AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 AV1 encoder is almost on par with Intel Arc and Nvidia’s RTX 40 series

Why it issues: AMD’s new AV1 encoder and totally unlocked encode classes will permit Radeon RX 7000 sequence GPUs to compete instantly in opposition to Nvidia RTX GPUs and Intel Arc Alchemist GPUs within the streaming house. Permitting avid gamers and content material creators to recreation, report, and stream prime quality video all on the identical time on a single graphics card.

Streaming knowledgeable and YouTuber EposVox printed a efficiency preview of AMD’s new AV1 encoder, present in its RX 7000 sequence GPUs, and located the encoding high quality to be surprisingly good for capturing gameplay. In observe, the encoder was capable of get very near Nvidia’s RTX 40 sequence NVENC encoder and typically outperform Intel’s Arc Alchemist counterpart, which is one thing AMD has not been capable of accomplish in years.

EposVox particularly examined with a Radeon RX 7900 XT in a number of titles, together with Apex Legends, Battlefield 2042 and CSGO. In these video games, he says encoder efficiency sits in-between Nvidia and Intel’s AV1 implementations, with AMD’s AV1 encoder wanting the worst in Battlefield 2042 and Apex Legends, however wanting higher than Intel’s AV1 encoder in some conditions as nicely.

Regardless that AMD’s AV1 encoder would not outright beat its rivals, it’s a lot better than AMD’s H.264 encoders which have been sitting behind Nvidia and Intel’s on a constant foundation. As of late, AMD’s AMF H.264 encoder can output good high quality movies, because of updates from AMD, however it’s nonetheless extensively thought to be a final place resident when in comparison with its rivals.

AMD’s new RDNA3 media engine options the primary AV1 {hardware} encoder the corporate has ever put in a client GPU. Earlier generations, together with the RX 6000 sequence, had been capable of decode AV1 movies, however did not have the correct {hardware} to allow AV1 encoding for recording and streaming movies. AV1 is the trade’s newest video codec that’s able to retaining very excessive picture high quality, with a small file dimension compared to codecs like H.264.

It ought to be talked about nevertheless that the encoder is barely supported in OBS Studio right now and it is nonetheless in an immature state. As an illustration, EposVox says AMD’s reviewers information calls for the usage of a number of FFmpeg choices and to manually implement them to get essentially the most out of AMD’s AV1 encodes, which is one thing OBS ought to be capable of do for you inside the software program itself. Efficiency additionally presents points, with AMD’s prime quality video preset being unusable at 4K / 60 FPS output. However these are issues that could possibly be improved with future software program updates.

One function the place AMD is ready to outperform Nvidia is on the quantity of encode classes the engine is able to supporting, which seems to be a vast quantity, based on EposVox, in comparison with simply three on Nvidia’s RTX 40 sequence GPUs. That is one thing that may be extensively wanted by content material creators because it permits a number of video recordings or streams to be lively on the identical time. That is helpful for streaming to a number of platforms like Twitch and YouTube, in addition to recording streams domestically to create shorts at a later date.

As soon as AMD irons out all of the kinks with its AV1 software program implementation, AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 seems to be a really succesful resolution for recording gameplay, with the power to get very near Nvidia’s AV1 resolution and output extra encode classes on the identical time, however solely time will inform if this turns into true.