Need Help! Trying to Up Grade a old HP for my Mother

my mom service provider recently improved their inter net service. use to be 60mb down now speeds can be up to 400mb down.

she has been having problems and had them come out and check the service. the technician said that it's her network card can't handle the new speeds she should get a 10/100/1000 mb card, and that she also should get a video card, the graphic are integrated and even before they upgraded their service she had problem from time to time with it.

i've tried to find info on the net, no luck. HP won't even talk to me about it. just keeps on want me to use the detect tool or automated chat bot.

Model # of computer is CQ2014
her ethernet card now is a 10/100mb : Qualcomm Atheros AR8152 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (NDIS 6.30)

i've opened the the tower and it appears to only have one slot for PCI-E. also the network card/adapter plug looks to be integrated into the motherboard. so if i had to choose between graphics and network i'll go with network.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Is there a spare USB port? You culd go with a USB to Ethernet adapter or what about going wireless with a USB Wifi Adapter?

That said, her tech should have checked but I would start with a new Ethernet cable. Those are very cheap, fragile and easily damaged but critical network devices. If her gateway device (typically the modem or router) has more than one port to connect a computer too, I would try a different port too.

While certainly a card that supports 1Gbps (1000Mbps) would better support 1Gbps networks, 100Mbps is still very fast as Tony noted and most likely fast enough for her needs - especially if her needs have not changed.

As far as a graphics card, the problem there is power (and maybe cooling). Factory made computers are notorious for including power supplies that are barely adequate to support the hardware they come with. Graphics solutions are power hungry, often the most power hungry devices in our computers, even more so than CPUs. So it is not uncommon to need a new PSU to support a new graphics card - especially when going from integrated to a separate card.

And graphics cards need cool air. It may be necessary to add another case fan to address a graphics card's cooling needs.

How much RAM is installed? That might be the better (and less expensive) option - depending on how much is in there now. Integrated graphics steals... err... "shares" a decent size chunk of the system RAM. Adding more RAM will not only provide more memory for the graphics solution, but also more RAM for Windows and her running programs. Again, depending on how much is in there now, adding more RAM could provide a significant bang for the money.

One big caveat is the operating system thought. If 32-bit, it will only recognize 4GB of RAM. If 64-bit Windows, you are in luck - assuming the motherboard will support more. If possible, I would go for 8GB.

You can use the Crucial Memory Advisor to determine what's in there now, and what it will support. You can download and run their automated memory wizard or enter the specs manually. You don't have to buy from Crucial directly, but if you do buy suggested RAM from them, the guarantee compatibility. Most other RAM makers have similar memory wizards.

On the plus side, most factory included power supplies can easily support an added network interface card and more RAM.

 

[QUOTE="Tony D, post: 216080, member: 2921"

Are you having any connection issues like buffering?[/QUOTE]


reel high ping,, any where from 85ms to 125ms, sometimes longer, and extremely high buffer bloat, pegs the meter, according to DSL Reports. shows up when loading webpages and sometimes when streaming.. she has two computers running off the same router less then 15 feet apart both wired, she's doesn't trust wifi ever since she saw a report of people stealing identity off of it years ago. the second a dell gets any where from 385 to 425 megs down and 29 to 35 megs up, pages load instantly, but it also has extremely high buffer bloat going by DSL Reports. problem didn't start until after they increased the speed.

tech couldn't answer why the high buffer bloat. and everything else checked fine. the tech and i both moved both cables to all four ports on router and still get the same results.

did some investigating and found USB network adapters. cheap enough i'm gonna order one and try it.

 

just found the USB adapters, i also found out that there are no PCI+E slots( see link). so screwed on the graphics, unless i buy a graphics card dock and upgrade power supply. the computer output is only 65wats. memory is good has 16 megs now and can handle 32.

i did some search and finally found this the motherboard specs.

link: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03014811

 

i just use DSL Reports for speed testing, best i've found. it has always been ben between the 35ms to 60 ms range at my house ( i live across the road from her) and her house and we both have the same provider which is Mediacom


this is from today, lows are the CQ2014, highs are the Dell ping on the dell today has been around 46 to 50 ms CQ2014 72 to 90ms.

 

ok, it will be later on tonight, shes gone right now and i left my key over there. i've never done IPCONFIG/AL before i know how to do command prompt. running windows 10

so IPCONFIG/AL then enter, then should there be only one gateway address or more.?

oh i also have reset the network and used JV16 powertools to change the address once.

 

ok i expect her back in about a hour or so. then i'll run it and post a screen shot instead of all that typing. i got short stubby fingers and have to hunt and peck other wise.

 

Yeah, that's too bad. Some Mini-ITX boards do support one PCIe slot to add a graphics card. But you are right, that one does not. There are USB graphics adapters to have their own power supply so you would not need to change that one out. But at some point you have to weigh the cost of upgrades for an older computer to the cost of new computer.

 

here is the screen shot,

 

from command prompt correct?

 

i told her that, but she's older school than me.

 

I'm just North of the Montana border and my ping to google.com is a consistent 24ms.

 

What do you mean by "high buffer bloat"? If buffering occurs with streaming video, it could mean an internet problem, or just old hardware. It's also dependent on the resolution of the streaming video.

Like Tony, I only have 50 down, and can stream 4K video with no issue on 2 different computers.

I only skimmed through the whole thread, but ISP throttling also comes to mind.