Ok.. so as the title implies this is a question about my desktop computer. Yeah yeah I know this isn't a tech support forum, but there are a lot of smart people here and I trust your opinions over most other sites.

So I have a ~5 year old Win XP computer that seems to struggle playing back streaming video. However, local video playback is fine even up to 1080p. I can't recall the processor speed or amount of RAM, but I suspect one of them might be the culprit. Graphics card was upgraded a few years back to 512MB. Browser is Firefox with Flash 10.1 installed. What you do think - Do I need more RAM?

Found the specs online: http://www.powerspec.com/systems/sys...lection=MCE460

I haven't changed anything except the graphics card. Internet connection is not an issue - I have a hardwired 50mbps connection.

bump********

And by streaming video do you mean flash player or something else that's inside a browser? That adds quite a lot of extra overhead.

Yeah it is using Flash Player mostly I think. I cleared the browser cache which helped alot with the buffering issue. Not sure if a 512 mb video card cuts it anymore and I know that I need to upgrade RAM as well.

check for packet losses. Download wireshark, turn on sniffer by selecting your network card, start streaming and look for warning/erros. if it's packet loss then you will see something like "retransmitted" and the packet will be highlighted in red(if I remember correctly.)