For most Apex Legends streams, the best OBS setup is a GPU hardware encoder (NVIDIA NVENC, AMD AMF or Intel Quick Sync) sending 1920×1080 at 60 fps, 6,000 kbps CBR with a 2-second keyframe interval to Twitch, fed by a Game Capture source and an in-game frame cap that keeps your graphics card below full load. If the picture turns to mush during fights at that bitrate, drop the output to 1664×936 before you change anything else. YouTube and Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting allow more, and the table below shows where each GPU family lands.
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Top 3 picks at a glance
Apex Legends OBS settings by GPU tier
Every row assumes OBS Studio 32 in Advanced output mode, CBR rate control and a 2-second keyframe interval. Bitrates are video only; add 160 kbps AAC audio for Twitch, or 128 kbps for YouTube, which is its stereo recommendation.
| GPU and destination | Encoder | Output resolution and fps | Video bitrate | Encoder preset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 40 or 50 series to Twitch | NVENC H.264 | 1920×1080, 60 fps | 6,000 kbps | P6, High Quality tuning, Two Passes (Quarter Resolution) |
| GeForce RTX 40 or 50 series to YouTube | NVENC AV1 | 2560×1440, 60 fps | 12,000–18,000 kbps | P5 or P6 |
| GeForce RTX 20 or 30 series to Twitch | NVENC H.264 | 1920×1080 or 1664×936, 60 fps | 6,000 kbps | P5 or P6 |
| GeForce RTX 20 or 30 series to YouTube | NVENC HEVC | 1920×1080, 60 fps | 10,000–12,000 kbps | P5 |
| GTX 16 series or entry laptop GPU | NVENC H.264 | 1280×720, 60 fps | 4,500 kbps | P4 or P5 |
| Radeon RX 7000 or 9000 to Twitch | AMD HW H.264 | 1920×1080 or 1664×936, 60 fps | 6,000 kbps | Quality |
| Radeon RX 7000 or 9000 to YouTube | AMD HW AV1 | 1920×1080, 60 fps | 8,000–12,000 kbps | Quality (Balanced if overloaded) |
| Radeon RX 6000 | AMD HW H.264 (HEVC for YouTube) | 1664×936, 60 fps | 6,000 kbps | Balanced |
| Intel Arc A or B series | QSV H.264 for Twitch, QSV AV1 for YouTube | 1920×1080, 60 fps | 6,000 / 8,000–10,000 kbps | TU4 (Balanced) |
| CPU only, 8 or more cores | x264 | 1280×720, 60 fps | 4,500 kbps | veryfast |
The Twitch rows stay at 6,000 kbps because that is still Twitch’s guideline ceiling for a normal single-track stream; going above it can leave viewers who don’t get transcode options buffering. The YouTube rows sit inside YouTube’s published ranges: 4–12 Mbps for 1080p60 in AV1 or HEVC, 6–17 Mbps for 1080p60 in H.264, and 6–24 Mbps for 1440p60 in AV1 or HEVC. Avoid x264 unless you have cores to spare, because Apex battle royale matches already lean hard on the CPU.
Why Apex needs more bitrate than its art style suggests
Apex stacks three things encoders struggle with: a camera that almost never stops moving (slides, ziplines, jump towers, grapples), full-screen particle effects such as Bangalore smoke, Caustic gas and Gibraltar’s dome, and dense foliage on maps like Storm Point. Each new frame contains a lot of detail the previous one didn’t, so a fixed 6 Mbps budget gets spread thin. A quick bits-per-pixel calculation shows why a slightly lower output resolution helps:
- 1920×1080 at 60 fps = 124.4 million pixels per second. At 6,000 kbps that is about 0.048 bits per pixel.
- 1664×936 at 60 fps = 93.5 million pixels per second. At 6,000 kbps that is about 0.064 bits per pixel, roughly 33% more data for every pixel.
- 1280×720 at 60 fps = 55.3 million pixels per second. At 4,500 kbps that is about 0.081 bits per pixel.
Viewers watching in a small player or on a phone rarely notice a 936p stream, but they do notice blocky smears when a fight fills the screen with smoke. Keep 60 fps either way: halving the frame rate makes Apex’s fast turns look choppy, which is worse than a small resolution drop.
