Streaming Question

Just started getting into streaming gameplay over Twitch.tv, and everything has started to lag, not on the stream side of things but the games themselves are, any suggestions or would I look at upgrading hardware?

RAM: 8GB DDR 3 RAM

CPU: AMD Athlon II x4 645

Video Card: Radeon HD 6870

EDIT: the games in question are, Borderlands 2, Fear 3, and Bioshock 2

Streaming is sort of intense on your computer, I think I heard someone say that it can up to double the suggested requirements for a game. You may have to significantly lower the quality settings in order to stream.

A lot of people capture the video on a second computer and stream from that.

yeah I might look into that thanks

@Dagbiker: Oh snap I need to look into that too!