Phenom 9550 too slow for video streaming 720p?

psy81

psy81

Gawd
Joined
Feb 18, 2011
Messages
605
Hey guys,

My old rig from way back is with my parents now. Its the original Phenom 9550 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM and a GTX 460. My parents only use the computer to stream video 720p (highest). The computer hasn't been formatted in some time but it is running super slow. Takes like 20 minutes to boot and watching video is a slide show. Weird cause I don't recall it being that slow when I was using it as a gaming rig lol

I know the SSD would help with boot times but would it also get rid of the slow streaming speed? The internet is fine as the other computer at my parents house runs on my old Phenom II 965 with GTX 580 and has no problems.

P.S. Running Windows 7 with Norton is installed.

Thanks in advance!
 
Last edited:
It's kind of a loaded question, it could be many things. With a 20 minute boot time I'm thinking disk issue, bad or weak sectors, have you checked if there is any spare disk space? Corrupt disk controller driver? Does this machine have stock cooling, is the cpu fan clean? What version of Windows? If this machine is running Vista( or even Windows 7 especially if there are a lot of tasks running) with only 4GB of RAM, it could be trying to hit the swap file and if there isn't enough disk space available it will be SLOW!!!
 
The processor is fast enough to handle even 1080p.

I'd be looking to reformat and checking for malware.
 
I say it time to reformat and see if that helps. 20 minute boot time is definitely not ok even on a old spinner drive. Could be something corrupt, virus and or malware. If reformatting doesn't help the disk is more likely going.
 
It ran perfectly fine when I had this computer back in 2010 and it was running windows 7 fine with Norton installed. I remember playing Dirt 3 on it at 1080p and I remember thinking this computer is fast lol. The case (Antec 300), stock cpu heatsink were recently cleaned.

The hard drive (still using IDE) is over 15 years old making me think this is a hard drive issue + all the bloat and programs running on it. I'm gonna stick a SSD via one of the SATA ports and do a clean Windows 7 install. Hopefully that will do the trick. If there is anyone with first hand experience with 9550 and streaming 720p video your input would be much appreciated.
 
Is the pc doing the ttranscoding like a media server or simply just watching 1080p video?

Ide? Holy crap. Throw a cheap SATA in there
 
You need at least a dual core to stream netflix. My single core dell latitute D510's would chug at anything over 480p. check cpu utilization and it would be pegged at 100%. My ideas are malware / thermal throttling. Probably a rogue process in the background is hogging up all your cpu.
 
no transcoding imagine streaming video from youtube or netflix. That is as much stress this system will get.

The Phenom 9550 is a quad core at 2.2GHz
Temps are in 40s to low 50s on load
when streaming 720p in firefox see all 4 cores at work around 50-60%
I'd imagine the GTX 460 is doing some work too

I'm afraid Norton may be the culprit but I had it running when I was using it way back and don't recall it slowing my PC down that much.
 
that cpu/gpu combo should be able to handle the 720p streams fine. my money would be on that 15 year old hdd dying or malware. putting in a ssd and a fresh windows load like you are doing is the correct course.
 
pendragon1 said:
that cpu/gpu combo should be able to handle the 720p streams fine. my money would be on that 15 year old hdd dying or malware. putting in a ssd and a fresh windows load like you are doing is the correct course.
Click to expand...

Thanks man, I think you're right. That hard drive is from an era when 75 GB was huge lol. I think its time to put it to rest.

Hopefully you're right and the good old Phenom 9550 + 4 GB DDR2 + GTX 460 is enough power to watch 720p streaming video haha

P.S. The Phenom II 965 is actually still great for every day use. I had it overclocked when I had it to 4GHz but now it just runs at stock speed at my parents house.
 
psy81 said:
no transcoding imagine streaming video from youtube or netflix. That is as much stress this system will get.

The Phenom 9550 is a quad core at 2.2GHz
Temps are in 40s to low 50s on load
when streaming 720p in firefox see all 4 cores at work around 50-60%
I'd imagine the GTX 460 is doing some work too

I'm afraid Norton may be the culprit but I had it running when I was using it way back and don't recall it slowing my PC down that much.
Click to expand...

My personal experience is that Norton is a pig. Try Avast, Bitdefender, Comodo, Kaspersky or Sophos all much better options. I'd be willing to bet based on the 50% load on the Phenom's 4 cores that the 460 is doing little to nothing.

