Capturing + Streaming

[FloPPyPiLLoW]

Hey guys, first time poster here. I have been trying my hand at capturing + posting gameplay onto my youtube channel with very little success. I have put quite a bit of effort into getting to where I have gotten so far but I think I'm going to need some upgrades so I decided instead of possibly wasting my money I'd come here and see what help I can get.

I currently run xSplit to capture my screen while playing games like Minecraft, League of Legends etc. I tried running at 720p while capturing it and it just was not working well. I could handle it while playing minecraft cause what's the worst that happens if my FPS drops a bit? However when I tried to play League of Legends I was getting frame rate drops all the way down to 2-10fps from my normal 40 fps. Quite a bit of an issue.

I switched my capturing to 480p to increase my framerate and it worked quite well. The raw footage even doesn't look that bad on my computer, but when it's uploaded to youtube the quality goes in the toilet. Maybe an issue with the rendering settings, not 100% sure.

I've looked into getting a capturing device for my recording because in the future I'd like to be able to record my xbox 360 gameplay too. So I came to thinking maybe I should just get one now for recording my computer gameplay. I'm not 100% sure how a capture device works though, would it put less strain on my cpu? Would I need a second computer to store the captured footage? What exactly would I need and how much would it cost me?

So that brings me to here. What are my options? Should I shell out some money now for a capture device? If so what one? What is the most efficient way to get the best quality I can for the least cost?

Hopefully you guys can help, if you need anymore info i'll be glad to provide it.

[FloPPyPiLLoW]

Still looking for help.