Nvidia is quietly expanding the video encoding capabilities of GeForce GPUs

The video encoding hardware built into GeForce GPUs is getting a bit of a boost, according to Nvidia’s recently updated support page (as seen by Tom’s Hardware). Previously, the NVENC encoder built into GeForce GPUs could encode up to three video streams simultaneously. Now, most GPUs supported by current Nvidia drivers can encode up to five streams of video simultaneously, opening up possibilities that have always been present in hardware but were limited to software in consumer GPUs.

It’s unclear exactly when Nvidia made this change, but archival snapshots on the Internet Wayback Machine show the old three-thread limit as early as March 18th, so you may need to install the most recent drivers to unlock additional encoding options. Your video quality settings may also limit the number of video streams you can encode at the same time.

Most GeForce GPUs dating back to the 2014 Maxwell architecture now support additional concurrent threads, so you don’t need a new or powerful graphics card to benefit from this change (although there are some models, especially MX-series GPUs for the budget). laptops that still don’t have video encoding capability, presumably because they lack the hardware). The list includes older models such as the GeForce 750 Ti, as well as most GeForce 900, 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 series cards. The types of video you can encode will still depend on what your GPU’s hardware encoder actually supports; this Nvidia support document lists the supported codecs,

Many of the GPUs on this list still have hardware capable of encoding even more video streams at once, but Nvidia still places software restrictions on these GPUs to encourage people who encode many streams at once to buy its Quadro and RTX for workstations . Instead, GPUs are used. There are software patches that can remove these restrictions for GeForce GPUs, although you rely on third parties to keep them updated and it may or may not be convenient for you to install them on your system.