Haha IDE make sure the UDMA function is enabled in the drivers and BIOS. I've seen similar issues before specifically with AMD UDMA IDE controller drivers in Windows 7. Your video is probably skipping when the IDE controller is making a read or write without DMA access. It will peg any CPU because of all the hardware interrupt requests. It only is exacerbated by the speed of the transfers, we are talking kilobytes instead of megabytes.
 
well I used to stream 720p on a laptop with a c2d 8400? 4Gb and onboard intel graphics.

edit: oh yeah good point about the AV. just use defender. if all they are doing is streaming they don't need anything else and Norton is crrrrap!
 
Something I used to see on old AMD chipsets was the drive controllers would go to PIO mode. Goto control panel and make sure the drive connection speeds are right. I bet the thing wakes right up.
 
even if it is/was a udma/pio mode issue put in the ssd and reload anyways. they will thank you and you will thank yourself if you ever have to work on it again. a 75Gb ide drive is well past its day!

edit: and if they only had ~75Gb you only need a cheap 120Gb ssd and it will be a big upgrade for them, speed and space.
 
Jorona said:
Something I used to see on old AMD chipsets was the drive controllers would go to PIO mode. Goto control panel and make sure the drive connection speeds are right. I bet the thing wakes right up.
Click to expand...

It does wake up lol what do I do exactly in Control Panel?
 
pendragon1 said:
even if it is/was a udma/pio mode issue put in the ssd and reload anyways. they will thank you and you will thank yourself if you ever have to work on it again. a 75Gb ide drive is well past its day!

edit: and if they only had ~75Gb you only need a cheap 120Gb ssd and it will be a big upgrade for them, speed and space.
Click to expand...

SSD + clean format should do a world of good thanks man!
 
psy81 said:
It does wake up lol what do I do exactly in Control Panel?
Click to expand...

Device Manager and it's disk, ATA, Storage Controllers or similar name. Find the advanced settings. It will have like a checkbox, radio button, drop menu or similar. It will say something about enable UDMA or UDMA preferred. Most likely UDMA Mode 2, 3, 4, etc... The higher the number the faster IDE interface will run. It's been a long time...

Windows 10 Screenshot
Capture.PNG
 
Zareek said:
Device Manager and it's disk, ATA, Storage Controllers or similar name. Find the advanced settings. It will have like a checkbox, radio button, drop menu or similar. It will say something about enable UDMA or UDMA preferred. Most likely UDMA Mode 2, 3, 4, etc... The higher the number the faster IDE interface will run. It's been a long time...
Click to expand...

Great! Thanks man! Probably won't need to do this since I'm going with a SSD but still good to know!
 
psy81 said:
Great! Thanks man! Probably won't need to do this since I'm going with a SSD but still good to know!
Click to expand...
also, make sure that the bios is set AHCI(not ide, may be that way already) mode for the hdd controller before you install windows on the new ssd. that way it will run as fast as possible on the sata2 header.
 
pendragon1 said:
also, make sure that the bios is set AHCI(not ide, may be that way already) mode for the hdd controller before you install windows on the new ssd. that way it will run as fast as possible on the sata2 header.
Click to expand...

Excellent point AHCI on the SATA ports is important to support the TRIM command on the SSD. Best of luck... With a shiny new SSD that machine should be fine for another 5 years...
 
I'm curious how much faster the machine would have been with ghosting the drive image over the SSD.
 
Great Tiger said:
I'm curious how much faster the machine would have been with ghosting the drive image over the SSD.
Click to expand...
IF he could get a good clone as he's unsure of what is causing the issue it would be a pretty noticeable difference, especially boot time and load times. the laptop I mentioned earlier, I cloned its hdd to a 60Gb sdd and it was a huge difference. even with being limited by the sata2.

edit: now that I think of it, i'd bet that his old 75GB ide is only 5400rpm too!
 
pendragon1 said:
also, make sure that the bios is set AHCI(not ide, may be that way already) mode for the hdd controller before you install windows on the new ssd. that way it will run as fast as possible on the sata2 header.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip! I was wondering if there is anything in the bios I need to do to boot from IDE to SATA so this is really helpful! I'm not going to clone the hard drive since it has a lot of unnecessary software running on it and the only thing they really need is the links to sites they watch their streaming videos which is all bookmarked and saved in the cloud via Firefox account.
 
You're using a phenom x4 for an HTPC? Do you have an idea how much those things suck down at idlle?

