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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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.