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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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!