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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rnj - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
it is not gamma settings definitely, i noticed this as well.ahar - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
I tried 10.1 on my system which has a Pentium E6500 and 9500GT and the latest Nvidia drivers. The CPU utilisation went way down whilst watching a HD stream on the BBC iPlayer but the image quality had also dropped considerably. There were noticeable block artefacts - it looks like the AA which was previously applied was no longer happening. I had a quick play around with the PureVideo settings it the Nvidia control panel but nothing seemed to make a difference.I've reverted back to Flash 10 now.
magicalz - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
AMD/ATIHardware video decoding of H.264 content in Flash Player 10.1 is supported on AMD/ATI products with
UVD2 with the ATI Catalyst? Software Suite, starting with version 9.11 for the ATI Radeon? family of
products, and driver release 8.68 for the ATI FirePro? family of products.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Well, that would explain things, though I *swear* it said Catalyst 9.10 earlier today/tonight. I think Adobe fixed a typo, because I even followed a link at one point to download the Mobile 9.10 drivers.Scali - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
You can download the 9.11 RC from AMD, as it is also required for the 2.0 beta4 release of the Stream SDK (with OpenCL support).Perhaps you could try and see if it makes a difference? I'd like to see that, especially since I have ordered a Radeon 5770 a few days ago.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
The 9.11 RC you mention through AMD's developer site does not support Flash 10.1 GPU acceleration, I just confirmed. Waiting for a driver that does from AMD, also trying to see when AMD will make it public.Take care,
Anand
Scali - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
Yes, it seems that AMD released the 9.11 drivers at about the same time as I made that comment.The final 9.11 release should have the GPU acceleration for Flash... However, it didn't seem like they left the OpenCL support in the final release.
So the 9.11 RC drivers and the 9.11 final release seem to be very different :)
hechacker1 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
1. So I'm assuming flash now takes advantage of DXVA2 EVR rendering, so the GPU is now responsible for decoding quality? I should now be able to adjust my AVIVO settings for flash? I'm not too sure how EVR/dxva and the video card is related.2. Too bad linux isn't yet supported. Flash on linux is notoriously bad. Nvidia is pushing their accelerated VDPAU, and many software players now include support for it. ATI and intel though are doing something different, but it seems binding are available to translate. So hopefully in the near future linux gets a modern bitstream accelerated video acceleartion framework.
3. Does it work with H.264 only? Or does it also work with sorenson and vp6 codecs? So youtube HQ or better is mp4 always?
hechacker1 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
And thanks for the article!blyndy - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
HTML5 is the real long-term solution, not flash 10.1.