AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K Review: The best Xbox One X capture card

In 2022, 4K video is hard. More pixels mean more power to procedure them, whether you're playing a game or rendering a video. For gamers, even playing a game at 4K resolution requires serious GPU power. Microsoft has inverse the game with the Xbox One X, a console that costs less than a high-end graphics carte du jour and that is capable of delivering games natively at 4K at 60 frames per 2nd (4K60).

So gamers and content creators rightly want to be able to harness this new power, but ways of capturing 4K60 footage are nevertheless sparse.

AVerMedia has delivered, though, with a $300 capture card that looks incredibly compelling. The Live Gamer 4K ticks all the boxes, just should yous buy 1? Absolutely. Here's why.

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AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K tech specs

The Live Gamer 4K is an impressive bit of equipment, and it needs a adequately capable PC to get the best from it, though not quite as crazy as you lot may have idea.

Specifications

• Interface: PCIe x4 Gen 2.
• Input: HDMI 2.0.
• Output: HDMI 2.0 with lag-gratis passthrough (cable included) with HDR support.
• Supported resolutions: Up to 2160p (4K) at 60 FPS, 1440p120 or 1080p240 and 140Mbps bitrate.
• Format h.264 and h.265.
• Dimensions: 125 mm ten 151 mm x 21.5 mm.
• Weight: 208g.

System requirements for 4K capture

• Bone: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: sixth Gen Intel Cadre i5 and above
• GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1060
• RAM: 8GB dual-channel
• Vacant PCIe 4x/8x/16x slots

Organisation requirements for 1080p60 capture

• Processor: Intel Cadre i5-3330 or above (i7-3770 recommended)
• GPU: NVIDIA GTX 650, AMD R7 250X or in a higher place
• RAM: 4GB

Despite AVerMedia only specifying Intel CPUs, this is apparently because the Alive Gamer 4K works "improve" with Intel. For the purposes of this review, the capture menu was in my own PC running a Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB of RAM and NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti. I had no compatibility issues with Ryzen.

AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K: Simple and effective

What first struck me about the Live Gamer 4K is how well idea out the hardware is. Internal capture cards get warm, simply AVerMedia has covered this ane entirely in mesh panels, with the cease being completely open up. In that location'south no fan, then it's not sucking in dust or expelling heat from the rear, but in that location's however a sizeable heatsink visible, so bold your PC has its cooling in club there are no worries at all. And despite all the mesh, there's withal space for an RGB strip.

Getting set upwardly takes no time at all. The card simply slots into a vacant PCIe slot on your motherboard, you attach the HDMI cables at the back of the PC and download the AVerMedia software to make sure you've got the latest drivers.

The Live Gamer 4K is thoughtfully designed while likewise maintaining a hitting presence in your PC build. And I've had absolutely zero bug in setting upwards and using the capture menu with either the RECentral companion awarding or other software such as OBS and XSplit.

Performance is slap-up and you're not going to surrender all your system resource, either.

Ameliorate still, using CPU rendering (on an 8-cadre Ryzen 7), I was only seeing a total system CPU usage of around xxx to 35 percent, with the RECentral app drawing about twenty percent of that.

This was recording at 1440p60 from my Xbox One X at 114Mbps bitrate. Using the GPU to encode naturally reduces the load on the CPU, in my case dropping to iv percent, while GPU usage on my GTX 1080 Ti stayed pretty steady at around 23 pct.

While streaming, the software performs similarly well, though to Mixer information technology volition only allow you lot to use a 4Mbps bitrate as the upper limit. Resource usage varies when using other software with the Live Gamer 4K, but for the most part, it's very efficient.

The footage looks amazing, likewise, with upwards to 140Mbps bitrate all the manner up to 4K resolution. If you have the storage bachelor, that is, to be able to save the massive files. An eight-minute 1440p capture at the settings I mentioned in a higher place is over 6GB in size.

The Live Gamer 4K brings loftier-resolution video and HDR to the table.

Like the Elgato 4K60 Pro, the Live Gamer 4K too offers back up for 240 FPS video at 1080p, perfect for PC gamers playing esports titles similar CS:GO and League of Legends, too as its support of HDR. In addition to laissez passer through, the Alive Gamer 4K can also capture HDR. Your Xbox One X will however demand to detect a 4K HDR display on the output, so this capture card won't trick the panel into allowing either of those without it, but if you do you'll be capturing game footage like never earlier.

