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Would you be able to explain to me what capture cards do exactly?

One of the most CPU intensive parts of streaming is realtime encoding (read: compressing) the raw video for transmission over the internet, a capture card is able to encode the video on dedicated hardware (sometimes in multiple formats and resolutions) freeing up your CPU for other things.

Will using a capture card reduce the need for high upload speeds? Or will it still be the same?

Capture cards don't speed up the internets. Capture cards take the system load off your CPU so that you get better performance both in-game and on your stream assuming your internet can handle the upstream requirement.

Not entirely, but they are somewhat interrelated in much the same way that you can trade off computer performance and upload rates without a capture card. With a capture card you might be able to put out a better quality on the same bandwidth or the same quality stream on less bandwidth by using slower higher quality compression without affecting your game performance.

Fast upload is generally still a good idea though if you want to put out a high quality stream.

Yep, before he installed his capture card, Jared could only get his stream to something like 500p max. The capture card allowed him to up the quality even though the internet and his other computer specs are the same.

Btw you should all watch to the very end for the best bit.

OMG THAT TROLL

I have a 2600K CPU and my CPU uses hardly anything even when encoding and running other programs at the same time. I think the main advantage of a dedicated card would be more along the lines of overall bottle necking? Getting the data to and from the CPU, etc?

No, it does the encoding instead of the CPU doing it... encoding is generally a pretty CPU intensive process. Are you sure you are measuring this right?

and @ ParO: The problem is that playing games uses the CPU, and encoding the video for streaming uses the CPU. This limits most peoples ability to encode video at a high quality (up to the limit of what their upload can handle). So this card takes over encoding video and your cpu just plays games and everyone's happy.

So if you feel your CPU is underutilised even when streaming then you have no use for this card. But I don't know how you're encoding without using much CPU (unless you're using CUDA or something, which causes problems for gaming too).

please tell me people actually have found the easter egg? I feel like Im the only one! lol

Yes I found it after looking for it but tbh not many people will. People who are interested in the zvt ambush style will have mostly already seen the video by now and people who aren't wont click either. So it just results in not many people clicking the vid. TT

What deals can you do for me?