Examined: With RDNA 3, AMD Radeon is lastly helpful for content material creators

It’s a tough reality, however AMD’s Radeon graphics playing cards have by no means been significantly wonderful in content material creation or reside streaming workflows. CUDA runs the world for video enhancing, and the AMF/VCE video encoder on AMD playing cards historically doesn’t hold up to the competition. However RDNA 3 and the Radeon RX 7900 series would possibly change all that.

I solely had restricted (distant) entry to one in every of AMD’s next-gen GPUs for testing, however I couldn’t resist testing the encoder capabilities on this new era and seeing how the updates fare. Spoiler alert: There’s so much to love now.

Welcome to the AV1 period

Ensuing from AMD’s acquisition of Xilinix, RDNA 3 GPUs now have Xilinix {hardware} onboard for the “New twin media engine.” AMD’s press conference didn’t present a lot info to go together with on this. The wording implies the “twin” nature is simply the “simultaneous encode and decode” capability, which just about each fashionable GPU can do—it’s simply worded to sound like it’s a related enchancment to the twin AV1 encoders in Nvidia’s content creator-friendly RTX 40-series graphics cards.

The {hardware} change brings us AV1 encoding functionality on AMD’s new Radeon playing cards, too! At present solely supported within the OBS 29 beta, the up to date encoder implementation nonetheless wants a piece, nevertheless it’s very promising.

High quality-wise, it’s truthfully arduous to see any main variations between low-bitrate AV1 encoded on AMD, Nvidia, or Intel {hardware}—which is nice information! For recording and archival utilization, AMD’s new AV1 encoder positively retains up with the competitors and brings that (anticipated however unsure) function parity to next-gen AMD customers.

When pixel-peeping to actually see who’s AV1 encoder performs finest for the upcoming AV1 streaming future at low bitrates (3.5mbps and 6mbps examined right here), AMD’s AV1 high quality appears to fall squarely between Intel and Nvidia, the place it incessantly seems noticeably extra blocky or blurry than Nvidia’s encoding, however doesn’t get as blurry as Intel typically does.

Streaming right this moment?

In additional excellent news: H264 and HEVC encoding on RDNA 3 GPUs additionally runs on a brand new {hardware} setup, with noticeable high quality enhancements over final era AMD encoding.

The unhealthy information? High quality nonetheless lags considerably behind Nvidia and Intel.

Intel and Nvidia nonetheless commerce blows for who has the very best quality in these eventualities, however AMD nonetheless can’t sustain.

This issues much less at greater bitrates, however high quality will harm at decrease bitrates. Although it’s price noting that the standard bounce between RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 is most vital at decrease bitrates!

Clearly the extra fast-paced the sport or content material you’re attempting to stream is, the extra this high quality distinction issues. For slower video games, the standard distinction is much less important.

It’s good to see that there’s some high quality enchancment right here , particularly since Nvidia is completed updating H264 high quality and I might be shocked if future Intel generations noticed enchancment on the legacy codec, both—however I used to be, admittedly, hoping for extra.

It’s unclear if this high quality bump is because of higher {hardware} making the most of extra intense software program config right here (similar to AMD’s claimed “AI” or machine studying technique of bettering video high quality), or if these encoders are operating on new {hardware}. I’m inclined to imagine H264 and HEVC are nonetheless encoding on older AMD {hardware}, as in Job Supervisor the older codecs are proven to be encoding on totally different {hardware} than AV1.

For recording, archival, and an AV1-streaming future, AMD’s new graphics playing cards will do what creators need. AMD fails to be aggressive for a H264-streaming right here and now, nevertheless, which is disappointing to nonetheless see.

AMD’s encoding tremendous energy

Within the reviewer’s information, AMD states that the H264 encoder can encode 4K video as much as 180FPS in H264 and H265, as much as 240FPS in AV1, and 8K at 48FPS in HEVC and 60FPS in AV1. Whereas not as spectacular as I found RTX 4000’s encoding capabilities are, this may nonetheless be nice—nevertheless it’s extra difficult than that.

The superior information is that this era appears to have no driver lock on encode periods. Meaning you may encode as many concurrent streams or movies as you need till the {hardware} begins to lag. I queued as much as 6 encodes without delay earlier than the Ryzen 9 7950X CPU within the machine bought too slowed down decoding the supply footage time and again. That’s nice. Nvidia at the moment has a driver limitation of three encode periods at a time, regardless of the {hardware} being able to much more.

Encoding greater than two periods at a time is hard, nevertheless, as the brand new “Excessive High quality” preset for AV1 pegs the video encoder {hardware} at one hundred pc utilization with only one 4K 60FPS encode, and I discovered it extremely straightforward to journey into encoder lag territory with each OBS Studio and AMD ReLive. This implies you’ll find yourself with a stuttery or slideshow-like video for those who’re not cautious. Above 1440p, I discovered it most dependable to make use of the “Pace” preset (not accessible in ReLive) which suggests you’ll want to make use of greater bitrates to take care of the identical degree of high quality.

On the intense aspect, this card could be a beautiful selection for Plex server customers wanting loads of simultaneous encodes—as soon as Plex provides help for this {hardware}, a minimum of.

AMD ReLive lives once more

AMD ships their very own recording and streaming software program with their GPUs, akin to Nvidia Shadowplay. Besides, it’s far far higher than Shadowplay in nearly each means. Extra settings, extra capabilities, extra options. Nvidia actually must replace Shadowplay ASAP.

Video enhancing?

I’ll have to research full creator workflow testing sooner or later as soon as I truly get hands-on with AMD’s new playing cards, however I did run a fast DaVinci Resolve benchmark utilizing Puget System’s PugetBench, operating on the Radeon RX 7900 XT moderately than the flagship XTX. It is very important observe that my take a look at bench for this run used an AMD Ryzen 7950X CPU as a substitute of my standard 12900k take a look at bench (since I solely had distant entry) however the outcomes are promising.

The Radeon 7900 XT appears to beat out last-gen’s RTX 3080 and 3090, which is spectacular. It nonetheless has an extended solution to go to match the brand new RTX 4080 and 4090—however hopefully the beefier Radeon RX 7900 XTX could make up that distinction. The 24GB reminiscence capability on the cardboard is actually welcome for video enhancing.

Is AMD again?

Based mostly on their communication decisions, I nonetheless can’t assist however really feel that media and streaming is an afterthought for AMD’s restricted sources (in comparison with Nvidia) however they’re lastly beginning to claw again efficiency in these classes. For individuals doing AI upscaling, video enhancing, or AV1 encoding, I lastly really feel assured recommending AMD playing cards to creators, particularly given how low cost they’re in comparison with Nvidia’s costly GeForce choices this era.