What is Intel Quick Sync?

Intel Quick Sync is Intel’s hardware video encoding and decoding technology integrated into some of its CPU's. This encoder will take the job of encoding your video stream from your CPU and use the Intel integrated graphics card instead. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU micro-architecture on 9 January 2011. You can use Intel Quick Sync if you have an integrated graphics card by following the guide below.


How do I enable Intel Quick Sync?

If the option for Intel Quick Sync is not enabled in the Overwolf settings, please proceed to do the following:

  1. Check here if your CPU supports the Intel Quick Sync technology.
    If your CPU does not support this, you can not use this encoder.
  2. Make sure your motherboard is supported via Intel integrated graphics card (iGPU).
    For example, the P67 series motherboard does not allow use of the iGPU and therefore cannot use Quick Sync.

Once you have determined that you own a CPU and motherboard that supports Intel Quick Sync, please do the following:

  1. Enable your Intel Integrated graphics (iGPU) in your BIOS.
    Refer to your motherboard's user manual on how to access and configure this option, you can follow this guide here (take note that the BIOS settings may vary between manufacturers, so please check your manufacturer's website and manuals to make sure you are doing it correctly, since we simply can not provide instructions for various set-ups).
  2. Install the latest chip-set drivers for your motherboard and CPU so your iGPU is up to date (click here to download the latest update).
  3. Right click on your desktop and click on “Display Settings”:

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  4. Select the “Detect” button to find inactive displays:

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  5. Choose the display that correlates to your Intel HD Graphics (this will be one of the windows shown as “Another display not detected”) and click on “Try to connect anyway”:

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  6. Click on “Apply” to save the changes.
  7. Select your main display and choose “Extend desktop to this display”:

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  8. Click on “Apply” and a when a popup window shows select “Keep changes”

Now that we enabled your Intel Quick-Sync it's time to make sure the encoder is working in Overwolf:

  1. Open up your Overwolf settings (the little wrench icon)
  2. Click on the "Capture" tab
  3. Click on "Advanced"
  4. Scroll down to the "Encoding" option
  5. Click on the drop down arrow and choose "Intel Quick Sync"
  6. Try to record a video with one of the capturing apps