1911 Beta

A shitty hard drive will have little-to-no impact on streaming performance. The number one thing that will cause shit streaming performance is overloaded network nodes that your ISP is using. I know this firsthand using Time Warner who loves to route to saturated nodes. I alleviated this by VPNing to another state and voila: no more stuttering / freezing. Once you've determined that that is not the problem, I would look and make sure you don't have processes running a ton of CPU cycles. Basically make sure no software is fucking your shit up. I'd say the last thing you should be doing is replacing hardware and the first things you should replace are the CPU/RAM as they are much more likely to cause an issue than a hard drive or an addon video card (integrated video would probably cause issues).

EDIT: Also, WatchESPN is notorious for being a steaming pile of shit. Keep that in mind.

This will be a pretty open and close topic, but... I have two computers, an older one that I use basically for streaming and then my main PC. I have four hard drives in my new one (because I am frugal and don't want to spend the money on a 1 TB hard drive) and then I have a crappy laptop 5400 rpm SATA drive in my backup. I have hijacked Brandon's WatchESPN account information (again because I am frugal and don't have cable) but when I stream video it sometimes chops up a bit. I am just wondering if I take a hard drive out of my other computer that is a higher RPM if that will make any difference on the streaming capabilities. If spec's are relevant, my backup PC is an Athlon x2 Dual Core 4200, 2.75 GB Ram, Geforce 8400 PCI-E video card, and the OS is Ubuntu. Just wondering if I pull out the hardware and reinstall Ubuntu whether it will make any difference.

If you need a hot visual to get your brain working, my backup is the facial closeup. I need the full body on my main monitor as I focus my attention more on that screen...

[img]http://imgur.com/ZuBGm2O.jpg[/img]