Tips For Improving Computer Performance
We have compiled a list of useful tips and tricks you can use to help improve your computers performance while recording and streaming. Carry on reading to find out more!
Hello Content Creators!
Whether you are trying to maximize your recording quality or make your streams more engaging, one thing is for sure — the demands you are placing on your computer aren’t getting any less. With this in mind, let’s go over a few things that can be done to make sure your computer is running at peak performance.
General Improvements
Drivers: Make sure you have the latest drivers for your computer. Drivers are exactly that, they drive certain parts of your computer; GPU drivers enable you graphics card, USB drivers let your USB ports function. Keeping drivers up to date is necessary as they usually come with performance and security benefits, among others. To check if you have the latest GPU drivers, find out the brand of GPU your computer has and then go to the respective site for your GPU — Intel, AMD, Nvidia — and use the auto-detect tool.
Disk Space: When a hard drive or SSD becomes full it will often slow down and this can cause not only the whole computer to feel slow, but also cause issues when recording or streaming. There are two things you can do. The first is go through your hard drive and look for large files that are not needed and delete them: old recordings or videos you have already uploaded, maybe games you don’t play anymore. What can also help is recording to a external hard drive. Any USB 3.0 hard drive is fast enough to be used as the destination for saving videos, and 1 Terabyte hard drives come pretty cheap these days.
USB Connections: Where your capture device is plugged into physically on the computer can also make a difference. USB has a set bandwidth that it can work with, and video uses a LOT of bandwidth. Therefore, it’s good to keep high bandwidth items separate, like a Game Capture HD60 and a C920 webcam. Below is an image of a typical motherboard I/O panel.
We have labelled the 3 groups of USB ports for your convenience. As already mentioned, video inputs take a lot of bandwidth, so when deciding where to plug in your capture card, make sure the port isn’t shared with another high bandwidth device, such as a webcam. For example, plug your HD60 S into one of the ports of group 1, together with your mouse. Then, in group 2 you plug in your webcam and keyboard. This grouping of high and low bandwidth devices can help improve device performance. Just make sure that USB 3 devices are in USB 3 ports (they are usually blue, like in the above image).
Software Improvements
This section covers tweaks you can make in the Game Capture software to optimize performance.
Stream Command: Available since Game Capture 2.1, Stream Command is a powerful tool allowing you to add a webcam, image overlays, browser alerts and more to your streams and even your recordings. However, if you will only be recording gameplay and don’t need those features, you can turn Stream Command off to reduce CPU load. To do so, click on the settings icon at the top right of the Game Capture software and uncheck the “Enable Stream Command” box. Stream Command is now disabled. You can still use Live commentary and record separate audio tracks.
Quality Settings: The quality (bit rate) setting can also have an impact on performance, especially when using the HD60 S, since it does not have an onboard encoder, unlike the HD, HD60 and HD60 Pro. With higher quality, your videos will look better, but that comes at the cost of increased CPU load. Try to find a good balance between the two.
Sharing Settings: In the software settings, under sharing, there is a checkbox that reads “Always convert new videos to MP4 file”. This setting is active by default and allows for videos to be exported in the background, while you continue recording. Exporting uses some CPU as well, especially when overlays are in the video or live commentary needs to be mixed in. We recommend disabling this option if you see any performance issues. With this setting disabled, to export a video, click on the edit tab, choose a video, and then click on the “File(MP4)” share option.
If your CPU is still running at a higher load than you’d like, we have a more exhaustive knowledgebase article that contains further tips to improve software performance here — e.lga.to/performance.
If you have questions or issues, you can contact us via e.lga.to/help or on Twitter at @ElgatoSupport.
