Clarification about some technical items

I asked these equivalent questions from Audials Technical Support and got boilerplate FAQ responses or no answer at all.  So I thought this community of experts could help

Question #1

My system is fairly robust and has a ‘high end’ GPU card.  Is the GPU actually used during the capture of the information or only when that information is played back in the system?  What is the role of the GPU with this software? 

Question #2

Data can be recorded in a lossy format – MP4 as an example.  What are the encoding parameters used for this compression?  I am familiar with Handbrake and the number of parameters used to determine the characteristics of the output file.  Does Audials have comparable output file parameterization? 

Question #3

My system is fairly robust and has a ‘high end’ GPU card.  While streaming video recording the load is measured in the 6% to 8% range – very low.  I often use the system for other activities.  The Audials FAQ and support personnel admonishes against that approach but I cannot determine if there is any actual impairment.   With the low amount of load on the system why should I avoid doing other tasks while recording is occurring?