Question / Help Capture card, will it do any use?

[solomonyo]

Hello guys!

I was thinking of getting a Capture card for my PC, due to right now when playing more intense games my cpu goes around 80% cpu usage and I was wondering if getting a capture card would reduce this at all?

I haven't really read up on the subject so that's why I'm asking.
And, if it does reduce the cpu usage and such, is it the Avermedia Live Gamer HD I should get?

My PC specs are:
CPU: AMD FX 8350 @ 4.5GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 650Ti BOOST 2048MB
Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0
Memory: Corsair 8GB CL8 1600Mhz VENGEANCE

Edit: Atm I'm livestreaming in 720p@60fps and I rather don't go lower fps. If i'm gonna go 1080p at some point I'd like to do 30fps at least.

 

[Kharay]

First of all, not every capture card out there is supported at this time. Secondly, OBS does not (yet) support any hardware encoding used by capture cards. So, if you're on a single PC setup there really is very little point to acquiring a capture card if improving on the game's performance is what you are after.

There are however other ways to improve on the performance of OBS and the videogame in question. Which games are we talking about here?

 

[solomonyo]

First of all, not every capture card out there is supported at this time. Secondly, OBS does not (yet) support any hardware encoding used by capture cards. So, if you're on a single PC setup there really is very little point to acquiring a capture card if improving on the game's performance is what you are after.

There are however other ways to improve on the performance of OBS and the videogame in question. Which games are we talking about here?

I'm running BF3 right now. At least that's the game which takes up the most performance.
Other games, like WoW, Diablo, Minecraft and similar games doesn't take up as much. But It's in BF3 and in the future BF4 I want more performance.

Getting a new GPU wouldn't really do much difference, at least for the price I could get a capture card with and since I don't have a solid income I rather not go way to expensive.

If it matters, I run 2 screens on the current gpu, one for gaming (1920x1080) and the other on 1280x1024 for Stream chat and such

 

[Kharay]

How about... just toning down the game's graphics a bit? Certain aspects of a game's graphics/behaviour are really very CPU (or GPU) heavy but do not really shine all that well on-stream. Things like Physics, Post-Processing, Shadows, Ground Clutter/Density all can safely be toned down quite a bit without making your stream look any worse but will make sure you free up some CPU and GPU time.

 

[solomonyo]

How about... just toning down the game's graphics a bit? Certain aspects of a game's graphics/behaviour are really very CPU (or GPU) heavy but do not really shine all that well on-stream. Things like Physics, Post-Processing, Shadows, Ground Clutter/Density all can safely be toned down quite a bit without making your stream look any worse but will make sure you free up some CPU and GPU time.

Running on low atm :)
Perhaps there is some other setting I can change via a file or something? To reduce "something" even more?

 

[Kharay]

You could consider running 48 FPS in OBS instead of 60. That might free up some more CPU/GPU time.

 

[solomonyo]

Tried it out and the result wasn't really great.

I was trying it out with a friend, so NVM the swedish. :P

Here's the 48 fps:
http://www.twitch.tv/bondtv/b/444741145

Here's the 60fps:
http://www.twitch.tv/bondtv/b/444743335

I'm glad for your help, but I really don't want to go lower than 60fps on 720p.
Thing is, I do understand the reason that it takes more running bf3 than other games, but if I can gain that performance by buying a capture card that would've been great. But according to you it won't.

There must be another way though.

 

[dodgepong]

If you don't want to sacrifice video quality in your game or on your stream, then the best way to reduce load your computer would be to get a second PC with a capture card to do the encoding. Capture cards on a single-PC setup are useless.

 

[solomonyo]

I hear ya.

Guess I'll figure something out.
I have my old cpu, a AMD Phenom 965 Black Edition laying around here, but I need a motherboard + PSU to get it running.
Do I need a good gpu to run the second pc with capture card?

 

[dodgepong]

The most important thing to have in the dedicated streaming computer is a good CPU. As long as your GPU fully supports DX10, you should be mostly fine.