT playback consumption : 12W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 playback consumption : 15W

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT gaming consumption : 115W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 gaming consumption : 187W

Sources :
- AsRock RX 5500 XT Power Consumption : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-radeon-rx-5500-xt-phantom-gaming-oc-8-gb/31.html
- MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Power Consumption : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-2060-gaming-z/30.html

 

[frederic1]

I have finally sold my Radeon RX 5500 XT for a MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gaming x which is the best compromise. It has even lower Power Consumption than the AMD but a much more powerful GPU (turing).

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT Idle consumption : 5W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Idle consumption : 10W
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gaming X Idle consumption : 5W

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT multi-monitor consumption : 19W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 multi-monitor consumption : 15W
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gaming X multi-monitor consumption : 7W

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT playback consumption : 12W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 playback consumption : 15W
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gaming X playback consumption : 8W

ASRock RADEON RX 5500 XT gaming consumption : 115W
MSI GeForce RTX 2060 gaming consumption : 187W
MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gaming X gaming consumption : 100W

Sources :
- AsRock RX 5500 XT Power Consumption : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-radeon-rx-5500-xt-phantom-gaming-oc-8-gb/31.html
- MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Power Consumption : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-2060-gaming-z/30.html
- MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gaming X Power Consumption : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-gtx-1650-super-gaming-x/31.html