Capturing Apex in OBS after the DirectX 11 removal
Respawn removed the DirectX 11 option in the Season 24 patch in March 2025, so Apex now runs only as r5apex_dx12.exe. Old guides that say “switch to DX11 to fix a black capture” no longer apply. Use this order instead:
- Add a Game Capture source, set Mode to Capture specific window and pick [r5apex_dx12.exe]. Game Capture hooks the renderer directly and costs less than Display Capture.
- Run Apex in Borderless Window if alt-tabbing breaks the hook; it is the most forgiving mode for capture with anti-cheat games.
- Leave “Use anti-cheat compatibility hook” on at first. If the game stutters only while OBS is hooked, toggling it off has fixed that for some Easy Anti-Cheat players.
- If the source stays black, close MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner Statistics Server, which are a commonly reported conflict with the DX12 hook, then run OBS as administrator.
- On laptops, set both obs64.exe and Apex to the dedicated GPU in Windows graphics settings. Game Capture cannot grab a game rendered on a different GPU than OBS.
- Still black after an OBS update? Close OBS, clear the C:\ProgramData\obs-studio-hook folder so the hook files are rebuilt, and relaunch. Display Capture is the fallback, but it shows notifications and anything else on that monitor.
In-game settings that leave room for the encoder
NVENC, AMF and QSV run on dedicated encoder hardware, but OBS still needs GPU time to composite your scene. When Apex pins the GPU at 99%, OBS reports rendering lag and the stream stutters even though the game feels smooth. NVIDIA’s own OBS guide recommends capping frame rate so GPU usage stays under about 95%.
- Frame cap: The engine tops out around 300 fps. Add the launch option +fps_max followed by a number (for example +fps_max 180) in Steam or the EA app, and pick a value your GPU can hold with some load to spare. A steady cap also gives OBS evenly paced frames to sample at 60 fps.
- Adaptive Resolution FPS Target: Set it to 0. Otherwise Apex lowers its render resolution in heavy fights, exactly when the encoder is already starved, and the stream goes soft.
- NVIDIA Reflex: Keep it Enabled; it works alongside a frame cap and doesn’t fight OBS.
- Texture Streaming Budget: Pick a tier at or just below your card’s VRAM. OBS browser sources and alert overlays also need video memory.
- V-Sync: Off, with the frame cap doing the pacing.
- Volumetric Lighting and Sun Shadow Coverage: Lowering these typically frees GPU time with little competitive cost.
Also turn on Windows Game Mode and Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, both of which NVIDIA lists in its OBS guidance.
OBS output settings, field by field
- Video: Base (canvas) 1920×1080, Output 1920×1080 or 1664×936, Downscale Filter Lanczos so text and the kill feed stay readable, Common FPS 60.
- Rate control: CBR. Twitch and YouTube both ask for constant bitrate so their ingest servers get a predictable stream.
- Keyframe interval: 2 seconds, not 0. Twitch requires 2 seconds, and YouTube recommends 2 with a 4-second maximum.
- NVENC extras: NVIDIA’s recommended values are High profile, Look-ahead and Psycho Visual Tuning on, and Two Passes (Quarter Resolution). If OBS shows “Encoding overloaded,” drop to P5 and Single Pass before touching resolution.
- Network: If you see dropped frames, Twitch suggests cutting bitrate by 200–500 kbps, which barely changes picture quality.
Twitch Enhanced Broadcasting and YouTube
Ticking Enable Enhanced Broadcasting under Settings, Stream has OBS encode several renditions on your GPU and choose settings automatically, so the manual encoder fields are locked. Since June 2026, Twitch’s 2K option is open to all Partners and Affiliates, with up to 9 Mbps for the 1440p HEVC track and 7.5 Mbps for the 1080p H.264 track. Every rendition is uploaded at once, so those two tracks alone need 16.5 Mbps of upload before lower renditions and audio. Twitch doesn’t currently offer AV1, so keep AV1 for YouTube or local recordings. For YouTube, AV1 at 1440p60 is the cleanest way to show Apex’s long sightlines without the soft look of a 1080p stream.
Audio, Streamer Mode and stream delay
- Capture game sound with an Application Audio Capture source on r5apex_dx12.exe so it gets its own fader and can sit a few decibels under your microphone.
- Set Settings, Gameplay, Streamer Mode to Killer or All. It replaces other players’ names with aliases, which keeps offensive usernames off your stream.
- For ranked sessions, OBS’s Advanced, Stream Delay setting with 30–60 seconds makes stream sniping much harder. The trade-off is slower chat interaction, so many streamers only enable it in ranked.