The samples below are taken directly from the capture menu using the RECentral app and uploaded to YouTube. HDR was enabled in games that back up it, but i of the biggest issues is how you share that video with the world. YouTube is pretty picky, though on a not-HDR display you only get served an SDR copy regardless.

As an added bonus, ownership a Alive Gamer 4K likewise gets you a free re-create of Cyberlink's PowerDirector 15 so you tin can edit your clips. Even if it says y'all demand to upgrade to edit 4K video.

AVerMedia Alive Gamer 4K : The software

While streamers will nearly probable use XSplit, OBS or Streamlabs OBS in conjunction with the Live Gamer 4K, for just capturing footage directly from the console the RECentral companion app is your best bet. There'south a one-click way to enable or disable HDR capture, every bit well, if your game and output support it. If HDR isn't in the game, the push button won't activate.

Visually, information technology'due south a picayune dated, but unlike the main competitor, Elgato, AVerMedia hasn't dissever off its 4K capture from its regular software. That means it's packed with all the features users of the company's other cards have become used to, including the power to stream. The latency offered upwardly past the capture carte du jour is so depression that while I'm not necessarily recommending it, it'southward perfectly possible to use a single screen to capture and play your games with RECentral.

Everything is really easy to ready up. There are some pre-installed settings you can use, or you tin ready a custom profile with your desired resolution, frame charge per unit, and bitrate, along with which piece of hardware you want to encode with (default seems to always exist the GPU) and how good you desire the audio.

Getting ready to stream is equally straightforward. RECentral supports Twitch and Mixer along with a host of other services, including Facebook, YouTube, and annihilation that supports RTMP as long equally y'all have a stream key and URL. In the case of Mixer, FTL is also supported.

RECentral is very all-around for newcomers to streaming.

And whether yous're capturing or streaming, RECentral offers either a simple, single input capture from your console, or it allows you to add multiple sources like webcams, images, web URLs, videos and screen capture from your PC.

While streamers will notwithstanding ultimately have more command using the popular software, RECentral is surprisingly good. With the URL source, you tin add in your favorite overlay with interactive alerts from sources such equally player.me and Streamlabs, and you can add multiple scenes. Coupled with solid performance and not existence as well thirsty with system resources, folks new to streaming are in good easily.

The just real criticism I can direct towards RECentral is that it'south sluggish at times when you're switching betwixt recording and streaming setups. Otherwise, it's a great tool for beginners to stream with, and for anyone using the Live Gamer 4K to capture with.

Should you purchase an AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K? Yep!

For the all-time consumer-level game capture correct now you're looking at one of two products. The Live Gamer 4K is one, the Elgato 4K60 Pro is the other. I recommend the AVerMedia card over the Elgato. If you have an Xbox Ane Ten and you want high-resolution capture, you should buy a Live Gamer 4K. Period.

At that place are many things it has in its favor, simply at the height of the list is price. At nigh $300, information technology's shut to $100 cheaper than the 4K60 Pro, and information technology too handles HDR, something the Elgato does not. The Elgato Stream Link characteristic is the biggest advantage the 4K60 Pro has over the Live Gamer 4K, merely for almost people, that's not likely enough to warrant the extra spend.

Pros:

• Supports 4K capture at 60 FPS.
• Commencement consumer capture card to back up HDR.
• Captures excellent video.
• Companion app is beginner friendly.

Cons:

• RECentral app is a scrap sluggish at times and quite dated looking.

This is a truly fantastic product from AVerMedia. It only works, there's no setup fuss, the companion app is full-featured and friendly to both newcomers and more than experienced folks, you lot get a pretty decent video editor thrown in for free, and it lights up with RGB inside your organization.

If you have an Xbox One Ten and you want to capture above 1080p, purchase this correct at present.

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Update July 6, 2022: We updated this review to correct an fault which stated the AVerMedia product is the only carte in this category to perform 1080p @ 240Hz, the Elgato 4K60 Pro can do this as well.

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/avermedia-live-gamer-4k-review

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