Elgato 4K X 60 Variable Refresh Rate capture card
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The demands on game capture have more than doubled this generation, with modern consoles & PCs offering 4K/120 HDR, VRR and beyond. Even though they all come with internal capture and streaming options, they fall far below the outputs. Elgato have always strived for maximum quality, and they were the first company to ship an external VRR capable capture card with the HD60 X, I reviewed almost 2 years ago now. The team have not rested since, working hard to add more features and increase quality. They now released 2 new capture cards this month that raise the game again,
which they sent me both for review. Most of this video will be focused on the most exhaustive of the 2, the 4K X external capture card. But they have also upgrade their long standing 4K Pro MK2 card to offer VRR and 8K passthrough. More on that later.
Contents & Specs
In the box we get the unit itself that looks near identical to the previous HD 60 X but now states 4K on the front, so no confusion. The back offers the same USB-C port and 2 HDMI 2.1 sockets, one for the input and output, respectively. This comes with a suitable Elgato HDMI 2.1 cable which is required through your gaming chain to ensure the maximum quality. Another vital element is the new Elgato braided and labelled cables which include the USB3.1 Gen2 or USB3.2 cable that delivers a full 10.2Gbps bandwidth, required for the demands of such high frame rates and pixels. It offers the premium HDMI 2.1 capture of 4K 144fps in SDR and with 1440/60 or 4K/30 with HDR. It can still passthrough 120Hz HDR and VRR irrespective of your capture choice.
The big-ticket item is this is among the first 4K/120 HDMI 2.1 capture cards which includes HDR and VRR, ALLM and even G-Sync support. Meaning no machine from Steam Deck, PS5 or PC misses out as every source can be passthrough up to 4K 144 HDR and captured up to 4K 144 SDR. PC players can passthrough 1440/240 at 144fps or lower. Now, the data centric among you may have questions such as, but the PS5 HDMI pushes 32Gbps and the Series X can push 40Gbps with the HDMI 2.1 spec maxing out at 48Gbps. So how is this going to work along a 10.2Gbps pipe. Well first things first, this only impacts capture and NOT passthrough. As this is all handled directly inside the unit itself with the HDMI in being fed immediately to the HDMI out port meaning the exact same quality and no extra lag, or at least less than 4ms worse case based on my tests. It is faster by default as ALLM worked perfectly on my LG, Samsung, and Sony OLED screens. Internally the input is split off and then fed down the USB-C cable into your PC and relevant storage of choice, which must be compressed. This means that we need to factor in the quality and frame-rate maximums into your capture tools. HDR 10 adds more bandwidth which is why 4K HDR is limited to 30fps capture or 1440p for 60fps. By lowering the bitrate via the Chroma subsampling as 4K/60 at full 4:4:4 Chroma I.e. full RGB exceeds that pipe at roughly 18Gb/s. These are the options on PS5 4K -1 or -1 and 4:2:2 on Series Consoles. Using Display Stream Compression is vital, which almost all Display port and HDMI devices use. Lowering the chroma to 4:2:2 which is largely invisible/lossless for games and movies but on PC Text it can be obvious. That same 18Gb/s now fits inside the 10Gb/s limit at 9Gb/s. The table on screen shows you the passthrough vs capture levels available. Which is why a USB3.2 port on your PC is required, you can use a lower 5Gbs USB3.1 port but resolution and framerates will be limited. I worked with Elgato on this during the early review stage, and they are looking to add a Port check in the software to advise you the speeds you can achieve.
Capture the moments
The Elgato 4K capture software enables a simple but minimal capture tool that will show the framerate and resolution of the source and capture. As before this includes VRR rates and can also be captured to a .csv file with the software. It serves its purpose, but the reality is most will integrate into Elgato stream Deck suite or other tools such as OBS which both cards work seamlessly with, and I have fully integrated it into my own frame rate and capture tools.
As many know I cover and care about Latency a great deal and both these cards offer a huge boost, Auto Low Latency Mode is now supported meaning your TV can still switch to the lowest input latency automatically along with it now breaking free of my previous framerate capture level. Using this card, I can now capture Series X and PS5 with VRR at 120fps in full 4K, before this card I was restricted to 1440p. A huge boost for me and any reviewer or streamer that wants to deliver the best quality to the viewer that the device can deliver. And the fact that all these features come at no cost to your local play session, you can simply leave the card in situ all the time even when not capturing, bliss for me.
Summary
The quality the card can capture at is as excellent as before. Offering a myriad of compression options, even up to Lossless if you have the capability. The top range 4K and framerates will necessitate some restrictions on that, but as you see with the comparisons now, using The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered Fidelity VRR mode I could not capture the full 4K 50ish output at the full 120Hz output prior to this card. Now with the 4K X I can, ensuring the sharp clean pixel quality of that 4K display is present over the previous 1440P capture limit. Without this Elgato card I would not be able to capture VRR games as I have done from the past few years here and over on IGN performance reviews. And the card is also fully compatible with Nvidia’s G-sync screens meaning if you play and capture on PC, Consoles or even Steam Deck, which also offers VRR support, this is a Single solution with a wide range of functions and features and superb image quality.
But wait, there’s more!
4K Pro Update
The 4K Pro is largely similar to the previous model, requiring an internal PCIe2 x4 slot as a minimum. And really allows you hook up your set-up and still enjoys 4K 120 pass through with HDR, ALLM and VRR but the capture levels of the card remain the same as before. You can capture at higher bit rates and quality but 4K 120fps is not possible, 1440p 120fps is the limit. The main reason for swapping is you ensure you gain the same high quality and seamless integration into your capture suite but gain all the features of your screen which enables you to tone map HDR passthrough to SDR capture including VRR at a sharp 4K/60fps. The only thing to note on both for VRR capture, which I covered in far more depth in my HD60 X review, is that the capture will remove the tearing just as on your screen, but it will be captured within a fixed rate container. Such as 30, 60 or 120fps. Although close to the same rate as achieved on the screen, the refresh on your screen will alternate on a per frame basis whereas in the capture it will be an even 8, 16 or 33ms cadence. Due to this Audio sync can sometimes cause issues and it is best to unbuffer the capture when VRR is being captured.