Elgato is often seen as a benchmark in the streaming hardware market, particularly capture cards. However, the brand is not without competition. We tried the AverMedia GC575 alternative.
Four years after the launch of the next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, capture cards are catching up. The consoles can now offer 4K at 120 Hz or 8K at 60 Hz thanks to their HDMI 2.1 output, but no capture card on the market was compatible. A problem for professionals in the sector, both testers and streamers.
Two brands are tackling this new generation: Elgato, the industry champion with its Elgato 4K Pro card, and AverMedia with its Live Gamer 4K 2.1 card.
AverMedia lent us a copy of its card for our testing.
An internal acquisition card
The AverMedia Live Gamer 4K 2.1 (GC575) is an internal capture card to be installed in a desktop PC with a PCIe Gen 3 x4 connection. There is an HDMI 2.1 output and input with passthrough.
Installation is very easy and the card is quite compact, especially compared to modern graphics cards.
Better than Elgato?
The card can handle 1440p and 4K up to 144 Hz and an ultrawide 21:9 format up to 3440 x 1440 pixels at 144 Hz. The specs list specifies that the card can record a 1080p stream at 360 Hz with HDR enabled. On paper, this is better than Elgato’s promises. Indeed, the Elgato 4K Pro card “only” offers 4K at 60 frames per second in passthrough, and not 4K at 144 Hz like Avermedia.
As a reminder, passthrough allows you to both record the stream present on the HDMI 2.1 input port, while retransmitting it on the output port. This is a very important function for streaming a game while recording it, without having latency.
Software ecosystem in retreat
While Avermedia does brilliantly in terms of technical specifications, the same cannot be said of the software ecosystem. Here, Elgato is always ahead with its large software suite and the compatibility between all its products.
The Assist Central, RECentral and Gaming Utility software offer the bare minimum. They are used to identify your product, update its firmware and adjust certain parameters. For example, it is possible to adapt the HDCP setting for the Xbox, Switch, PS5 or another machine. However, Avermedia’s software development does not seem to be the brand’s priority. Thus, the latest version of RECentral dates from July 2023, almost a year ago. A beta version is offered, but it dates from November 2023.
However, Avermedia should not be dismissed. Indeed, the use of a capture card mainly involves perfectly compatible third-party software such as OBS Studio. In everyday use, there is little difference between using an Elgato or Avermedia card. Furthermore, nothing prevents the user from combining an Avermedia capture card with Elgato hardware for the rest of the equipment (webcam, sound, streamdeck, etc.). The argument of the Elgato ecosystem therefore has its limits.
A more competitive price
Where Avermedia stands out from Elgato is its slightly more competitive price. Where Elgato sells its premium card at 299 euros, we find theAvermedia Live Gamer 4K 2.1 at 269 euroswith promotions regularly allowing to lower its price.
Source: www.frandroid.com
