AnandTech Tests GPU Accelerated Flash 10.1 Prerelease
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Testing with AMD GPUs: Doesn't Work Yet
Update 4: AMD has released Catalyst 9.11 with Flash support for Radeon HD 5000 series and 4000 series GPUs. No word on integrated graphics platforms. We've begun testing but the drivers don't seem to enable H.264 decode acceleration under Hulu at this point, waiting for a response from AMD.
Update 3: AMD tells us that Flash 10.1 support is coming later today, we should have a working driver soon.
Update 2: The latest beta drivers from ATI do not enable Flash 10.1 hardware acceleration support (both leaked and the supposed Catalyst 9.11 drivers from ATI's developer site). We're still waiting for ATI to get us a version of their drivers that does enable GPU acceleration under Flash 10.1. Desktop http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_195.55.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_32bit_195.55.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_195.55.html Notebook http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winxp_195.55.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winvista_win7_195.55.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winvista_win7_x64_195.55.html
NVIDIA's drivers are publicly available however:
Update: The Release Notes now indicate Catalyst 9.11 drivers are required, which would explain our difficulties in testing. We're still waiting on a version of Catalyst 9.11 from AMD that works with Flash 10.1. We will post updated data as soon as we have the driver.
I’d say that my ION testing went pretty smoothly, but the same definitely doesn’t hold true for AMD.
I setup an AMD 785G system (integrated Radeon HD 3200) with a AMD Sempron LE-1150. This is a 2.0GHz, single core, K8 based processor with a 512KB L2 cache. Definitely faster than an Atom.
The integrated graphics of the 785G chipset fully supports H.264 decode acceleration and shouldn’t have a problem with Flash 10.1. AMD has it on the supported list and things should be smooth. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t agree:
| Windowed Average CPU Utilization | Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 |
| Hulu Desktop - The Office - Murder | 97% | 100% |
| Hulu HD 720p - Legend of the Seeker Ep1 | 94% | 100% |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - Murder | 57% | 60% |
| Hulu 360p - The Office - Murder | 27% | 35% |
| YouTube HD 720p - Prince of Persia Trailer | 90% | 100% |
| YouTube - Prince of Persia Trailer | 8% | 8% |
Not only did CPU utilization figures not go down, in many cases they went up. I asked Jarred to help me with a sanity check. He had a notebook based on the mobile version of the same chipset with an Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 (dual core 2.0GHz) and ran his own numbers:
| Windowed Average CPU Utilization | Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 |
| YouTube HD 720p - Prince of Persia Trailer | 46% | 46.5% |
There was no change in CPU utilization when moving from Flash 10.0 to 10.1.
The two of us did notice something however. Flash 10.1, although not perfect on AMD hardware, did seem to improve performance. Jarred measured the number of dropped frames between Flash 10.0 and 10.1 in our YouTube HD test:
| Windowed # of Frames Dropped (lower is better) | Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 |
| YouTube HD 720p - Prince of Persia Trailer | 289 frames | 212 frames |
There’s a definite improvement in 10.1, but just not nearly as much as we saw from NVIDIA.
I tried a few more things before giving up on AMD. I tossed in a Radeon HD 5850 to see if it was the integrated GPU at fault - still no change in CPU utilization. Finally I upgraded processors and used an Athlon II X2 240 instead of the meager Sempron.
| Full Screen (1920 x 1200) Average CPU Utilization | Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 |
| Hulu Desktop - The Office - Murder (Sempron LE-1150) | 100% | 100% |
| Hulu Desktop - The Office - Murder (Athlon II X2 240) | 80% | 72% |
CPU utilization finally went down, but not nearly as much as what we saw with NVIDIA. There’s something not quite right about how AMD’s hardware interacts with the Flash 10.1 preview; I guess that’s why they’re calling it a prerelease.
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Doormat - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
On my old Macbook Core duo 1.83Ghz, I can watch Hulu now, both windowed and full screen. Before it was really bad....joshv - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Sorry, Flash performance on Mac sucks. I've done full screen Hulu on my relatively slow Core 2 Duo and it was smooth as silk - Windows Vista. On my current Core i7 machine I can watch full screen HD content from Hulu. Again smooth as silk - 15% CPU utilization.marc1000 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Hi guys. nice news, but I would like to ask if it is possible to do a second test on the AMD systems, because the 9.10 vs 9.11 issue. Even a quick check would suffice to let you (and us) know if it ever changes anything. Thanks,marc1000 - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Sorry, I was checking the article again. In the first page you say there is NO 9.11 driver compatible right now. We will have to wait then... thanks anyway!7Enigma - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Could one of you do a quick test with the 9.11 drivers and give at least a single data point to show how well this works on the ATI parts? I know you updated to say 9.11 was required and that could be a problem, but these tests appear pretty hands-off (FRAPS), so a single episode of the Office or the HD content on YouTube shouldn't take more than an hour to run?I just don't want to see the comments section turning into another ATI/NVIDIA fanboy girl-fight, and claims of NVIDIA favoritism...
Very interested in the final version of this FLASH update. It has been WAYYYY too long in coming.
UNCjigga - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I am wondering if piping the video through the DXVA hardware decode path does anything for image quality? Do the standard Purevideo/Avivo enhancements apply? At the very least, I imagine it might "soften" resized video a bit more than the standard pixelated crap from Flash.rnj - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
actually it resulted in a signficantly quality dropAzhrei - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
So I just checked it out and on my system the video quality for hulu 480p videos at fullscreen is horrible. There is noticeable blocks that is most evident in peoples faces. I downgraded back to 10.0. I don't know if the problem was my video card's rendering or flash but on an 8800 gts 512mb it was unacceptable. I didn't check performance closely because on an i7 flash doesn't stress the CPU enough for me to care. I just checked task manager to make sure it wasn't doing something weird and pushing the CPU hard.csng - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Just tested it on my Nvidia 9600GT,running a youtube HD content, CPU utilization dropped to 25-27% compared to > 55% before using the latest flash player. However the video quality dropped and the whole scene seems washed out. Some blocky effect as mentioned as well..ioannis - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
it might be just gamma settings. Try reducing gamma for video from the nvidia settings.