Question / Help Need some suggestions on Capture Cards.

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IIISystemXIII

New Member
Hello OBS Cummunity,
I am looking for some help on choosing a capture card for streaming. I'm not new to the scene as I have been streaming twitch for a long time now just fine without a capture card but with most newer games now days I'm starting to get some performance loss and dropped fps in-game because of the cpu and gpu usage I'm having to utilize just to stream from OBS. I just need some rough suggestions as to which cards you people think are the best out there and the ones you have less problems with. have a budget of 200$. I've looked around myself for some but I'd rather get opinions from those who own one and have there own experiences so I can be informed myself upon which are good and which to stray away from. Just looking for something to stream 720P at 60 FPS or even 1080P at 60 FPS. Preferably I would like 720. Thanks in advance to those who help me out.
 
Krazy

Krazy

Town drunk
On a single PC setup, adding a capture card likely won't make anything better. OBS already uses capture methods that are extremely efficient, using very minimal resources in order to do so, the only real added strain is the x264 encoding. Capture cards can't avoid that, and in some cases can actually result in slightly less performance because of how they work.
 
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jesyjames

New Member
For me, the biggest difference a capture card(LG HD) has made on a single pc setup is the removal of that feeling of streaming. You know the one where you start to stream and immediately can feel the difference in game play. For whatever reason, whenever I use game source or any of the various screen capture methods I feel input lag-- however slight, however in my head-- and it really drives me crazy.

FPS performance wise, there is a negligible difference in frame rate using game capture vs the capture card.

I had actually bought the live gamer portable hoping to use my laptop to do the encoding but as it's not currently supported it's currently an expensive paper weight.
 
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IIISystemXIII

New Member
@Jesyjames
Yeah i know what your talking about with the noticeable difference to when you aren't streaming and your games run just fine but when you start a cast you notice the fps issue with some games where it's not running its full potential. That in it self is what drives me crazy to. That's the who reason why I was asking for suggestions for Capture cards because I thought It would alleviate the problems I'm having with a slight drop in FPS and such. But from what I'm reading I guess it has some negative and positive affects but doesn't solve the issue with a single PC setup. I guess the best route would be to run a dual PC setup that way to completely negate all that CPU and GPU usage on the same PC from Streaming.

@ Krazy
I do notice that OBS does a great job and minimizing the the performance loss when streaming compared to Xsplit which is why I love this program. I can run a 720p Stream no problem due to the fact that my Connection is 55mb Down and 11mb Up so i can run it pretty well, I just don't like, like I've said before the noticeable drop in FPS slightly on most games from streaming a Single PC. But I get what your saying.

@ WayZHC
I've had friends tell me as we have argued back and forth that the Live Gamer HD isn't really worth the extra cash considering my friends have this card and say that the quality isn't all that great and it's more of just a nice pretty card to have in your case. I've seen some streams who run with this card and it seems not at all bad in my opinion. But I have also considered the cheaper Avermedia card which was the Game Broadcaster HD due to the fact that it looks like it runs all the same things Live Gamer HD does just without the nice looking cover on the card and the Record button. The Game Broadcaster HD is what I've been recommended by a couple people but I'm always seeking out opinions of others to make my final decision.

I do appreciate your responses to this matter and I will most definitely take all this information into account. But Overall It looks like a Dual PC setup would be the best way to go.
 
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jesyjames

New Member
I will tell you one negative to a dual stream setup which may or may not matter to you: it's kind of a hassle.

With a single pc setup, it's as simple as firing up OBS and hitting stream-- which encourages me to do it. When using my laptop, I found it sort of a pain to get it plugged in, find a good spot for it, etc. It might be different with a dedicated desktop machine that is always there and all you have to do is turn it on.. but it's definitely something to consider. I don't always want to turn on two computers to play/stream a game.
 
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IIISystemXIII

New Member
@ Jesyjames
Yeah I get your point with it also being sort of a hassle firing up 2 PC's just to stream. I have a spare PC which is why I was considering it in the first place but I'm still up in the air about it. By the way I wanted to ask you about the Actual name of the card you are currently using at the moment. I know you stated LG (HD) but I couldn't find anything on it unfortunately. Just so i can compare and contrast the differences between all the ones I'm looking at and considering and also by checking out peoples reviews and such. Thanks for response. Much appreciated.
 
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jesyjames

New Member
Oh, sorry, Avermedia Live Gamer HD. I also have the portable version which isn't compatible with OBS at the moment.

I went with the Live Gamer HD as it is the only card I know of that lets you play at 1080p/60fps and stream at 720p/60fps. I was hoping that would be the case with the Live Gamer Portable so I could use my laptop to encode, but other than a promised patch for that ability/obs support so far it's been a fail for me. Does anyone know of a USB card that lets you play in 1080p and stream in 720p/60fps? I mostly play FPS games and really enjoy the smoothness of 60fps streams.

Here is just a brief comparison for you:

Avermedia Live Gamer as capture source:
http://www.twitch.tv/sm4llz/c/2251644
Min FPS 173, Max 185, Avg 178.167

Game Capture as Source
http://www.twitch.tv/sm4llz/c/2251647
Min FPS 141, Max 185, Avg 171.711

Just running the benchmark without streaming:
Min FPS 164, Max 199, Avg 175.097

Obviously BO2 runs great for me either way and there is not too much of a difference in FPS, though the minimum is quite a bit lower using Game Capture. But it wasn't exactly apples to apples as you can see by the lengths and the fact that I left the hud up for the first part of the 2nd video. That said, I think the difference would've been there anyway.

I'd probably have to do a little more GPU intensive comparisons, but hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea. Like I said, for me, the biggest difference is in how the game feels... my mouse just feels more like I'm used to it feeling using the LiveGamer. And I freely admit it might be placebo effect, but there you have it.
 
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