Streamers who use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) can take advantage of a pretty big boost to both framerate and stream quality with the software's latest update. Teaming up with NVIDIA, OBS version 23.0 includes optimizations for NVIDIA graphics cards that can offload some of the encoding work done by your CPU, helping to improve overall performance without investing in a dedicated encoding rig.
Specifically, OBS version 23.0 takes advantage of the dedicated NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) on GeForce graphics cards for the heavy lifting. According to NVIDIA, this improves streaming in two major ways:
- Visual quality of stream: encoding that typically requires heavy-lifting from the CPU, and causes a trade-off between local framerates and streaming quality, is almost completely off-loaded, freeing the CPU up to handle other tasks.
- Improved framerates and game performance: the rest of the GPU is free to do what's most important, play your favorite games at the highest framerates possible.
NVIDIA's latest RTX 20-series GPUs feature the dedicated NVENC hardware encoder, so you'll get the best bang for your buck if you've already outfitted your streaming rig with one. However, NVIDIA says that "current GeForce GTX GPUs, 600-series and newer with NVENC, will also see speedups with these optimizations" as well. Have a glance at our list of the best graphics cards if you're looking to upgrade.
You can download OBS version 23.0 now for free.
Ray tracing goodness
EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC
The latest and greatest.
NVIDIA's RTX series is its latest and greatest. Sporting support for improved lighting effects via ray tracing, powerful AI, and built on the company's Turing architecture, the RTX 2070 marks a solid middle ground between power and price.
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