Laptop GPU (NVENC) vs CPU x264 for encoding:

[kavinreed]

For those who encode a lot on laptops, do you still prefer CPU x264/x265 for quality, or is NVENC on newer GPUs good enough now? I know NVENC is much faster, but I'm not sure how visible the quality gap is at the same bitrate these days.

Also wondering if a laptop with a dedicated GPU is really worth it for encoding, or if a good CPU with more cores is the better use of money.

[jagabo]

Laptops are notoriously under-cooled and should be avoided for software encoding.

[pandy]

Same bitrate? This will not work but if you can accept 20% higher bitrate then NVEnc is sane choice.

[jagabo]

I use x264 for 8bit h.264 SD and HD encoding, NVEnc for 10 bit h.265 UHD encoding. Using a well cooled desktop computer.