Underpowered vista pc

[ciscocd1]

Hello,
I have been living with this pc for a couple of years but my patience has run out. I know it is capable of greatness but the current setup seems to be suffering.
The two main complaints are,
1- Will not stream full screen video(even non-HD) from netflix without pixilating and stuttering audio and picture.
2- Playing iTunes music, you can hear the stuttering and glitching of an under powered machine.

I feel like the specs of the machine should allow for these basic operations so I'm a bit perplexed.
Here are the specs, and before you ask, the internet connection is not the issue because the blue-ray, xbox and my phone all use the same connection and stream netflix in HD with no issue.

Lian Li tower bought second hand with motherboard/cpu installed.
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ @2.21 GHZ
3GB ram
NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT 512MB
and
Vista Ultimate SP2 64bit
I'd be interested to know if these specs are so behind-the-times that this machine is hopeless,
Thanks for your help in advance, I'll clarify or add info as needed,
Thanks

 

[tiny voices]

Your CPU and GPU are pretty dated by modern standards.

 

[aldan]

that and the fact that your operating system is a big ram hog and you only have 3gb of ram.