We know you don't actually care about 99 percent of the contents of
the latest Flash Player update. What you really want to know is whether those new
1080p YouTube streams will run smoothly on your machine thanks to the newly implemented graphics card video acceleration.
AnandTech has come to our collective aid on that one, with an extensive testing roundup of some of the more popular desktop and mobile GPU solutions. NVIDIA's ION scored top marks, with "almost perfect" Hulu streaming (see table above), though Anand and crew encountered some issues with ATI's chips and Intel's integrated GMA 4500 MHD, which they attribute to the new Flash Player's beta status. On the OS front, although Linux and Mac OS are not yet on the official hardware acceleration beneficiary list, the wily testers found marked improvements in performance under OS X. It seems, then, that Adobe has made good on its
partnership with NVIDIA, and made ION netbooks all the more scrumptious in the process, while throwing a bone to the Mac crowd, but leaving the majority of users exercising the virtue of patience until the finalized non-beta Player starts making the rounds in a couple of months. Hit the read link for further edification.
posted November 17th 2009 5:46AM
Nice... My XBMCBuntu Revo installation is about to really take off!!!
No support yet for linux or macs.
@Nihility Is there ever any support for Linux? Yet the community still manages to overcome 90% of the obsticles.
Can't wait for the final version, and GPU acceleration support for OS X users, tired of Safari crashing due to flash, and tired of way to much Cpu utilization from flash. Well welcome and much needed update.
So true!
PLS Adobe get Flash for Mac OS X fixed. Honestly im not even asking for GPU acceleration just pls make use of the APIs Apple provides.
50% CPU-Load on a Core 2 Duo for video Playback is insane...
Junemas,
You aren't alone - it crashes on a regular basis in Windows 7 using IE8 as well. They have many threads in the adobe forums about it but so far no solution.
I don't know if I've ever had Safari crash due to Flash on Tiger/Snow Leopard, but I have noticed in the past 6 months or so, if I open a bunch of browser windows on sites I use frequently, the faint sound of .... fan speed increasing.
WTF?
Yep, turned out flash ads are proliferating so much that it actually makes my fans speed up when I've got a ton of windows open. Either that or a newer version of flash is less efficient than the old ones were.. in any event, I installed Click2Flash (lots of similar extension are available for Firefox).. problem solved. I've never been big into ad blockers or anything, I can deal with stupid flashing pictures... but when advertisers get greedy and start in any way impacting system performance.. goodbye!
fuuccckkkk flash!!!!! thank god for html 5 try http://www.youtube.com/html5 and the video tag
Maybe when Apple and Adobe start playing nice together Adobe might try harder?
WIN
Yeah it makes a huge difference...
My 12GHz of processor just yawned
meh, just give us a 64bit windows version of flash already adobe!
What site, web interface, or flash enable app could you possible be using that would justify the use of IE 64bit or any other 64bit web browser? The program would need to access over 2GB of ram to make 64bit necessary? It you really think 64bit is necessary more power to you, but I would rather have Adobe spend its time improving its programs stability and taking greater advantage or hardware acceleration than bring 64bit support to market. 32bit flash works just fine in 32bit IE on 64bit systems.
Actually, over 4gb of memory. 32-bit with PAE can go very high, up to 128gb but traditionally, for 32-bit, its about 4gb minus what ever other addressing space is used (VRAM, CHIPSET, etc)
forgive my being a dumbass, but does this benefit macbooks with GMA X3100 gfx?
any offloading to the gpu helps. this is especially true when you compare it to the previous technology (i.e. cpu only)
I don't understand why they don't extend the GPU-Acceleration to the RAdeon HD 2xxx series. It's good enough for DXVA x264 playblack but can't help with flash? WTF Adobe
It's a fair question. It all depends on the relative performance of your video card to your CPU (on integrated graphics, fairly poor) as well as how GPUs handle flash versus CPUs. I'm guessing that flash can be run much more efficiently on a GPU, so even with a weak GPU you're better off using that rather than your CPU. Especially if your GPU isn't busy doing much else.
