When you set up OBS to stream or record, one choice affects quality and performance more than almost any other: which encoder you use. The two main options are NVENC, the dedicated encoding hardware built into NVIDIA GPUs, and x264, a software encoder that runs on your CPU. Picking the right one for your hardware and goals is the difference between a smooth, sharp stream and a laggy, blocky one.
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How They Differ
x264 encodes video on the CPU. At slower presets it can produce excellent quality, but it steals CPU cycles from your game, which can tank frame rates on a single PC. NVENC offloads encoding to a separate part of the GPU, so it barely touches gaming performance. Modern NVENC (Turing generation and newer) closed most of the quality gap, making it the default recommendation for most streamers.
At a Glance
| Factor | NVENC (modern) | x264 |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | GPU encode block | CPU |
| Gaming FPS impact | Very low (1-5%) | High at good presets |
| Quality at 6-8 Mbps | Excellent | Excellent (slow preset) |
| Best for | Single-PC streaming | Dual-PC / spare CPU |
| CPU headroom needed | Minimal | Substantial |
Which Should You Use?
Choose NVENC If
You have a single gaming PC with a GeForce GPU from the RTX 20-series or newer. Modern NVENC delivers quality very close to x264’s slower presets while leaving your CPU free for the game. For the vast majority of streamers, this is the correct answer.
Choose x264 If
You run a two-PC setup where a dedicated streaming machine’s CPU has nothing better to do, or you have a very strong CPU with spare cores and want to squeeze maximum quality out of a low bitrate. On a single PC while gaming, x264 at “medium” or “slow” usually costs too much frame rate to be worth it.
Bitrate Guidance
Encoder choice interacts with bitrate. Streaming platforms cap ingest bitrate, so efficiency matters most at the low end.
| Resolution / FPS | Recommended Bitrate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 720p60 | 4,500-6,000 kbps | Good with NVENC |
| 1080p60 | 6,000-8,000 kbps | NVENC or x264 slow |
| 1440p60 | 10,000-15,000 kbps | Needs high ingest limit |
At the common 6,000 kbps cap for 1080p60, modern NVENC and a slow x264 preset look remarkably similar, so the tie-breaker becomes performance, where NVENC wins on a single PC.
Encoder Settings That Matter
For NVENC, set the preset to Quality or “P6/P7 slow,” enable Look-ahead and Psycho Visual Tuning, and use a max B-frames value of 2-3. For x264, choose the slowest preset your CPU can sustain without dropping frames, “veryfast” is the safe single-PC default, “medium/slow” only if you have the headroom.
Recording vs Streaming Changes the Math
The NVENC-versus-x264 decision shifts depending on whether you are streaming live or recording locally. Live streaming is bitrate-constrained by the platform, so efficiency at 6,000-8,000 kbps is what matters, and modern NVENC handles that beautifully with almost no gaming cost. Local recording, by contrast, lets you use a very high bitrate or even near-lossless settings, where NVENC still shines and keeps file sizes and CPU load manageable. For most creators the answer is NVENC for both, reserving x264 only when a dedicated second PC has a strong CPU sitting idle.
Watch the Stats Dock, Not Just the Preview
Whichever encoder you choose, keep OBS’s Stats dock open while you test. It separates frames lost to encoding lag (a CPU or GPU limit) from frames lost to the network (an upload problem), which are fixed in completely different ways. If encoding-lagged frames climb, ease the preset or resolution; if network-dropped frames climb, address your upload or bufferbloat. Judging your encoder by the Stats numbers over a real gaming session is far more reliable than eyeballing the local preview, which never shows the stutter your viewers actually experience.
FAQ
Is NVENC worse quality than x264?
On older NVIDIA cards, yes. On RTX 20-series and newer, modern NVENC is very close to x264’s slow preset at typical streaming bitrates, and the small quality difference is usually outweighed by the huge performance advantage on a single PC.
Does using NVENC lower my game’s FPS?
Only slightly, typically a few percent, because encoding happens on a dedicated block of the GPU rather than the shaders. That is far less impact than x264 at a good preset, which can cost you double-digit frame-rate percentages.
Bottom Line
For nearly every single-PC streamer with a modern GeForce card, NVENC is the right encoder: near-x264 quality with minimal frame-rate cost. Reserve x264 for dual-PC setups or CPUs with cores to spare. Match your bitrate to your resolution and platform cap, dial in the quality presets, and you will get a clean stream without sacrificing your gameplay.
