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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imaheadcase - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I've never had any issues with Flash playing on computer, i got a normal computer to, GTX 260, quad core 2.83ghz, 8 gigs of ram.What video specifically do you experience "dropped frames" on?
ProDigit - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
try playing even the simplest farmville, grow about 1000 trees in it,and you have yourself one slow framedropping flash program!Voldenuit - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I know exactly what you mean about preaching to the choir. I have a decent midrange system (E7600, 8 GB RAM, 4870 1 GB, W7 x64), and even having Flash ads in an open browser window will choke my framerate on Dragon Age: Origins.So I did the sensible thing and installed Flashblock (previously I only used it on my laptop for battery life and performance).
Bad Adobe, Bad.
nilepez - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
Better than flashblock, just use noscript (assuming you use firefox/mozilla).If I ran a website, I think I'd avoid all flash ads (or at least highly recommend my advertisers avoid it).
Although i know many block all ads, I have no problem with ads, so long as they don't talk and don't eat up CPU cycles....oh and I block the keyword ads, because I move my mouse while reading, and those inevitably block the text that I'm reading.
Someone said that the problem is poor coding and that may be true, but if you're on a message board and you open up a bunch of threads in different tabs, those flash ads will eventually kill your processor. On one board, I open up every single thread that I've participated in as soon as I get on (so that they don't get marked as read before I read them) and until I blocked flash, that killed my system.
heffeque - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Not also that. The 10.1 works even more unstable than the 10.0. I've tried it and I had to go back to 10.0 to be able to use firefox for more than 15 minutes.B3an - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
You people dont get it...1) Flash Player 10.1 is a early pre-release, NOT final.
2) Flash is great, it's the best thing out there for delivering so many things. It's also some of the most fun and creative software i use. The problem is how advertisers use Flash, and what stupid websmasters decide to do with it (dump flash ads all over the place. This is NOT the fault of Flash. It simply happens to be the best thing for these things. If there was anything that could compete, that would be used instead and then people would just call that annoying.
2) Nothing is wrong with Flash performance considering what it does. It uses Vector based graphics normally and this happens to be very demanding for CPU's, Adobe could not possible get vector graphics magically running as good as pixel based graphics no matter what they did. The advantage of vector based graphics though is things like infinite zoom with no pixelation, and adaptive resolution. It's nice to see GPU acceleration for video though, that was needed.
It's sad that even Anand does not seem to understand this stuff.
omaudio - Thursday, March 11, 2010 - link
I agree Flash is a good thing and used poorly often. My concern is that the vector benefits you mention simply become irrelevant with pixel based video being converted to Flash. It is a mammoth waste of electricity and cpu/gpu cycles. I hope they are able to come up with a better alternative for video as it seems to me the core of Flash based video (vector based video) will never change.Griswold - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
No, its not an early previews. You can bet your momma that the final version coming early next year will still have at least half of the issues you can see with this beta.cosmotic - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Vector based graphics have very variable CPU requirements, where raster video has CPU requirements directly proportional to the compression and resolution which at this point is very high. The Flash player is extremely efficient. It has no problem reaching 60FPS on high resolution content. The problem comes when you overload the content with silly effects that Adobe made just a little too easy to use (eg: shadows). Your frame rate dispute likely stems from the default FPS of 24, which ironically is what film and video runs at, unless it's running at 29.97 or 30 FPS... either way much lower than 60.HD video just cannot play back without dropping frames without the help of a GPU. Most codecs use the GPU at this point so you rarely see high CPU usage with video playback.
I agree with you that it would be sad if Anand did not understand this stuff, but I think he understands it more than you think he does, and more than you actually do yourself. What's even more sad is how many people at Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, nVidia, AMD, etc don't understand this stuff. It's a nightmare for us even competent users, let alone computer illiterate.
What I'm sad that Anand doesn't understand (or maybe ignores) is how bad the entire codec and GPU acceleration industry is. I see screenshots of Absolutely horrid control panels and video players without comments like "Look at this complete trash they shipped us". There is no reason to have 1) non-native looking anything and 2) a control panel for graphics or codecs. This kind of bleeds over into the sound card realm as well.
Anand: I have a fairly similar Mac and I fully identify with you. The situation is complete garbage.
Zoomer - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I disagree, there is a point for control panels for video/audio codecs. See FFdshow.Control Panel for Gfx:
How else can we force things like AA, AA type, CF, etc on/off? Editing the registry?
Audio: Should we edit the registry to change the number of speakers, the subwoofer cutoff frequency (depends on size of mains vs. sub), etc?
"HD video just cannot play back without dropping frames without the help of a GPU. Most codecs use the GPU at this point so you rarely see high CPU usage with video playback."
Not really true, a good C2Q should do it just fine.
That said, I must say that flash wasn't really meant to be used the way it is used today.