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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pcfxer - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I call BS on Adobe in particular because the ENTIRE Snow Leopard release was to provide access to hardware features through Xcode. Snow Leopard is an OS for developers!Xcode provides access to Compute Power of the videocards, just instantiate the object; almost like COM but easier ;). Let me translate for Adobe.
"We are lazy, like really, really lazy and don't really care about platform support. We're more closed than any other company but we'll blame others for our fallacies! Let's sign an NDA-no wait, that would be proprietary and companies like Apple, Linux/BSD (company?? I need coffee) want Adobe to standardize an API."
If Adobe were to create an API, they would handle the back-end and could even "open up" the front-end to Adobe. I should go to their offices in Ottawa and slap them on their wrists now.
Visual - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
flash should just use the platform's libraries to decode video. any video format, not just limited to their crap. why the hell not?there isn't directshow equivalent on linux, but ffmpeg is pretty standard there and can be used directly instead. ffmpeg has VDPAU support on linux since the start of this year, which is pretty much the equivalent to dxva. at least for nvidia cards. if it does not yet, eventually it will have support for the AMD alternative, and then all programs using it will automagically get that too.
i don't know why things on windows are such a mess that official ffmped wont support dxva there - but there are versions that do, and there are other directshow filters that do, so using directshow should be a fine solution there.
Penti - Wednesday, November 25, 2009 - link
DirectShow and ffmpeg aren't the same thing and FFmpeg is illegal homebrew software anyway. You can compare DirectShow with gstreamer and DXVA with VDPAU. FFmpeg are just the codecs and container demuxer, not the multimedia framework that puts the image on the screen.Flash contains it's own decoders. It's videos aren't exactly the same as videos in normal containers either.
damolol - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
When these drivers become better I would love to see a battery life consumption between gpu accelerated flash and non gpu accelerated. I think it would be useful since long battery lifes for netbooks and Ultraportables are all the rage at the moment.Hyperlite - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
C'mon guys, you need to retest the AMD system.......................................MrPoletski - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
now how about somebody gives dirt facebook PHP code an equivelant increase in speed;)FireGate13 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Two bugs so far:1.I noticed Billinear filtering is missing on youtube videos when you don't play them HD. This was exactly the same when you disabled Hardware Acceleration in Flash Options. But now with this 10.1 beta I clearly can see the blocky effect everywhere especially when I make a video play fullscreen.. Good Job Adobe!
2. I noticed strange pauses when I saw a video sometimes. Whenever I start task manager for example my video pauses!
I have 9800GT,driver 195.50 and adobe 10.1 new flash.
(that was the acceleration they promissed? only h.264 decoding? omg:( ).
Meghan54 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I just read the article and decided to retest Hulu.My system is a Core i7 920, 6GB RAM, Radeon 4870 1GB video card....on a 6Mb DSL line and I'm at the end of the line---way out in the sticks.
Currently downloading a large file, have ESPN (Mike & mike) audio streaming in the background (muted right now) and playing "V" in HD setting and full screen.
I notice no blockiness, no artifacts, nothing but perfect visuals from Hulu. While it does stutter once every few minutes for a second...guess dropping a frame or whatever....I'm attributing that to my taking a lot of the bandwidth I have available being used by ESPN and the file I'm downloading while watching the video.
Otherwise, a simply smooth video, looking just as good as the OTA broadcast of the original.
Don't know what the issues are for you, but I've just never noticed any problems with Hulu's streaming, except in videos that weren't filmed in HD to begin with.
Meghan54 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Forgot to post the rest of the machine's specs:Win 7 Ultimate x64, ATI driver 9.10, 26" LCD monitor.
I just booted my slow laptop (Celeron 900 cpu--2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 15.5" screen, Intel IGP 4500, Win 7 Home x64)....connected to Hulu via a Wireless G connection and still got very smooth video, no blockiness anywhere, just great video.
Maybe, as was suggested before, it's a Mac problem? I don't know, but none of our machines in our house, all running Win 7 x64 variants with varying video cards, has any issues with Hulu's streaming video or quality thereof.
FireGate13 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Dont forget to Dowload Nforce version 195.55 desktop drivers!