AnandTech Tests GPU Accelerated Flash 10.1 Prerelease
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI and Intel Update, 11/19/2009:
After uninstalling Flash 10.1, reinstalling, rebooting, and switching to the High Performance power profile (instead of Balanced), some of the Hulu problems noted on the previous page seemed to clear up slightly. We already tested with the latest Intel drivers, so that wasn't the issue. Additional testing revealed that if you disable GPU acceleration with 10.1 (and restart your browser), the Hulu 480p problems are not present, but we continue to have difficulties with Hulu 480p playback on the GMA 4500MHD with GPU acceleration enabled on all the videos we've tested. The 360p videos work without any problems. Here are the updated results, including results from the Gateway NV52 HD 3200 laptop using the Catalyst 9.11 drivers. We've also added the data for 10.1 with GPU acceleration disabled as a point of reference.
Intel GMA 4500MHD (Gateway NV58)
| Updated Gateway NV58 (GMA 4500MHD) Full Screen 1366x768 Performance |
|||
| Flash 10.0 | Flash 10.1 (GPU) |
Flash 10.1 (No GPU) |
|
| Hulu 720p - CPU | 61% | 37% | 69% |
| Hulu 720p - FPS | 26.3 | 24.7 | 25.3 |
| Hulu 480p - CPU | 58% | 56% | 68% |
| Hulu 480p - FPS | 35.9 | 10.9 | 33.9 |
| YouTube 720p - CPU | 32% | 24% | 37% |
| YouTube 720p - FPS (Dropped) | 26.5 (0) | 24.0 (0) | 19.5 (104) |
Starting with Intel, the results have only changed slightly. We can now use Flash 10.1 in all cases, but we have to disable GPU acceleration for certain videos. This may be an issue similar to NVIDIA stating that ION has problems with YouTube HD videos that are 854 pixels wide; hopefully it will be cleared up with driver and/or Flash updates. HD Flash on the other hand definitely benefits from the GPU acceleration and DXVA in Flash 10.1. The Hulu HD Legend of the Seeker video has CPU usage drop 24% while the 720p Prince of Persia trailer on YouTube reduces CPU usage by 8%. Hulu's The Office does reduce CPU usage 2%, but frame rates drop from 30+ FPS to only 10 FPS.
Turning off GPU acceleration in Flash 10.1 shows where and how much the 4500MHD is helping. The YouTube HD trailer drops to around 20 FPS with occasional dropped frames causing noticeable stuttering, and CPU usage jumps 13%. Hulu HD playback remains smooth, but CPU usage jumps 32%, so the DXVA acceleration clearly helps a lot in this instance. Standard Hulu videos like The Office return to a smooth frame rate, but CPU usage is 10% higher than Flash 10.0. Overall, since the Intel GMA 4500MHD with a T6500 CPU manages to handle Flash video up to 720p in full screen mode using Flash 10.0, the 10.1 update isn't critical right now. If you're using a CULV processor (or a display with a higher resolution), Flash 10.1 may be more beneficial. We'll look at that scenario in a future article.
ATI HD 3200 (Gateway NV52)
| Gateway NV52 (ATI HD 3200) Full Screen 1366x768 Performance |
|||
| Flash 10.0 | Flash 10.1 (GPU) |
Flash 10.1 (No GPU) |
|
| Hulu 720p - CPU | 76% | 56% | 76% |
| Hulu 720p - FPS | 13.2 | 24.5 | 24.5 |
| Hulu 480p - CPU | 72% | 62% | 73% |
| Hulu 480p - FPS | 12.7 | 34.9 | 31.3 |
| YouTube 720p - CPU | 53% | 22% | 42% |
| YouTube 720p - FPS (Dropped) | 26.0 (0) | 24.0 (0) | 21.3 (103) |
With the updated Catalyst 9.11 drivers, our results were a lot better than before. Previously, using Flash 10.0 we were unable to view either of the Hulu videos (720p or 480p) in full screen mode without severe stuttering. YouTube HD on the other hand worked fine with 0 dropped frames. Moving to Flash 10.1 with DXVA GPU acceleration, we now see smooth frame rates on all Hulu content and lower CPU usage for both Hulu and YouTube videos. YouTube CPU usage on the Prince of Persia trailer drops 31%, Hulu's Legend of the Seeker drops CPU use 20% while nearly doubling the frame rate (i.e. from dropping half the frames to showing everything), and 480p Hulu drops CPU usage 10% with frame rates almost tripling (from ~13 FPS to over 30 FPS for what appears to be 30 FPS video content).
Disabling the GPU acceleration in Flash 10.1 still results in a better experience at Hulu than Flash 10.0, with roughly the same CPU load but no stuttering. YouTube HD is similar to the GMA 4500MHD in this case, with a frame rate of 21 FPS and slight stuttering. Unlike the Intel platform, if you have an ATI card and a moderate CPU it appears that Flash 10.1 is a clear win.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I stopped messing with Folding when I started doing the calculations for how much it was costing me in electricity (and a few pieces of failed hardware). Plus, the GPU client in particular always seemed to slow down system responsiveness. If you want to multitask GPU intensive applications, I think we're still deep in the driver update stages (whether ATI or NVIDIA). Give it another year... LOL.dicobalt - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
I have been using Flash 10.1 for the last few days and it seems to crash Firefox in an Nvidia dll. All while using YouTube. Downgraded to the stable release and all is well again. Using Win7 driver 190.38 because newer drivers cause Flash to freeze video up for a half second for every every 10 seconds of video.How I wish Flash would die...
PS. Adobe too.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
My testing on the ION LE was with Win7 and I didn't have any problems. Can you list details of exactly what hardware you're running on? Also, I believe the 195.55 drivers from NVIDIA are part of the requirements for this to work optimally (though if it's just DXVA that shouldn't be true).dicobalt - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
e6300 / gigabyte-p35-dq6 4gb ram / 9600GTI have not yet tried the 195.55 drivers, those are still beta but I will give it a try. I was also having problems with the new Nvidia drivers not load balancing gpu folding@home while playing videos. The drivers in Vista would allow me to run gpu folding@home and playback a 1080 video without any frames skipping. None of the Win7 drivers allow me to do this so far.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
I would assume you're probably overclocking as well? Most people with something like an E6300 do that. Anyway, you might need to try several combinations, and with this beta software (and beta drivers) I wouldn't count on load balancing of multiple GPU applications.dicobalt - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
The CPU from 1.86 to 2.8GHz yea, GPU is stock 650Mhz, all works ok in Vista though. I did just install the 195.55 drivers and it's not as severe as a problem with folding and 1080 video but it is still too much dropping to make it watchable. So far YouTube has not caused Firefox to crash yet, that usually takes some time though, it doesn't happen right away. These drivers need some more work and Flash needs to reach a final version so that Nvidia can fix Adobe's screwups lolHalcyon666 - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Will the 10.1 prerelease help with flash games like the SPAM on facebook? or is it just for flashed video?JarredWalton - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Currently this is targeting video, but Adobe doesn't rule out the possibility of improving other Flash applications in the future.7Enigma - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Anand I've got to be honest, I'm not liking the new trend of reposting an old article with a small update. It is difficult to find since you have to go through the article to find the updated information, and the comments section becomes jumbled up with old posts and new posts.Please go back to the old way of posting a small updated blog post with a link to the original article for those that didn't read it originally, or would like to read it again.
For your faithful readers, it's not a small annoyance.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Actually, the update was by me. I also tried to make it very clear, seeing that the page is labeled with "AMD and Intel Update". I could have done it as a blog, true, and perhaps next time I will.