AnandTech Tests GPU Accelerated Flash 10.1 Prerelease
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
I suppose I could start this article off with a tirade on how frustrating Adobe Flash is. But, I believe the phrase “preaching to the choir” would apply.
I’ve got a two socket, 16-thread, 3GHz, Nehalem Mac Pro as my main workstation. I have an EVGA GeForce GTX 285 in there. It’s fast.
It’s connected to a 30” monitor, running at its native resolution of 2560 x 1600.
The machine is fast enough to do things I’m not smart or talented enough to know how to do. But the one thing it can’t do is play anything off of Hulu in full screen without dropping frames.
This isn’t just a Mac issue, it’s a problem across all OSes and systems, regardless of hardware configuration. Chalk it up to poor development on Adobe’s part or...some other fault of Adobe’s, but Flash playback is extremely CPU intensive.
Today, that’s about to change. Adobe has just released a preview of Flash 10.1 (the final version is due out next year) for Windows, OS X and Linux. While all three platforms feature performance enhancements, the Windows version gets H.264 decode acceleration for flash video using DXVA (OS X and Linux are out of luck there for now).
The same GPU-based decode engines that are used to offload CPU decoding of Blu-rays can now be used to decode H.264 encoded Flash video. NVIDIA also let us know that GPU acceleration for Flash animation is coming in a future version of Flash.
To get the 10.1 pre-release just go here. NVIDIA recommends that you uninstall any existing versions of flash before installing 10.1 but I’ve found that upgrading works just as well.
What Hardware is Supported?
As I just mentioned, Adobe is using DXVA to accelerate Flash video playback, which means you need a GPU that properly supports DXVA2. From NVIDIA that means anything after G80 (sorry, GeForce 8800 GTX, GTS 640/320MB and Ultra owners are out of luck). In other words anything from the GeForce 8 series, 9 series or GeForce GT/GTX series, as well as their mobile equivalents. The only exceptions being those G80 based parts I just mentioned.
Anything based on NVIDIA’s ION chipset is also supported, which will be the foundation of some of our tests today.
AMD supports the following:
- ATI Radeon™ HD 4000, HD 5700 and HD 5800 series graphics
- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics (and higher)
- ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 integrated graphics (and higher)
- ATI FirePro™ V3750, V5700, V7750, V8700 and V8750 graphics accelerators (and later)
It’s a healthy list of supported GPUs from both camps, including integrated graphics. The only other requirement is that you have the latest drivers installed. I used 195.50 from NVIDIA and Catalyst 9.10 from AMD. (Update: The Release Notes now indicate Catalyst 9.11 drivers are required, which would explain our difficulties in testing. ATI just released Catalyst 9.11 but we're having issues getting GPU acceleration to work, waiting on a response from AMD now)
Intel’s G45 should, in theory, work. We tested it on a laptop for this article and since the acceleration is DXVA based, anything that can offload H.264 decode from the CPU using DXVA (like G45) should work just fine. As you’ll see however, our experiences weren’t exactly rosy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
135 Comments
View All Comments
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!