The state of hardware .h264 encoders (AMD VCE / QuickSync) in Afterburner?

Discussion in 'MSI AfterBurner Application Development Forum' started by ClavusElite, Jan 26, 2015.

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  1. ClavusElite

    ClavusElite Guest

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    Hi, I was wondering if I could ask some knowledgeable people about the current state of GPU-accelerated video encoding in Afterburner. From my experience, Afterburner doesn't really seem to achieve the same performance as the AMD Gaming Evolved app when using the AMD VCE plugin for h264 encoding. For example in Arma 3, when I start recording with Afterburner I can easily see 1/4th of my fps drop, while with the Gaming Evolved app the performance impact is negligible. Same goes for when using Intel QuickSync in Afterburner (even though it seems to massively outperform AMD VCE?).

    Using a R9 290 btw (so should be VCE 2.0), plus an Intel 4770K.

    I can't see much of a difference between the resulting recording quality, so I'm left wondering where Afterburner is held back, as it seems to me that both applications are using the same method for encoding. So why is that? Did I make a wrong assumption anywhere? Do the official vendor apps (like AMD's GVR / ShadowPlay) use some kind of hidden APIs that 3rd-party apps can't access?

    I really think that Afterburner is one of the best recording applications out there because of the many options, but the performance impact is just way bigger that of the official apps.
     
  2. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    If you believe that current state of all hardware accelerated encoding modes in AB is crap and "way back" behind everything else, you have nice and very simple option to use vendor's native software only. AB is not a single button tool like ShadowPlay/GVR, preconfigured for record on single hardware platform only and it requires a bit of understanding to use it. And as the majority you're absolutely wrongly identifying video encoding as the source of performance hit. It is just plain wrong.
    That's the only comments I'll leave here, please leave the tool for those who can use it.
     
  3. ClavusElite

    ClavusElite Guest

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    I'm sorry if I'm making wrong assumptions, but as I mentioned I really didn't know where the problem was, hence I was asking. The post you linked explains pretty much everything I needed to know. So after CPU bottlenecks and HDD bottlenecks, we also have DirectX bottlenecks... I assume AMD then has something similar to Nvidia's NVFBC and NVIFR interfaces that only GVR uses at the moment?

    Thanks for the info and sorry for sounding ignorant :)
     
  4. Darkness Knight

    Darkness Knight Guest

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    mmm yeah, i noticed fps drops with afterburner, instead use Mirillis Action!

    Salu2 - Darkness Knight
     

  5. Unwinder

    Unwinder Ancient Guru Staff Member

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    Closed. Sometimes I really regret that AB is distributed freely.
     
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