Choppy video

I have never really got the answer on this.

Will a video card improve choppy streaming video? In this particular computer I think the net speed is fine, 3 meg line, and the smaller youtube videos seem like they are going to play fine. But you get to a Hulu video and things get choppy, even on the smaller size. We upgraded the RAM, and it's about 1 1/4 gigs, with shared video. It's the same on Chrome and IE. Fresh install, hard drive appears to be ok, with the amount of testing I did. The processor should be plenty fast enough. Unless Avast is making it choppy or something?

With my home computer, I can't watch the larger size that well. It gets choppy at that point, when I reduce it down, things get better. I have a 6 meg line here.

I have heard people say that a better video card won't help, but I'm not so sure about that, since the quality of streaming video has gone up in recent years.

Troy

There could be a number of factors, most of which you've already addressed e.g. additional RAM, processor (anything 1.8ghtz upward should suffice), graphics card and open applications/running processes.

1280mb RAM should be plenty. Do you have an integrated/on-board video card built into your motherboard or do you have a card inserted into an AGP/PCI/PCI-e slot? If you have a graphics card you might simply need to update your drivers. Depending on the make and model you can find the correct drivers for the video card at the manufacturers website (often nVidia or Radeon (ATI)) - this will be the most common cause of "choppy video" in my experience. I would recommend checking you also have the correct drivers for your mobo, whether the card is integrated or not. Again you can find these from the manufacturers site. Everest Home Edition is freeware that detects the hardware currently installed in your PC so you can find the drivers you need. If no card is present a stand alone video card will improve the video quality - nothing fancy needed to play video (if you're gaming you will need a faster card) even the early nvidia/radeon cards (440 MX/ 8500 gt ++) will stream all video with no problems.

Hope this helps.

Use ctrl + alt + delete and kill any processes you don't need, such as Avast if you feel it's slowing streams. I would test this but if it makes no difference remember to restart the application for virus scanning

This particular computer only has the integrated video, and I'm not sure if the drivers from DELL are the most recent. They may have stopped updating the drivers some years ago, but I'm not for sure. These people aren't playing any high tech games, you know, I feel like a graphics card might help resolve the issue. But I'm not certain about it.

The machine should be plenty fast enough for what is being asked of it. 2 Ghz or more. This is a pretty good amount of memory for Windows XP. The install is quite new. They have only been using the machine online for maybe a month.

Avast might the issue. Unless the machine doesn't really like how the memory is set up? I have them installed in matching pairs, one pair being 2-512s the other pair being 2-128s. There is a bit of a sluggishness that defies my understanding. The loading phase of Windows is a bit on the slow side. It goes through the pre-Windows screens pretty quick, which doesn't really suggest a mobo problem. With the memory it has, I would expect a little more "wham bam, thank you mam." Unless Avast is being a complete hog.

I might try switching to something else as far as antivirus and see if that helps too.

Troy

You know it's a little unresponsive at times, but the link or button does end up working. You know that problem when you try to click on something, but it's not ready to be clicked. I'm just not seeing the speed I expect from it. Many times when you slap that extra memory in there, you have a "new" machine.

It could be a lot of things, I suppose. A bad piece of hardware can "poison" as system.

Troy

Sounds fine, you would notice more than just video performance issues if your machine didn't like your RAM config.

Avast running in the background can be pretty resource consuming. I'm not a great fan of anti-virus, I deal with the malwares/virus' if and when I get them (very, very rarely!) and rarely scan - us conspiracists (and former employees of major virus engine developers!) know that white collar hackers are employed to create viruses and often distribute them (without the virus theres no need for the cure!). Though officially I shouldn't recommend deleting Avast or whichever scanner you may use, but something to keep in mind. Is the performance drop really worth the 'protection'?

If it's a dell machine it's likely to be intel integrated graphice, am I right?

You can find updated drivers for your model at either downloadcenter.intel.com... or support.dell.com...

If neither of these offer the correct drivers or don't improve the situation you should look at removing your RAM sticks one by one and rebooting each time to see if there is any hardware corruption, but honestly I doubt it with what you've described.

Good luck!

When I'm back over there I'll try some different things. I might pull the smaller pair of RAM sticks and see if things improve. First I might just rip Avast off of there, and just see.

I don't currently use any antivirus other than Malwarebytes free on my own machine at home. I just update and scan now and then.

Yeah, it's a Dell, integrated video. I used the drivers from the site. Perhaps intel might have more recent drivers.

Troy