AnandTech Tests GPU Accelerated Flash 10.1 Prerelease
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Flash 10.1 on GM45 and ION Laptops
As Anand mentioned, I ran some tests on laptops as a sanity check. Besides the AMD numbers (ATI HD 3200 using a Gateway NV52 laptop), I also ran tests on an HP Mini 311 (NVIDIA ION LE) and a Gateway NV58 (Intel GMA 4500 MHD). My results with the ION LE laptop are similar to Anand's experience, except that I didn't have an external display so I used the native 1366x768 laptop LCD. The difference between Flash 10.0 and 10.1 is absolutely stunning on an ION-based netbook. I conducted all of the laptop testing with the videos running in fullscreen mode.
| HP Mini 311 (ION LE) Full Screen 1366x768 Performance |
||
| Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 | |
| Hulu HD 720p - LOTS - Avg. CPU | 98% | 66% |
| Hulu HD 720p - LOTS - FPS | 1.1 | 24.2 |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - Avg. CPU | 92% | 66% |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - FPS | 7.1 | 27.6 |
| YouTube HD 720p - PoP - Avg. CPU | 90% | 69% |
| YouTube HD 720p - PoP - FPS (Dropped) | 10.5 (1519) | 24.0 (0) |
Using Flash 10.0, the ION netbook is horrible for Flash video. Standard definition movies on YouTube are about as good as it gets, and there's still obvious frame dropping when running in fullscreen mode. HD movies range from dropping about one third of the frames to dropping well over half of the frames, and that's at 720p. With YouTube now starting to support 1080p videos, things only get worse. We averaged around three frames per second on a 30 FPS video. Hulu is even worse, with SD video managing just 7.1 FPS and a 720p video running a 1 FPS slideshow.
Upgrade to Flash 10.1 and pretty much all of the problems mentioned above are gone. Average CPU utilization drops by 20 to 35% and every video we tested worked without a hitch (provided we used the &fmt=22 workaround mentioned earlier). Hulu's 720p Legend of the Seeker (one of their few HD videos at present) ran at a buttery smooth 24 FPS. Needless to say, your typical netbook using an Intel GMA 950 isn't going to be able to do any of this stuff, regardless of which version of Flash you're running.
Moving on to the Gateway NV58 with GMA 4500MHD....
| Gateway NV58 (GMA 4500MHD) Full Screen 1366x768 Performance |
||
| Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 | |
| Hulu HD 720p - LOTS - Avg. CPU | 76% | 56% |
| Hulu HD 720p - LOTS - FPS | 25.3 | 24.5 |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - Avg. CPU | 72% | 62% |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - FPS | 33.5 | 10.2 |
| YouTube HD 720p - PoP - Avg. CPU | 52% | 41% |
| YouTube HD 720p - PoP - FPS (Dropped) | 26.2 (0) | 24.0 (0) |
Things were a bit more interesting on the NV58. First, we really didn't have any trouble watching any of the videos in full screen mode using Flash 10.0. CPU usage was rather high on the 2.1 GHz T6500 processor, but there were no noticeable frame drops. Both Hulu videos had CPU utilization at above 70%, with spikes hitting 95%. The YouTube 720p video we looked at didn't require nearly as much CPU power, and it didn't drop any frames. One oddity worth noting is that frame rates actually tended to be slightly higher than the video content, though it didn't cause any noticeable distortion.
Updating to Flash 10.1 was a mixed bag. The good news is that CPU utilization dropped by 11 points on the YouTube 720p video. The frame rate also locked in at 24 FPS, which is what you would expect since the source movie is 24 FPS. Our Hulu HD 720p movie dropped CPU usage by 20%, again with frame rates running at the expected 24 FPS (give or take). The anomaly was the Hulu SD video, where we saw CPU usage dropped 10% but frame rates went from a smooth 33 FPS down to 10 FPS. Unfortunately, looking around Hulu, the vast majority of their videos appear to have this problem on the GMA 4500MHD.
Considering the problems we had with ATI video playback and Flash 10.1, the problem appears to be either graphics drivers or incomplete support for non-NVIDIA hardware in Flash 10.1. We expect this is one of those areas Adobe will work on during the next couple of months prior to the official launch of Flash 10.1.
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Olen Ahkcre - Monday, January 11, 2010 - link
This article is totally off base...Flash video playback pausing frequently isn't caused by the Flash player. It's cause by the server being overloaded with too many requests.