So this means Flash on the Mac is actually... decent?
seems like too much to hope for.
well it is 10x better on my MacBook with the Intel GMA 950. Before watching this Youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUM1284TqFc&fmt=37 in HD would just lag, totally unwatchable but now if is perfect.
@jordand
I have a VAIO with a GMA950 (C2D@1.6)
good to know it won't be left in the cold when the final version is out.
What is this crap? Hurry up with the linux and OS X versions, idiots! It's been a long time coming.
I'm sorry.....Hulu HD? 720p? Where is this content and how can I get access to it?
search hd in the search box there are only three things there though.
"...Anand and crew encountered some issues with ... Intel's integrated GMA 4500 MHD, which they attribute to the new Flash Player's beta status."
I assume by "the new Flash Player's beta status" they mean the exorbitant suck inherent in Intel graphics chipsets. ATI does not deserve to be lumped in with the crappy Intel GMA.
True, they've updated the article slightly to indicate they tested this with old ATI drivers - Flash 10.1 requires the new ATI Catalyst 9.11s. They haven't rerun any of their tests though (yet).
Except it does work with the Intel 4500MHD chipset if you have the latest / brand new .1986 drivers installed.
I did not say that the acceleration doesn't work on 4500MHD. What I said is that all Intel GMA's including the 4500MHD epically suck.
Couldn't disagree with you more. Their video acceleration is right up there - using DXVA I can play 1080p x264/MKVs with less than 50% CPU utilization on my Core 2 Solo 1.4Ghz + 4500MHD ultra portable. If there are problems with Intel GPUs and the new version of Flash it's because Adobe is in bed with Nvidia.
They only suck when it comes to 3D, but not everyone plays games on their laptops do they? If you're a real gamer, you'll want discrete graphics and pay the extra $100+ for it.
Can anyone give me info on what this means for us poor netbook users? More specifically the Atom and the Intel GMA 500?
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/adobe-flash-player-10-1-beta-is-out-multi-touch-and-video-accel/
i don't know if I would be bothered to download this thing on my computer when there's no hiccup or any issue with video playback.
It's about freaking time Adobe you lazy bastards!
It's notall god news. It only runs on the latest GM80 GPU chip. And what about that Flash Player 0 day exploit that is running wild with no fix!
Ok I take it back... You still suck major balls Adobe!
Where the heck are the Vimeo HD tests?!
anything for mobiles?
See http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/259425
Ed
This is nice and all but flash is still a shitty format for video, anything else wouldn't need gpu offloading to actually play
Just downloaded and installed it on my HP Mini311 with NVIDIA ION. Very impressive HULU playback with HiRes selected. Smooth video with only a very rare and just barely noticeable pause in the picture.
Paul
I saw about the "requires 9.11" and went "wow, that's the first I heard about Anandtech being behind in drivers". I jumped on ATI's site and found that only 9.10 is available for download. Guess I won't be testing 10.1 either.
Apparently 9.11 should be out soon:
http://twitter.com/CatalystMaker/status/5771689786
I hope it fixes the frequent crashing in Windows 7 IE8. Even on a fresh format of Windows 7 with NOTHING but the latest flash installed IE crashes one out of every 10 web pages you visit with flash. You can go back to the paget that crashed and it will come up fine - it seems to be a memory leak or something as you can't get it to crash with any consistency but you are guaranteed to crash after you browse a number of flash pages. It is on all of the adobe forums but with no solution in sight.
It's shit like this that will make even casual websurfers look to block flash entirely, driving down flash-based advertising revenue, and shifting advertisers away from flash entirely.
Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, Adobe.
See the security bulletin I posted above which may explain the crashes. Be carefull
Hopefully these lazy asshats can provide X64 playback, too...
get with the program, Adobe!
My Acer Timeline with single core 2700 su played a 1080p trailer with only skips if I tried to do anything else. Firefox takes up about 65-75% of cpu load.
I'm pretty certain that flash isn't solely to blame for crappy youtube performance. They can't seem to handle SD streaming with a 20mbit pipe 70% of the time.