• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Alternatives to Elgato capture cards?

Shantae

Shantae

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Feb 15, 2019
852
I'm not really super familiar with what's available to capture live game footage, but I've been thinking about getting something recently to stream some older games I've been playing lately. Only brand I've ever really heard of is Elgato, and even those seem to have either gone up in price from what I remember, or just out of stock. I was wondering if there were any good alternatives out there? Every time I try just searching for those type of products, you find so many no names things on amazon that you don't know what to trust.
 
Primus

Primus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,840
AVerMedia and Blackmagic Design are good lower-end alternatives. Magewell makes very good high-end cards, especially ones with multiple inputs.
 
Hanbei

Hanbei

Member
Nov 11, 2017
4,089
AverMedia does pretty nice stuff when it comes to recording and streaming devices. You should check their products, I'm sure they have something for what you need.
 
Ukumio

Ukumio

The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
1,415
Australia
Razer has a decent capture card with 1080p capture and 4K passthrough. I use Elgato though because I like internal cards and I like the ecosystem.
 
Escaflow

Escaflow

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
1,317
Razer Ripsaw HD not good enough ? I think the price is reasonable but sadly I don't see any stock from Amazon though
 
TheZynster

TheZynster

Member
Oct 26, 2017
13,285
I actually prefer my avermedia PCI card vs the elgato one. Elgato was causing some very wicked static with my Zen setup........Avermedia worked ace
 
poptire

poptire

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
9,981
I have the avermedia gl310 and it's been pretty great. Haven't had an issue with it in my ~3 years of owning it.
 
shadowhaxor

shadowhaxor

EIC of Theouterhaven
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
1,730
Claymont, Delaware
Christopher Robin said:
Even this brand seems to have a bunch with no prices/stock on amazon :/
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's due to them constantly going out of stock.

Primus said:
AVerMedia and Blackmagic Design are good lower-end alternatives. Magewell makes very good high-end cards, especially ones with multiple inputs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not sure why you consider Avermedia to be lower-end, as many of their products have been superior to Elgato for a while now. Including their 4K capture card offering, with Elgato only finally surpassing them with the 4K60 S+. Price per performance, Avermedia is on par with Elgato. If anything, the ReCentral software is still lacking and there's lots of room for improvement.

I've been recommending Avermedia over Elgato for a while now just due to the lower price points. Echoing what was said previously, I had the Elgato 4K60 Pro and I had nothing but issues and three replacements. I sold that off once Avermedia's 4K PCIe card was released, cheaper, better feature set, and it's still going strong.
 
SunhiLegend

SunhiLegend

The Legend Continues
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,573
I use an internal AverMedia card to capture gameplay, not sure about streaming since I've never tried that but for capturing purposes it's great, tried Elgato but experience was terrible for me, wasn't a fan at all, stuck to AverMedia.
 

lupinko

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,154
I got my Avermedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus yesterday and it's complete trash when trying to capture classic hardware. I'm really upset by that.
 
Mamoniadas

Mamoniadas

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,652
shadowhaxor said:
Not sure why you consider Avermedia to be lower-end, as many of their products have been superior to Elgato for a while now. Including their 4K capture card offering, with Elgato only finally surpassing them with the 4K60 S+. Price per performance, Avermedia is on par with Elgato. If anything, the ReCentral software is still lacking and there's lots of room for improvement.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I believe they mean in terms video capture hardware both avermedia and elgato are on the lower end.
OP you got to specify what and how youre attempting to stream older games. if you dont know that you're gonna end up buying a device that wont support your setup.
I sniped a livegamer 4k a few days ago since it specifically supported OSSC 5x
 
element

element

Member
Oct 27, 2017
920
I've moved from Blackmagic Design to Yuan cards and USB 3 devices.

UB570G PRO HDMI2.0 HDR is 4k with HDR over USB 3.0. They are rock solid.

SC710N1-L HDMI2.0 is another 4k option over PCIe and only uses 4x slot.
 
Primus

Primus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,840
shadowhaxor said:
Not sure why you consider Avermedia to be lower-end, as many of their products have been superior to Elgato for a while now. Including their 4K capture card offering, with Elgato only finally surpassing them with the 4K60 S+. Price per performance, Avermedia is on par with Elgato. If anything, the ReCentral software is still lacking and there's lots of room for improvement.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not lower-end as compared to Elgato, but lower-end as compared to Magewell and other more pro-level capture cards.
 

lupinko

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,154
Mamoniadas said:
I believe they mean in terms video capture hardware both avermedia and elgato are on the lower end.
OP you got to specify what and how youre attempting to stream older games. if you dont know that you're gonna end up buying a device that wont support your setup.
I sniped a livegamer 4k a few days ago since it specifically supported OSSC 5x
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's better than the live gamer that I bought, it won't accept 240p at 3-4x or 480p at 2x on the OSSC. I'm really disappointed by it.
 
Polyh3dron

Polyh3dron

Prophet of Regret
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,860
I use a Datapath Vision RGB-E1S card. It just captures video up to 1080p60 via DVI, and then I capture the audio with my line input. You can usually find them on eBay for around $150 and they are especially great for retro consoles with their odd refresh rates.
 
Last edited:
Midgarian

Midgarian

Alt Account
Banned
Apr 16, 2020
2,619
Midgar
How important is it to use a separate computer for capturing?

I'm running a 2080Ti with 3900x.

Hell do I even need a capture card? Would an OS solution not be enough?

How significant are the performance hits?
 
Akai

Akai

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,045
Midgarian said:
How important is it to use a separate computer for capturing?

I'm running a 2080Ti with 3900x.

Hell do I even need a capture card? Would an OS solution not be enough?

How significant are the performance hits?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'd assume that you'd be fine with those specs, but why not just download Twitch Studio or OBS Studio and find out?
 
Midgarian

Midgarian

Alt Account
Banned
Apr 16, 2020
2,619
Midgar
Akai said:
I'd assume that you'd be fine with those specs, but why not just download Twitch Studio or OBS Studio and find out?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes will mess around. I have this weird psychological affliction for not experimenting with the tools myself. I always do a bunch of research and ask for other opinions on software and such, I should just jump in and see how it all works.

Have all the time in the World right now as well ofc :P
 
Symphony

Symphony

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,361
Avermedia's Live Gamer 4K GC573 is a fantastic card for the sheer breadth of consoles it can support, via OSSC's 5x mode it can handle pretty much any retro console you throw at it and for the current systems you have HDR tone mapping so you can play in 4K HDR, send it to the card and it'll still put out a nice image for capture/streaming.

The problem is that no matter what card you look at currently, it'll be either out of stock or available at a massively inflated price (for reference the GC573 is normally £249, I got it at £219) since production is probably on hold due to the lockdowns and people that are stuck at home are taking to streaming and YT.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.