Question / Help Downscaling (When should I use it?)

I'm pretty certain that I know what most of the options do in OBS but what does downscaling do exactly and should I use it? Main question is, if I set my base resolution to say... 1600x900 and downscale to 2.0 (800x450) does that mean my computer is encoding and performing as if my resolution is 1600x900 but is sending 800x450 to the viewers?

Should I just set a custom res of 800x450? Or 1600x900 and downscale to it?

increases output quality at the cost of output size; the output image will be smaller, but it will be able to maintain quality much better

Doesn't quite answer my question. Is CPU going to be taken up by the base resolution or the downscaled resolution?

Encoding is done at the downscaled resolution, which is 90% of where the CPU time in OBS goes to. Setting your base resolution low will cause aliasing artefacts in the output.

Thanks for the help both of ya! :D

yea, using downscale will reduce CPU usage.