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Nvidia quietly boosts the video encoding capabilities of GeForce GPUs

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080.

Enlarge / Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

The video encoding hardware built into GeForce GPUs is getting a small boost, according to a quietly updated Nvidia support page (as spotted 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 Nvidia's current drivers can encode up to five streams of video simultaneously, unlocking capabilities that had always been present in the hardware but that were software-limited in consumer GPUs.

It's unclear exactly when Nvidia made this change, but archival snapshots on the Internet Wayback Machine show the old three-stream limit as recently as March 18, so you may need to install the most recent drivers to unlock the additional encoding capabilities. Your video quality settings may also limit the number of video streams you can encode simultaneously.

Most GeForce GPUs going back to the 2014-era Maxwell architecture now support the extra simultaneous streams, so you don't need a new or powerful video card to benefit from the change (though there are some models, particularly MX-series GPUs for budget laptops, that still don't have any video encoding capabilities, presumably because they're missing the hardware). Models as old as the GeForce 750 Ti are on the list, as are most GeForce 900, 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000-series cards. The kinds of video you can encode will still come down to what your GPU's hardware encoder actually supports; that Nvidia support document lists supported codecs, color depths, and other specs for each GPU.

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With Nvidia Eye Contact, youโ€™ll never look away from a camera again

Nvidia's Eye Contact feature automatically maintains eye contact with a camera for you.

Enlarge / Nvidia's Eye Contact feature automatically maintains eye contact with a camera for you. (credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia recently released a beta version of Eye Contact, an AI-powered software video feature that automatically maintains eye contact for you while on-camera by estimating and aligning gaze. It ships with the 1.4 version of its Broadcast app, and the company is seeking feedback on how to improve it. In some ways, the tech may be too good because it never breaks eye contact, which appears unnatural and creepy at times.

To achieve its effect, Eye Contact replaces your eyes in the video stream with software-controlled simulated eyeballs that always stare directly into the camera, even if you're looking away in real life. The fake eyes attempt to replicate your natural eye color, and they even blink when you do.

So far, the response to Nvidia's new feature on social media has been largely negative. "I too, have always wanted streamers to maintain a terrifying level of unbroken eye contact while reading text that obviously isn't displayed inside their webcams," wrote The D-Pad on Twitter.

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GeForce Now Ultimate first impressions: Streaming has come a really long way

Rows of GeForce Now servers

Enlarge / It's not actual GeForce RTX 4080 cards slotted into GeForce Now's "Superpods," but Nvidia says the hardware is pretty close. (credit: Nvidia)

Cloud-based gaming service GeForce Now's new Ultimate tier is rolling out today, promising a series of adjectives about game streaming that might have seemed impossible just a few years ago: high-resolution, ray-traced, AI-upscaled, low-latency, high-refresh-rate, and even competition-ready.

I tested out the Ultimate tier, powered by Nvidia's RTX 4080 "SuperPODs," for a week on a server set up for reviewer early access. If I hadn't been hyper-conscious of frame numbers and hiccups, I could have been tricked into thinking the remote 4080 rig was local. Ultimate streaming can also be "better than local," such as when it lets you stream a AAA, ray-traced game on a low-powered laptop, tablet, or TV with no console attached.

Ars had previously described our GeForce Now 3080 experience as "dreamy" and called the performance "a white-hot stunner that rivals the computing power you can muster" with the same RTX 3080 card in your PC. It's easy to lay at least the same kind of praise on the new Ultimate tier. It replaces the previous RTX 3080 option with the next generation's chipset for the same price ($20 per month, $99 for six months). That might be a steep price tag for a service that mostly makes you buy your games, but given the 4080's $1,200 price, the rent-versus-buy question is worth considering at this level.

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