Does a game capture card affect performance?

[flaxe]

Alright so this question is gonna be kind of short. Does a game capture card degrade performance like a recording software? If so, is there a difference?

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Flaxe said:

Does a game capture card degrade performance like a recording software?

what are trying to do here? you don't need a capture card if you're gaming and streaming/recording from 1 PC.

 

I don't think a capture card can help encode a recording/stream, it only captures as a video input (like a webcam)

[igormp]

Are you using it to capture the stream from one PC/console and do the recording job in another PC? If so, then no, there's no impact other than some unnoticeable delay.

 

If you're planning on using it to capture the output of a single PC and try to record that same PC, then that capture card is useless since the PC will still need to do all the work of encoding that media. 

[geo3]

No. As far as your PC is concerned that capture card is just a monitor it's outputting to. 

[flaxe]

28 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

what are trying to do here? you don't need a capture card if you're gaming and streaming/recording from 1 PC.

 

I don't think a capture card can help encode a recording/stream, it only captures as a video input (like a webcam)

Alright thanks for the reply. And yes I was trying to game and record from 1 pc, sorry if this was a dumb question, I'm new to recording and stuff so

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Flaxe said:

Alright thanks for the reply. And yes I was trying to game and record from 1 pc, sorry if this was a dumb question, I'm new to recording and stuff so

all good, there's no dumb question

 

do you need help with setting it up and such?

[flaxe]

29 minutes ago, igormp said:

Are you using it to capture the stream from one PC/console and do the recording job in another PC? If so, then no, there's no impact other than some unnoticeable delay.

 

If you're planning on using it to capture the output of a single PC and try to record that same PC, then that capture card is useless since the PC will still need to do all the work of encoding that media. 

Ooohh ok I understand now, so there is virtually no difference between a recording software and a capture card when only 1 pc is involved (basically)

[flaxe]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

all good, there's no dumb question

 

do you need help with setting it up and such?

Thanks for asking but nope. I only needed to know if capture cards were better performance wise, and I needed an answer but there was none online so I asked here.

[Moonzy]

5 minutes ago, Flaxe said:

there is virtually no difference between a recording software and a capture card

a capture card is more like a webcam, it is an input device.

a recording software is something that can take inputs (like a capture card, webcam, or software input like display and audio) and process it into a file and what not.

[flaxe]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

a capture card is more like a webcam, it is an input device.

a recording software is something that can take inputs (like a capture card, webcam, or software input like display and audio) and process it into a file and what not.

Ooh alright, that makes sense. So is there even a point of having a capture card if you already need/have a recording software (using just 1 pc)

[Moonzy]

Just now, Flaxe said:

So is there even a point of having a capture card if you already need/have a recording software (using just 1 pc)

nope, only if you want to capture output from other device (other PC, or console)

you can use Display capture or Game capture in OBS to record locally run applications.

[flaxe]

Alright, I know all I need to know for now . I hope this post was helpful to someone else.

 

 

[igormp]

If you're worried about performance, most GPUs (even integrated ones) have built in encoders that can offload that process from your CPU, making it pretty much 0 cost. The downside is that quality is usually noticeably worse than software encoding with your CPU (unless you have a nvidia Turing card or newer, the encoder in those is really good).