It's 72 watts! Because four cores without any power gating, just Cool 'n' Quiet.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2559/6

And I doubt you go to the trouble putting t to sleep, since it takes 20 minutes to boot.

This site puts that yearly electricity cost at between $70-120.

https://www.quora.com/How-much-is-t...unning-a-desktop-computer-for-a-year-non-stop


Stop wasting your moeny by being lazy, and thinking you're saving. You'd pay less for a new low-power Atom-based bare-bones than you'd pay in a two years to leave that on 24/7, and the Atom would sip a couple watts at idle.
 
Last edited:
Waking up from sleep and booting up are 2 different things. My parents do use the sleep function in Windows because its so slow to boot up but it wakes up on its own from time to time. I prefer to go with the ssd and see how that goes. Hope to get more life outta my Phenom 9550. It has sentimental value okay lol :p
 
whateverer said:
You're using a phenom x4 for an HTPC? Do you have an idea how much those things suck down at idlle?

It's 72 watts! Because four cores without any power gating, just Cool 'n' Quiet.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2559/6

And I doubt you go to the trouble putting t to sleep, since it takes 20 minutes to boot.

This site puts that yearly electricity cost at between $70-120.

https://www.quora.com/How-much-is-t...unning-a-desktop-computer-for-a-year-non-stop


Stop wasting your moeny by being lazy, and thinking you're saving. You'd pay less for a new low-power Atom-based bare-bones than you'd pay in a two years to leave that on 24/7, and the Atom would sip a couple watts at idle.
Click to expand...

did he say he will use it 24/7? probably a few hours a week to a few hours a night.
 
Ruoh said:
Get rid of the Norton crapware.
Click to expand...
Norton IS (newest one) is actually really light. It uses way less resources than Windows Defender and is noticeably faster on my system.
 
pendragon1 said:
IF he could get a good clone as he's unsure of what is causing the issue it would be a pretty noticeable difference, especially boot time and load times. the laptop I mentioned earlier, I cloned its hdd to a 60Gb sdd and it was a huge difference. even with being limited by the sata2.

edit: now that I think of it, i'd bet that his old 75GB ide is only 5400rpm too!
Click to expand...

But that's just it. I'm curious as to how much faster. Another option is open up the resource manager and see if something is hogging processing power. I recently ran into this issue with window media player started hogging all the processing power. Turned out be an infected MP4 file.


Ruoh said:
Get rid of the Norton crapware.
Click to expand...

I WAS going to say this but this isn't 1998 anymore. It's not as bad as it used to be but I totally what know what you mean by eventually just wanting to stay away from it.
 
Thing is I vividly remember gaming on it in 2010 with Norton installed and I remember thinking the PC was fast at that time. I know everything is relative but I know for sure I was able to watch youtube at that time with no issues and I don't recall taking 20 minutes just to load Windows. I'm pretty sure the hard drive is the source of all the problems. There was second IDE hard drive was purchased around the same time the current hard drive was purchased in the early 2000s installed in this system and that hard drive actually died last year. The hard drives were pulled from a Pentium IV system which shows how old they are.

I won't be able to install the SSD until around Christmas when I go home for the holidays but when I do I will be sure to report back! The main test is how long it takes to boot into Windows and if it can play streaming video (like youtube) without lagging. I might clone the hard drive just to see how much of a difference it makes to test it out first before doing a complete reformat.

Stay Tuned and thanks again everyone for your input!

That was a lot of feedback in a short amount of time for a CPU released in 2008 lol

On a side note: that was the system (Phenom 9550 paired with an EVGA GTX 275) that got back into PC Gaming (which is why it has sentimental value - many good memories lol) and I got the Phenom II 965 in 2010 (which was a huge jump and later paired with GTX 470s in SLI) followed by the FX-8350 in the fall of 2012. As you can see I was an AMD loyalist until recently when I joined the dark side...
 
Last edited:
psy81 said:
Hey guys,

My old rig from way back is with my parents now. Its the original Phenom 9550 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM and a GTX 460. My parents only use the computer to stream video 720p (highest). The computer hasn't been formatted in some time but it is running super slow. Takes like 20 minutes to boot and watching video is a slide show. Weird cause I don't recall it being that slow when I was using it as a gaming rig lol

I know the SSD would help with boot times but would it also get rid of the slow streaming speed? The internet is fine as the other computer at my parents house runs on my old Phenom II 965 with GTX 580 and has no problems.