GPU acceleration is for playing back Flash _CONTENT_, not Flash video (FLV).
The reason being some apps created using Flash place an unusual amount of load on the CPU.
If you think GPU accelerated Flash has anything to do with video playback, I think you might be seriously confused.
modulo - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
This article makes ANANDTECH, look like a bunch of apple swilling morons.Hello ANANDTECH, did you know that 95% of the worlds computers still use windows? Probably not, which is why you put an article like this using a MAC, on a website 90% dedicated to PC hardware. And what is there to know about mac anyway? RUMOR RUMORS RUMORS, being a mac"enthusiast" is all about how much shit you can talk, how many rumors you can start, and how hard you would suck steve jobs cock if he put it in your mouth.
NOW.
Flash, is a fabulous technology that makes 10 million different things possible on the web that would NOT HAPPEN without it. OK, and interestingly, this article advocates turning on an adblocker, for their own website!!! If I was a sponsor of this website I would demand to have my motherf***inh money back.
LOL, now you noobie losers want to complain because your computers are slow, go talk to your grandma about how long it takes her to have a bowel movement, THAT is slow.
TravisO - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
On Flash 10.1 video _IS_ GPU accelerated but there is a catch, only H.264 video is GPU accelerated but the old FLV video is not. Here's the text from the 10.1 release notes:H.264 video hardware decoding
Flash Player 10.1 introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth, high quality
video with minimal overhead across mobile devices and PCs. Using available hardware to decode video offloads tasks from the CPU, improving video playback performance, reducing system resource utilization, and preserving battery life.
PS: Keep in mind you must use a supported video card to be accelerated, which means only GPUs invented these past two years approximately, virtually nothing from Intel is supported except the new Core i CPUs with the integrated GPU, if you have a Netbook you're screwed unless you have an Ion chipset.
Xmister - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
You should get some information before starting to write bull***t."Flash video playback pausing frequently isn't caused by the Flash player. It's cause by the server being overloaded with too many requests. "
You think they are so stupid, that can't see the difference of buffer-loading and framedrops?!
"GPU acceleration is for playing back Flash _CONTENT_, not Flash video (FLV). "
The GPU accelerated flash's main point is H.264 decoding, and all the HD flash videos are now H.264 encoded(on youtube non-HD too).
"The reason being some apps created using Flash place an unusual amount of load on the CPU."
And what do you think, what amount of load an HD video places on the CPU? I'll help you a bit: a lot.
"If you think GPU accelerated Flash has anything to do with video playback, I think you might be seriously confused. "
You are seriously confused, clear the lot irrelevant information from your head, and get some relevant. I could only advise this whenever you want to comment on anything.
coachingjoy - Sunday, November 29, 2009 - link
Is flash worth the install when advertisements are taken into account?Sunagwa - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I don't understand the problem. I have a Core 2 Duo @ 3.8Ghz and I use Hulu all the freaking time with absolutly no problems whatsoever.JarredWalton - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
Exactly. You have a high end system that can do all the video decoding in software on the CPU without problems. Not everyone has that. (And OS X is a different beast, apparently, at least as far as Flash is concerned.)Sunagwa - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I see, my bad I guess I didn't really consider my CPU to be high end. The system he mentions at the beggining sounded pretty powerful though I have never run anything but windows so I may be wrong...JarredWalton - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I should clarify: it may not be high-end by today's standards (what with Core i7), but a moderate ~2.0GHz Core 2 Duo can handle 1080p video decoding in software (albeit at high CPU utilization). It's really more of a question of laptops and even then more netbooks and nettops. And Flash optimizations are of course also important - I've seen Flash choke other laptops with Intel IGPs on older Flash revisions, but 10.0 does much better.dicobalt - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
You guys misunderstand what I was saying. I can play 1080 video just fine, HULU, WMV, MP4, MOV, whatever. I am unable to play 1080 smoothly when I have the Folding@Home GPU client running, that's the only time I have trouble with it (and standard def video too). Though it was working fine on Vista before I installed Win7.Most of the time when I am playing HD video files CPU usage is about 28-48% on the most loaded core.
BTW since I updated to Nvidia drivers to 195.55 now Firefox is no longer crashing on YouTube videos with Flash 10.1 installed. Seems to me that Nvidia was not ready for Win7 with their drivers, they got a lot going on right now.