Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsA good capture device with a major caveat
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 16, 2021
TL;DR:
1. When the card is on sale, it doesn't have any competition.
2. You may have trouble capturing at the highest resolutions/framerates if your system uses a key E Wi-Fi card.
3. You may have compatibility issues with certain HDMI splitters.
4. Customer support could be better.
The AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K is a good capture device, but it has one significant issue that prevents me from calling it great. Whether or not you're impacted by this issue depends upon your setup and how you intend to use the device.
The issue I'm referring to relates to something called maximum payload size or MPS. If you haven't heard of it, don't worry, neither has anyone else. Essentially, MPS is part of what determines how much bandwidth is achievable on a PCI interface. Capturing 4K at 60FPS requires substantial bandwidth. This card has been designed to realize the required bandwidth, but only if the device can achieve the intended MPS on your system.
AVerMedia provides its own capture software called RECentral for recording and streaming input sources. Within RECentral is a bandwidth test that shows how much bandwidth the card has access to on your system and what formats you're able to capture with that bandwidth. After installing and updating the card, I noticed that I wasn't getting enough bandwidth to record at 4K resolution at 60FPS according to RECentral—something the card is advertised as being able to do with my system specs. Many hours of Googling later, I discovered this was due to a conflict with the Intel AX200 Key E Wi-Fi adapter installed in my system. Without getting too technical, the Wi-Fi card in some way (I don't understand the specifics myself) limits the MPS of the Live Gamer 4K to 128 bytes. In order to operate with maximum bandwidth, the capture card needs an MPS of 256 bytes. There are two workarounds: move the capture card to your GPU slot (lol, no), or remove/disable the Wi-Fi adapter. When either of these are done, assuming the rest of your system meets the requirements listed by AVerMedia, you will then be able to achieve the bandwidth necessary to record in 4K60 at maximum quality.
To be clear, if you're not using a key E wireless adapter, you should be gold. Additionally, if you're not bothered by perhaps using the PCIe slot designated for a GPU, that would work too.
I've contacted both Intel and AVerMedia about this issue. To AVerMedia, I requested that they update their system requirements for recording at 4K60 HDR to mention the necessity for a maximum payload size of 256 bytes. This was their response:
"We have confirmed that the performance test results only refer to the RGB24 format which needs to process a lot of data than the p010(HDR). You definitely can record 4kp60 HDR video with 128 bytes of PCIe payload size in p010 format. We will fix the performance test results and clarify the 4Kp60 HDR video is not restricted by the payload size soon for your reference, thank you."
In other words, according to AVerMedia, you can in fact record 4K60 HDR without a maximum payload size of 256 bytes. Unfortunately, I have no convenient way of testing this at the moment, but I may update this review when I do. What I can say is that this doesn't always appear to be true according to what others have said. In a YouTube video I discovered while researching this issue (https://youtu.be/lW6chIX79B0?t=554), a user states that he was unable to get 60FPS while recording in 4K HDR unless he placed the capture card in the PCIe slot intended for a GPU. To make an already technical review even more technical, according to his videos, RECentral showed his PCIe bandwidth to be about 9.8gbps when unable to record in 4K60 HDR. While limited by an MPS of 128 bytes, I'm getting around 10.6gbps, so that might indeed be enough to bridge the gap and record in 4K60 HDR, but who knows. At least we have AVerMedia on record as saying that it's possible. In order to record at the highest qualities, RECentral recommends a bandwidth of around 11.9gbps, and that is what I get when removing my wireless adapter.
As for Intel, I wanted to reach out to them because I speculated that the root of the issue was in the Intel wireless adapter only supporting a maximum payload size of 128 bytes. Because it only supports 128 bytes at most, it in some way limits the MPS of all other devices on its PCIe lane, even if those devices themselves support a higher MPS. I inquired as to whether or not they currently or plan to offer any wireless adapters with maximum payload sizes of 256 bytes or higher, and this was their response:
"Thank you very much for the time, we appreciate your patience in this matter, I am sorry to hear that we do not have a workaround for the issue, nor an estimated time for a new card with 256 Bytes payload. I will raise the flag to our higher-up level team, I will provide all the information gathered in your tickets so they know how important is to implement 256bytes in a newer card."
So there you have it. A strange issue without a good solution for now. Hopefully AVerMedia's next capture devices will support PCIe 3.0 to bypass this problem entirely.
With the more technical side of things out of the way, I'd like to discuss another problem I had that relates to the use of an HDMI splitter. If you plan to keep your computer and source near to each other and don't need to bypass HDCP, using a splitter isn't necessary. Although I haven't used it myself, the card does feature an HDMI passthrough that I'm sure works fine. In my case, however, my computer is located some 10ft away from my sources, so an HDMI splitter is necessary to avoid stringing 20 miles of HDMI cable around the room.
The first splitter I used (EZ-SP12H2, ASIN: B07VP37KMB) unfortunately appears to have audio compatibility problems with the Live Gamer 4K. Although it worked fine with my television, it periodically introduced dropouts and popping in the audio signal when used with the Live Gamer 4K. This is probably something AVerMedia could fix with a driver update, but since they don't support the use of HDMI splitters, I wouldn't expect them to view it as a priority. Once I discovered that the splitter was at fault, I purchased a new splitter (EZ-SP12HAS, ASIN: B07WR7KP1B) that works flawlessly. This new splitter does not remove HDCP by default, but it can be made to do so with a little work. EZCOO, the company who makes both splitters, is receptive and reasonably competent, so they can point you in the right direction if you need assistance.
Lastly, I wanted to speak a little about AVerMedia's customer support. As you can imagine, the first few weeks of owning this card was quite the tribulation. Amazon allows a product to be returned for a full refund within 30 days, and it took nearly all thirty of those days to solve my issues with this capture card. Because I wasn't sure whether or not I'd be able to come to a decision within that time, and I didn't want to abuse Amazon's return policy by playing musical capture cards, I asked AVerMedia if they'd be willing to allow me to return the capture device directly to them for a full refund in the event that I wasn't able to resolve my issues within 30 days. They refused, citing the fact that the card was purchased on Amazon as rationale, even though their company is the Amazon seller. Strange and unpleasant. I will say that they were polite and responsive—something that is depressingly rare these days.
It's tough to recommend this capture device. On the one hand, it does do the job and at a price where few are able to compete. On the other hand, technical issues and a customer support that has left a sour taste in my mouth end up holding it back. I had to put in an awful lot of effort to get everything working. Many probably won't be as discriminating, and if that's you, feel free to ignore this review and trust the hundreds of 5-star reviews. I, however, expected better. Two stars docked for the customer support experience as well as the esoteric technical issues that are irritating at a minimum and at worst false advertising.
Feel free to ask any questions. I'll probably update this already-too-long review as soon as the RetroTINK-5X releases to discuss compatibility with that device.
