Upgrading a E7500

[parsley007]

Hi, I currently have a Inspiron 560 with a E7500 with 4 GB RAM. I have upgraded it with a 1GB Radeon 6450, and a 64 GB SSD.

I mainly use it for watching streaming flash online, such as www.twitch.tv. However, recently it has been lagging on almost any one I try to watch.

I'm not really sure where the bottleneck is, but my first guess was the CPU. I was looking at either upgrading to another 775 CPU, which doesn't really seem like a good option, or buying something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883113252

Also, my Internet connection is 6/.5 DSL.

Just looking for any suggestions on the way to ensure I can play 720p+ streaming video without constant buffering.

Thanks.

 

[postmortemIA]

Doubt it is CPU, my Core Duo 1.83GHz plays 720P just fine .. check CPU usage, check max internet speed vs. bandwidth used by twitch

 

[piasabird]

720p is like an achile's heel for Intel. It is easier to play 1080p. Even on the Haswell i-7 processors with the newer HD4600 integrated graphics this is a problem. I think this is a good deal for the money but it is kind of out of date already.

I have seen some problems with wireless routers slowing down and causing iterruptions. What this does is it causes you to lose your connection in the middle of a streaming session. However, this is theoretically fast enough unless you want to upgrade your DSL to a faster speed. But that might not help if it is a network issue.

I am using the same speed DSL. Helps to have full speed HD video at 1080p. I think the video is better like that. Now they are pushing 4k video.

 

[Cerb]

^ +1

Your hardware is fast enough to do it in pure software (though it shouldn't be doing that, with the 6450, except for Netflix).

Just to verify, try downloading a HD video and play it locally.

Also, do a speed test. Your DSL might be not quite enough, or you could have a WLAN problem, if you're not wired.

 

[Blain]

Would an E3110 be worth the time, if the price was right and the MB supported it?

 

[mfenn]

Open up the Task Manager to the performance tab when you're watching a video. If the CPU usage isn't at 100% on either CPU, then you're not CPU-limited.