Do you want to stream or record with OBS Studio using NVIDIA’s NVENC hardware encoder (H.264, H.265/HEVC or AV1), but you don’t know which graphics card to buy for good video quality? Not every NVIDIA GPU supports every codec. NVIDIA publishes an official list of all its GPUs with their encoding (NVENC) and decoding (NVDEC) features: the Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix.
Direct link: NVIDIA Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix
In this article
How to read the support matrix
- Open the matrix and expand NVENC – Encoding. For video playback features, expand NVDEC – Decoding instead.
- Choose your category: Consumer (GeForce), Professional (NVIDIA RTX / Quadro), Server (Data Center), DGX or Jetson / IGX.
- Find your graphics card (or the one you want to buy) in the BOARD column.
- Check the codec columns: H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC) and AV1. “YES” means the card can encode that format.
- Look at NVENC Generation and Total # of NVENC. Newer generations add features, and some cards have more than one encoder.
Quick facts for GeForce cards
This is what NVIDIA’s matrix showed in October 2026:
- No NVENC at all: some cheap cards, such as the GeForce GT 1030 and many MX laptop GPUs (for example MX150, MX350 and MX450), have no hardware encoder. Don’t buy them for streaming with NVENC.
- H.264: supported by all other GeForce cards in the list, from the Maxwell generation (GTX 745, GTX 750 and the GTX 900 series) up to the RTX 50 series.
- H.265 (HEVC): supported from the second Maxwell generation (GTX 950, 960, 970 and 980) onward. The GTX 745 to GTX 750 Ti (first Maxwell generation) can’t encode HEVC.
- HEVC B-frames: need the 7th NVENC generation or newer, which starts with the Turing cards (RTX 20 series and most GTX 16 series cards).
- AV1: only the RTX 40 series (Ada Lovelace) and RTX 50 series (Blackwell) can encode AV1. The RTX 30 series and older can’t.
NVIDIA updates the matrix when new cards come out, so always check the official list before you buy.
Use NVENC in OBS Studio
In OBS Studio, open Settings > Output and choose an NVIDIA NVENC encoder (H.264, HEVC or AV1, depending on what your card supports) in the encoder list. The video is then encoded by the graphics card instead of the processor. To stream to several platforms at the same time, see how to live stream on multiple platforms with OBS for free.
NVIDIA Video Codec SDK
Developers who want to use NVENC and NVDEC in their own software can download the NVIDIA Video Codec SDK here: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk/download
Source: NVIDIA Developer
