Does computer performance affect streaming video?

[Genocidicbunny]

Yeah I have a feeling you're confusing some things.
Monitor refresh rate -- only really matters on CRT displays, causes flickering of the monitor when it's too low. LCD's aren't affected by this.
Fast as it can actually refers to things that use the GPU. Flash video is not one of those things. It is your processor that does all of the work unless you have a card that can assist with GPU acceleration. Even then, you're cpu bound. Your GPU is still effectively displaying 2D content so its not going to be very stressed, therefore your stuttering is because of something else.
That lousy adapter is just the default windows one. On Windows Vista its actually relatively powerful ( No Aero, but it can easily drive a 1680x1050 resolution with no slowdown unlike the XP one)

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeh, the XP one is the one I'm talking about. And its not unique to streaming videos, any video comes out choppy with the lousy one.

Another way to test if its connection is to download the videos as a FLV file and play it in VLC or some other player and see if its choppy then.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

The default XP one is barely enough for 2D 1024x768.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I only use it when my regular (crummy, integrated) GPU's driver is being fussy.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

On that topic, have you ever tried using Omega drivers? They may be more stable than the default ATi/Manuf. ones.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've heard about them, but I wasn't too sure what they were for.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Basically, a guy went and took the default ATi/nVidia drivers and modified them for better stability, etc. I remember on my old PC I had problems running Spore -- really bad artifacting. Went and installed the most up-to-date omega drivers and presto, everything worked fine.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I'll take a look at them, thanks.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Downloading the Omega drivers, gonna install them tomorrow when I'm not so tired.

 

[Shadylookin]

I imagine its computer performance assuming you have a reasonable buffer

 

[Mr. Keith]

FWIW, I was just watching a video review on gamespot.com, and it was running quite choppy, and the Windows Task Manager had my CPU usage at 100% for the duration of the video.

 

[Aramazd]

FWIW, I was just watching a video review on gamespot.com, and it was running quite choppy, and the Windows Task Manager had my CPU usage at 100% for the duration of the video.

That's your problem. You're going to need a better CPU.