OBS Studio receives optimization for NVIDIA graphics that improves performance for streaming and games

Robert Sole 28 February, 2019

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The OBS Studio software has been optimized for NVIDIA graphics, which will allow to improve the performance in games thanks to a codec optimization.

Streaming is more present than ever in the world of gaming, with a large number of platforms to play with. Today many professional streamers use two systems, one for gaming and one for live streaming. This allows to reduce the load on the gaming system, among other functions. NVIDIA has announced that in the next OBS update, they will implement optimization to end this. Now those with NVIDIA graphics will be able to deliver high quality broadcasts with a single system.

OBS will be specifically optimized for NVIDIA GPUs

The next version of the most popular streaming software will offer improved support for the NVENC encoder used in NVIDIA GPUs. Normally for the streams it is usually bet to use encoding by GPU instead of by CPU. This is because GPUs are specially designed for process parallelization and are more efficient than CPUs. On the other hand, this is a problem, since it subtracts work power for the rendering of the game.

NVIDIA reports that version 23 of the OBS Studio software "reduces the impact of streaming FPS by up to 66% compared to the previous version." This means that streaming transmissions will no longer require a transmission quality adjustment to adjust the loss of quality in the game or require two teams, one to play or the other to transmit. All GTX 600 Series GPUs onwards will be the ones to benefit.

Also from NVIDIA have highlighted that their latest graphics will offer "notable improvements in image quality at reduced bit rates." This is made possible by “dedicated hardware encoder architecture improvements.

From NVIDIA they have also highlighted that the number of frames in games such as Fortnite, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Call of Duty: Black Ops 48 and Apex Legends is improved by 4%, being compared with the x264 Fast encoding.

You can download version 23 of OBS Studio for Windows, macOS and Linux from the official website.