Will an HTPC upgrade avoid buffering?

[Cleveland612]

I purchased a refurbished Lenovo M58P SFF desktop a few months ago to use as an HTPC.  It arrived with an E8400, 4GB of Ram and Windows 7.  It cost me $100 CAD with shipping and taxes.  I replaced the HDD with a spare 128GB SSD, added 4GB of spare RAM, upgraded free to Win10 and added a low profile GT730 with a passive heatsink.  My total cost was $170 CAD.

The machine is very quiet, it works well as a simple web browser and it looks and fits great in my entertainment center.  Unfortunately, I get a lot of buffering when streaming video.  Netflix is flawless, but Amazon Prime video and a few other sources are lousy.  I've got lotsa bandwidth and I've run random speed tests without ever noticing anything odd.

 

So my question is:  Is the Duo core E8400 capable for streaming and playing video in the conditions outlined above?  Or, do I need more CPU power?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

buffering of frame drops?

 

buffering is almost always a bad network, frame drops are a slow system.

 

Your ISP may be throttling some sites, id try a VPN and see if that helps.

[The Sloth]

6 minutes ago, Cleveland612 said:

I've got lotsa bandwidth and I've run random speed tests without ever noticing anything odd

what's is your internet speed? 

6 minutes ago, Cleveland612 said:

Is the Duo core E8400 capable for streaming and playing video in the conditions outlined above?  Or, do I need more CPU power?

what resolution? 

[ProjectBox153]

The Core 2 Duo E8400 is more than capable of doing 1080p. Buffering would be a result of your network, or some other setting. 

[Cleveland612]

I've got 100Mbps down.  

We do have a few other system's in the home and although they all experience the occasional buffering situation, none are as bad as this machine.  This machine is by far the oldest...everything else is a Gen3 I5 or better.

 

Simply put, Netflix is just about the only source that can provide video at 720 or better without buffering.

 

 

 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 minutes ago, Cleveland612 said:

I've got 100Mbps down.  

We do have a few other system's in the home and although they all experience the occasional buffering situation, none are as bad as this machine.  This machine is by far the oldest...everything else is a Gen3 I5 or better.

 

Simply put, Netflix is just about the only source that can provide video at 720 or better without buffering.

 

 

 

 

 

what is cpu usage like?

 

Your sure this is buffering not dropping frames?