Andrew Cunningham
The video encoding hardware built into GeForce GPUs is slightly better, according to a quietly updated Nvidia support page (spotted by Tom’s Hardware). Previously, the NVENC encoder built into GeForce GPUs could encode up to 3 video streams simultaneously. Today, most GPUs supported by Nvidia’s current drivers are capable of encoding up to 5 video streams simultaneously, something that has always been present in hardware but limited to software in consumer GPUs. Unleash the functions
It’s unclear exactly when Nvidia made this change, but archival snapshots from the Internet Wayback Machine show an old 3-stream limit dated March 18th, so unlocking additional encoding capabilities could be may need to install the latest drivers. Video quality settings may also limit the number of video streams that can be encoded simultaneously.
Most GeForce GPUs dating back to the 2014 Maxwell architecture now support additional concurrent streams, so you don’t need a new or powerful video card to benefit from this change (although some There are MX series GPUs for models, especially budgets (which probably don’t have the hardware, so they don’t have video encoding capabilities yet). As with most GeForce 900, 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 series cards, the list includes models as old as the GeForce 750 Ti. The type of video you can encode depends on what your GPU’s hardware encoder actually supports. That his Nvidia support document lists the codecs, color depths, and other specs supported by each GPU.
Many of the GPUs on that list still have hardware that can encode more video streams simultaneously, but Nvidia has imposed a software limit on these GPUs to discourage people encoding many streams at once. We encourage you to buy workstation grade Quadro and RTX brands. GPU instead. Software patches exist that can remove these limitations for GeForce GPUs, but if you rely on third parties to keep them up-to-date and are used to having them installed on your system, you may or may not. may not be.
