With content creation on everyone’s mind and new 4K consoles slowly reaching more people, the need for a capture card that can deliver the best possible images is now more important than ever. With more need than ever, it’s no wonder brands like Elgato and AVerMedia are pushing what’s possible with internal and external solutions. This is where the latest and greatest from AVerMedia comes into play, drawing on the latest technologies, the Thunderbolt 3 based Live Gamer BOLT brings 4K60 HDR10 to an external capture card that just works.
CGMagazine has been using AVerMedia products for years, with many of our First-15 videos being captured on one of our internal 4K capture cards. So we were excited to see how Live Gamer BOLT could stand up to the competition, both in terms of ease of use and image quality. In the past, we’ve found that AVerMedia capture cards are some of the leading options from the ranges we’ve tested, so expectations were high going into this review.
4K60 is nothing new in game capture, with some solid picks from a few brands if you want to go internal. Unfortunately, the choices on the outside are a bit more limited, with many of the options hitting 30FPS, such as the NZXT signal 4K30. AVerMedia bypasses the limitations of USB 3.0 by choosing Thunderbolt 3 to provide the necessary bandwidth to deliver the best possible results. While it’s not as widespread on desktop systems, it’s increasingly becoming the norm on new motherboards from both AMD and Intel, and it’s standard on most laptops for the past three years.
While computers on the market can manage 1080P footage without breaking a sweat, 4K 60 is something much more intense, so you’ll need something powerful to get the most out of the Live Gamer BOLT and the visuals it outputs. For our testing, we used a recent Intel Core I-9 12900KS based system, with an Nvidia RTX 3700 and 64 GB DDR5 RAM. Although a bit exaggerated, since the AVerMedia site only mentioned that we needed an Intel® Core i5-6XXX / AMD Ryzen 3 XXX or higher, we wanted to ensure the best possible experience to see the potential of the Live Gamer BOLT.
“…the Thunderbolt 3 based Live Gamer BOLT brings 4K60 HDR10 to an external capture card that just works.”
With our content creator-focused PC up and running and the Live Gamer BOLT out of the box, it was ready to plug in and start capturing. The Live Gamer BOLT has a very simple setup and a limited number of ports, so the process is largely painless. The Live Gamer BOLT features Thunderbolt 3 (Type-C), HDMI 2.0 Out, HDMI 2.0 In and Line In. AVerMedia supplies an HDMI 2.0 cable, 3.5mm audio cable, and Thunderbolt 3 cable all in the box, so you should have everything you need to create some content.
Even beyond the Thunderbolt 3, the Live Gamer BOLT is also tailor-made for the modern content creator, with the simple look allowing plenty of RGB for any system style or look. The simple box is small enough to never get in the way, while doing what it’s supposed to do, very well.
Thunderbolt 3 means the Live Gamer BOLT delivers great performance with a fantastic 50ms latency. The images you can get from the capture card are stunning, with 4K resolution at 60 frames per second (FPS) with or without HDR. It also allows you to record your captured content in h.264 or h.265 and with a maximum bit rate of 240 mbps.
“It should be noted that the files the Live Gamer BOLT outputs are huge, so you need to make sure you have the hard drive space to store the videos…”
With its simple interface and the fact that the Live Gamer BOLT relies on GPU encoding to deliver the file, you simply need to record and start recording while recording. The little box does the work you need, and when you’re done, there’s a file waiting for the next step in the creation. It should be noted that the files the Live Gamer BOLT outputs are huge so you need to make sure you have the hard drive space to store the videos or you could run out of space very quickly. If you’re serious about diving into capture, you might want to look into a NAS system just to make sure you can delete the files as you create them.
AVerMedia offers their own in-house RECentral software that is made to make capturing as easy as possible. It will get the job done for most people and it gives you everything you need to capture and organize your many shots. Personally, while I don’t hate RECentral, I’m glad the Live Gamer BOLT also supports XSplit or OBS, as I prefer using software that is constant across all my hardware and configurations, but it’s good to know that AVerMedia provides the option for those who need it.
Testing with both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and the images we got from the Live Gamer BOLT were fantastic. It managed to deliver flawless video in HDR and non-HDR gameplay and did it all with ease with no hassle getting everything set up and working. In this current era of consoles, there are few capture cards that feel this easy or deliver this level of video, especially at 4K60 with consistently smooth frame rates.
At $449, the Live Gamer BOLT is an expensive option, but one that gets the results. It’s hard to deny the potential of Thunderbolt 3 for game capture, or how well AVerMedia has implemented it with this external capture box. This is a capture device made for the modern streaming setup, complete with RGB lighting and the ability to capture next-gen consoles. If you have the budget and have a Thunderbolt 3 post to hand, the Live Gamer BOLT brings the best external 4K60 recording on the market today and gives you everything you need to enhance your Next-Gen gaming experiences. to bring to the world.
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