Can a faster computer config overcome slowish Internet speeds?

[wappinghigh]

My usual Internet speed is around 10 mb/sec. My fastest processor/graphics card set up right now is a Core 2Duo 3.06 GHz with a Nividia Gforce GT 130 512 VRAM

The other day is was trying to watch Diggnation. This set up couldn't cope with their hidefinition stream. It's only 720p 30fps H264 (I think) So my question. Can a beefed up gaming style HTPC or Mac Pro overcome this sort of high def file streaming problem, (by speeding up or making the buffering larger) or is the Internet speed the only limiting factor here...THx

[thecodeman]

Pc is fine for hd. I run 1080p on c2d 6700 if I remember, 4 gb ram, windows 7, geforce 8800 gts. Not bad for an almost four year old pc. Try downloading clips in hd instead of streaming to see if results are the same.

[DonFromCanada]

My usual Internet speed is around 10 mb/sec. My fastest processor/graphics card set up right now is a Core 2Duo 3.06 GHz with a Nividia Gforce GT 130 512 VRAM

The other day is was trying to watch Diggnation. This set up couldn't cope with their hidefinition stream. It's only 720p 30fps H264 (I think) So my question. Can a beefed up gaming style HTPC or Mac Pro overcome this sort of high def file streaming problem, (by speeding up or making the buffering larger) or is the Internet speed the only limiting factor here...THx

You need to understand a lot of network terminology before you're equipped to hear the answer to your question...

Start by googling:

DNS response rate

network flutter

gateway latency

These items will affect the quality of your link speed, and have little to do with overall theoretical network throughput.

Your machine probably includes a gigabit ethernet card... and is capable of running nework traffic into it about approx 80% efficiency (more, if you get fancy with jumbo frames and 9000 byte packets, but that is another conversation) The lost 20% is due to the ethernet protocol, packets headers and footers, etc. Your network speed cannot get faster by altering an already fast machine... the only thing you can do locally is possibly register your own DNS server to enable faster lookups locally - but you usually have to be an ISP to do that. You can choose to replicate a portion of the DNS database locally for your most-frequented websites...