AnandTech Tests GPU Accelerated Flash 10.1 Prerelease
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Huge Improvements under OS X
The release notes for the Flash 10.1 preview say the following about cross-platform hardware accelerated H.264 decoding support:
In Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate adding the feature to Linux and Mac OS in future releases.
Ouch. Linux isn’t ready and Apple isn’t open enough. That’s not to say that there aren’t major performance gains to be had.
I took the same Office clip I’d been using for all of the other tests and ran it on my Mac Pro at full screen (2560 x 1600). Using Activity Monitor I looked at the CPU utilization of the Flash Player plug-in. I compared both versions of Flash and saw a significant drop in CPU utilization:
| Hulu Full Screen (2560 x 1600) Average CPU Utilization | Flash 10.0.32.18 | Flash 10.1.51.45 |
| Hulu 480p - The Office - Murder | 450% | 190% |
Going from roughly 450% down to 190% (or a bit over 10% of total CPU utilization across 16 threads) made full-screen Hulu playable on my machine. In the past I always had to run it in a smaller window, but thanks to Flash 10.1 I don’t have to any longer.
With actual GPU-accelerated H.264 decoding I’m guessing those CPU utilization numbers could drop to a remotely reasonable value. But it’s up to Apple to expose the appropriate hooks to allow Adobe to (eventually) enable that functionality.
Until then, even OS X users have something to look forward to with the Flash 10.1 upgrade.
Final Words
It's finally here. GPU accelerated video decode for Adobe Flash. Grab the preview and let us know how it fares on your system in the comments.
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Olen Ahkcre - Monday, January 11, 2010 - link
This article is totally off base...Flash video playback pausing frequently isn't caused by the Flash player. It's cause by the server being overloaded with too many requests.
GPU acceleration is for playing back Flash _CONTENT_, not Flash video (FLV).
The reason being some apps created using Flash place an unusual amount of load on the CPU.
If you think GPU accelerated Flash has anything to do with video playback, I think you might be seriously confused.
modulo - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
This article makes ANANDTECH, look like a bunch of apple swilling morons.Hello ANANDTECH, did you know that 95% of the worlds computers still use windows? Probably not, which is why you put an article like this using a MAC, on a website 90% dedicated to PC hardware. And what is there to know about mac anyway? RUMOR RUMORS RUMORS, being a mac"enthusiast" is all about how much shit you can talk, how many rumors you can start, and how hard you would suck steve jobs cock if he put it in your mouth.
NOW.
Flash, is a fabulous technology that makes 10 million different things possible on the web that would NOT HAPPEN without it. OK, and interestingly, this article advocates turning on an adblocker, for their own website!!! If I was a sponsor of this website I would demand to have my motherf***inh money back.
LOL, now you noobie losers want to complain because your computers are slow, go talk to your grandma about how long it takes her to have a bowel movement, THAT is slow.
TravisO - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
On Flash 10.1 video _IS_ GPU accelerated but there is a catch, only H.264 video is GPU accelerated but the old FLV video is not. Here's the text from the 10.1 release notes:H.264 video hardware decoding
Flash Player 10.1 introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth, high quality
video with minimal overhead across mobile devices and PCs. Using available hardware to decode video offloads tasks from the CPU, improving video playback performance, reducing system resource utilization, and preserving battery life.
PS: Keep in mind you must use a supported video card to be accelerated, which means only GPUs invented these past two years approximately, virtually nothing from Intel is supported except the new Core i CPUs with the integrated GPU, if you have a Netbook you're screwed unless you have an Ion chipset.
Xmister - Saturday, April 17, 2010 - link
You should get some information before starting to write bull***t."Flash video playback pausing frequently isn't caused by the Flash player. It's cause by the server being overloaded with too many requests. "
You think they are so stupid, that can't see the difference of buffer-loading and framedrops?!
"GPU acceleration is for playing back Flash _CONTENT_, not Flash video (FLV). "
The GPU accelerated flash's main point is H.264 decoding, and all the HD flash videos are now H.264 encoded(on youtube non-HD too).
"The reason being some apps created using Flash place an unusual amount of load on the CPU."
And what do you think, what amount of load an HD video places on the CPU? I'll help you a bit: a lot.
"If you think GPU accelerated Flash has anything to do with video playback, I think you might be seriously confused. "
You are seriously confused, clear the lot irrelevant information from your head, and get some relevant. I could only advise this whenever you want to comment on anything.
coachingjoy - Sunday, November 29, 2009 - link
Is flash worth the install when advertisements are taken into account?Sunagwa - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I don't understand the problem. I have a Core 2 Duo @ 3.8Ghz and I use Hulu all the freaking time with absolutly no problems whatsoever.JarredWalton - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
Exactly. You have a high end system that can do all the video decoding in software on the CPU without problems. Not everyone has that. (And OS X is a different beast, apparently, at least as far as Flash is concerned.)Sunagwa - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I see, my bad I guess I didn't really consider my CPU to be high end. The system he mentions at the beggining sounded pretty powerful though I have never run anything but windows so I may be wrong...JarredWalton - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
I should clarify: it may not be high-end by today's standards (what with Core i7), but a moderate ~2.0GHz Core 2 Duo can handle 1080p video decoding in software (albeit at high CPU utilization). It's really more of a question of laptops and even then more netbooks and nettops. And Flash optimizations are of course also important - I've seen Flash choke other laptops with Intel IGPs on older Flash revisions, but 10.0 does much better.dicobalt - Saturday, November 21, 2009 - link
You guys misunderstand what I was saying. I can play 1080 video just fine, HULU, WMV, MP4, MOV, whatever. I am unable to play 1080 smoothly when I have the Folding@Home GPU client running, that's the only time I have trouble with it (and standard def video too). Though it was working fine on Vista before I installed Win7.Most of the time when I am playing HD video files CPU usage is about 28-48% on the most loaded core.
BTW since I updated to Nvidia drivers to 195.55 now Firefox is no longer crashing on YouTube videos with Flash 10.1 installed. Seems to me that Nvidia was not ready for Win7 with their drivers, they got a lot going on right now.