AverMedia Live Gamer HD – Review and Performance Benchmarks

[section_title title=AverMedia Live Gamer HD Review – Benchmark Setup]
Streaming is a very intensive process that requires a pretty powerful computer to do it. If you want to play PC games and stream them from the same PC, this is going to require even more power. The AverMedia Live Gamer HD relieves your computer of processing the encoding of the video so the computer can focus on playing the game. For console streaming the capture card is also beneficial because it may allow you to stream at 60fps whereas your computer alone may not be capable of encoding fast enough for 60fps. In this review we put the encoder to the test with a series of benchmarks to see what kind of performance gains, if any, you can expect to see with this device.

We ran a series of benchmarks to determine the potential gains of using this capture device. First we tested the system by itself with nothing else running. Then we tested with XSplit open and present the best performance numbers possible with Xsplit capturing the gameplay (using Gamesource or Screen Capture where applicable). Next we tested through Xsplit again, while streaming, to see the performance hit of just streaming. Finally, we test with RecCentral so we can see the card used as both camera and encoder simultaneously.

Our Test Setup
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core i5-750 @ 2.6Ghz (Quad-Core)
G.Skill 12gigs DDR3 RAM
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Dual Monitor – ASUS V236H 1080p & Samsung SyncMaster 2233 120hz
Xsplit v1.1.1210.3101

Xsplit Stream Settings
Preset – XSplit Default
Quality – 7
Max BitRate – 2500 / VBV Buffer – 5000
Resolution – 1280×720 / 30fps
44khZ 16bit stereo / 128kbps

ReCentral
VideoFormat – FLV(H.264+AAC)
Resolution – 1280×720
Video Bitrate – 2500
Audio BitRate – 128kbps
FPS – 30