P.S. Running Windows 7 with Norton is installed.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
My old Phenom 9850BE with 8GB of RAM and a crap WD Blue hard drive booted windows 7 64bit in about 2 minutes. I retired it in September. It was my HTPC and it handled 1080p blu-ray rips fine.

The issue IS NOT the processor.

You have one or all of the following issues:
1. Software. Either a fuck ton of viruses/malware and/or a bunch of poorly configured possibly outdated antivirus/antimalware suites running continuously.
2. Hardware. That hard drive may be about to die. I suppose its remotely possible something got messed up in the bios or the CPU is stuck in Cool N Quiet speeds of 800mhz. I had that happen before with my Phenom setup and it turned out to be a motherboard issue.
3. General lack of maintenance in general. If the fans and heatsinks are clogged with dust, they won't cool, and the CPU won't even be able to hold stock speeds.
 
Last edited:
Wow IDE. Not even my grandparents still have any of those in their house. I do, sitting in a box, waiting for a dreaded day it might be needed again.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
My old Phenom 9850BE with 8GB of RAM and a crap WD Blue hard drive booted windows 7 64bit in about 2 minutes. I retired it in September. It was my HTPC and it handled 1080p blu-ray rips fine.

The issue IS NOT the processor.

You have one or all of the following issues:
1. Software. Either a fuck ton of viruses/malware and/or a bunch of poorly configured possibly outdated antivirus/antimalware suites running continuously.
2. Hardware. That hard drive may be about to die. I suppose its remotely possible something got messed up in the bios or the CPU is stuck in Cool N Quiet speeds of 800mhz. I had that happen before with my Phenom setup and it turned out to be a motherboard issue.
3. General lack of maintenance in general. If the fans and heatsinks are clogged with dust, they won't cool, and the CPU won't even be able to hold stock speeds.
Click to expand...

As I stated above in this thread, the case and heatsinks were all recently cleaned, norton antivirus is installed and has been installed for years so chances of major malware and viruses aren't that high, no thermal throttling issues as I see the clock speeds going up to 2200MHz and staying there and my parents aren't playing 1080p blue ray rips, they're watching streaming 720p quality video off the internet (not sure which is more demanding).

I think its a combination of inevitable hard drive failure (keep in mind a hard drive purchased around the same time in the early 2000s died last year - accessing files was extremely slow before it died) and unnecessary programs running the in background and in startup. I'll report back when I install the SSD around Christmas time.
 
Tup3x said:
Norton IS (newest one) is actually really light. It uses way less resources than Windows Defender and is noticeably faster on my system.
Click to expand...

It uses less resources because it doesn't do anything. The last time Norton was worth anything was like 2004.

Get a good AV like Avast, AVG or Kaspersky if you want to pay.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
It uses less resources because it doesn't do anything. The last time Norton was worth anything was like 2004.

Get a good AV like Avast, AVG or Kaspersky if you want to pay.
Click to expand...
I switched away from Avast because that thing is bloated as fuck these days and just slows down the whole system.
 
It's true Avast is bloated, but at least it's a proper AV and actually works. Norton on the other hand can sit there and tell you everything is A-OK while viruses are doing a little dance "na na na, you can't see me haha!"

I can't tell you how many customers that I've had to rescue their machines when Norton did fuck all to protect them, and they charge for that crap.
 
Update: SSD Installed and the computer runs much faster and quieter. The IDE HD was making all sorts weird and random buzzing noises too.

In terms of streaming video it had no impact (using the same browser (Firefox))! CPU usage was 40-60%, GPU usage at 10% when streaming videos before and after the update in Firefox.

But I switched my parents from Firefox to Google Chrome and the videos now play 100% smooth with no stutter or lag with CPU usage now at 35-50% (so usage is down a little bit) and GPU usage is the same at 10%. Personally, Firefox has been my browser of choice for the last 10+ years but after seeing what it did I'm tempted to switch!

Another weird thing is, I tested 1080p streaming on Youtube in Firefox (even before the SSD update) and it played the video's back perfectly. I think it has something to do with the video player in the browser (where my parents go to watch their Korean Shows) since it clearly plays better in Chrome.

Long story short, Phenom 9550 is still plenty sufficient for 720p and even 1080p streaming as well as everyday browsing :)

P.S. Still running Norton on this computer and I don't feel like its slowing the computer down. I remember a time when it really was a system hog but the 9550 seems to be able to handle it okay still.

Thanks again everyone and happy holidays :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top