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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Adasha - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I would hate to live in your ideal world. I bet you'd be happier if we got rid of all GUIs and reverted to command line only.B3an - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I'd also like to add, that the bad Flash performance in many things like Flash based ads, is nearly always down to the web developer of the ad itself. SO many of them could be made to use less CPU power, or even get file size way down.It's nearly always down to web design amatures who dont know the following:
What image files types are best suited for what they're doing,
When to use vector graphics instead of jpegs,
And what quality settings and Flash publishing settings to use.
Voldenuit - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
There's also the problem of Flash chewing resources when the application is in the background (eg if I'm playing a game and would like/need to keep my browser open).Users should have control over what applications run on their PCs, and the fact that Flash doesn't let you do this is a strike against Adobe (already not the most consumer-friendly company out there).
We have anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-phising as recommended and standard on most systems. I say anti-Flash should be just as important.
danacee - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 - link
Even with a 9500GT that plays back 1080p mkv beautifully flash player chugs. It also only uses one core! What the hell, atleast you'd think it would multithreaded. The Atom D510 may be pathetically weak, but it goes to show how far adobe's heads are up their asses when even with supported cpu/gpu on a supported OS (Win XP/Vista x64) flash is still such a piece of garbage it can only grab one thread of a cpu.marosy - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Anand, I'd like to congratulate to you for this article. I learn a lot from your articles.It seems that the bug with the 8400GS has been fixed in Adobe Flash Player 10.2 Beta.