Game Broadcaster HD Review

In the world of capture cards there are two types external and internal. Previously we’ve reviewed the external HD PVR Gaming Edition, but I’ve never tried a internal capture card before so I wanted to try my luck out with the Game Broadcaster HD.

AVerMedia’s Game Broadcaster HD does require a pretty recent and high end processor if you want to capture in high definition. If your PC doesn’t meet the minimum specs then you might want to look into a external capture card. The Game Broadcaster HD connects to your computer via the PCI-E slot. Here’s a quick rundown of the minimum specs: SD Video Capturing (MPEG-2 Format) Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E4300 1.8GGHz or AMD Athlon 64×2 Dual Core 2.0GHz, HD Video Real-time Capturing (MPEG-2 Format) Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz or AMD Athlon 64×2 Dual Core 2.8GHz, abd for HD Video Real-time Capturing (H.264 Format) Intel Core i5 750 or AMD equivalent.

What made me question whether or not the Game Broadcaster HD was going to work is that you must play your console game on your PC monitor. The software that is needed to record the footage features a preview window. It’s within this window that you play the game. Clearly capturing footage is very intense on your computer. So I could only begin to imagine the frame rate slow down issues that I would experience as I tried to play the game. Thankfully on the computer that I tested this capture card on, it wasn’t a problem. I played Vanquish on the Xbox 360 and still found the game to be very responsive. It didn’t seem as smooth as playing it on an HDTV, but it still worked perfectly fine. Also you don’t have to worry about playing the game only in a windowed mode, you can capture and play the game in full screen on your PC monitor.

What’s cool about the Game Broadcaster HD is that you can capture footage with both component and HDMI cords. With the component cords you do have to use the included VGA to component adapter. This card works for both consoles and PC gameplay capture. If you want to capture your PC gameplay, you’ll need one PC to capture the footage and another PC to play the game.

Clearly from my experiences the Game Broadcaster HD is a solid internal capture card that should satisfy your game capture needs.