257.29 驱动（暂定 6 月 28日发布）实现 flash 视频平滑缩放硬件加速

Edison

Last month I reviewed Zotac’s first Next-Generation ION nettop, the ZBOX HD-ID11. The chassis and feature set haven’t really changed much since the ION1 based ZBOXes, the only real difference is the HD-ID11 hasPine Trail and NVIDIA NG-ION inside. Unfortunately, in some cases, that’s not exactly an upgrade over the previous platform.

The original ION platform was a chipset and integrated graphics solution in a single package that stemmed off the Atom CPU. For a bunch of licensing reasons I described here, NVIDIA wasn’t allowed to build a similar chipset for the new Pine Trail Atom platform and thus had to come up with another solution. The next-generation ION now branches off Intel’s Pine Trail chipset, typically via a single PCIe 1.0 lane offering only 250MB/s of bandwidth to/from the chipset.

This results in a bandwidth bottleneck that can make bandwidth intensive GPU operations (e.g. 3D gaming) worse than the original ION. I suspect most folks don’t buy ION systems to game on them, so the bigger concern is another bandwidth intensive GPU operation: Flash video acceleration.

When you play back a GPU accelerated Flash video stream using Flash 10.1 on a Next Generation ION system the frames are sent to the GPU for decoding but then sent back to the CPU for compositing and finally copied back to the GPU’s frame buffer for display. In the Next Generation ION this happens over the meager PCIe 1.0 x1 interface. That’s thankfully bandwidth enough to decode, composite and display lower resolution Flash video, but not enough for 1080p.

Using current drivers if you try to play a 1080p YouTube HD stream on a Next Generation ION you’ll drop frames because of this bandwidth limitation. It gets worse if you decode and play the stream full screen at a 1080p desktop resolution. As I pointed out in my Next Generation ION review, even playing 480p Hulu content scaled up to 1080p dropped frames. It’s a real problem.

There is an obvious solution: do the entire process on the GPU itself, thus avoiding the copying back and forth over the PCIe x1 connection. NVIDIA told me this was possible, but it required a driver update. I now have that driver update: version 257.29.

The driver isn’t publicly available, although NVIDIA is shooting to have a public beta on June 28th with a WHQL release sometime in July.

I tested the driver with the latest Adobe Flash 10.1 beta (release candidate 7) and the NVIDIA press preview driver I mentioned above. I fired up YouTube in Chrome and picked a 1080p clip.

CPU utilization before and after the updated driver remains the same at around 15 - 20% of the Atom D510’s four threads. But this isn’t a CPU utilization problem. Using the current public driver the 1080p stream is unwatchable at full screen, the system drops a ton of frames. Using the updated driver? Smooth as butter.

It’s not all good news though. The frame rate will drop the minute you move your mouse and reveal the playback controls. That compositing still happens on the CPU. In fact anything that appears over the video kills frame rate. You can stop the playback controls from coming up by simply not moving your mouse, but a YouTube ad appearing over the video is less predictable.

Hulu continues to be Pro-Ablem. Even a 360p video scaled up to 1080p will drop frames with the new driver. NVIDIA is aware of the issue and is working on it. To NVIDIA’s credit, Hulu has always posed problems for GPU acceleration ever since the Flash 10.1 betas hit.

The new driver definitely makes things better and it looks like NVIDIA is committed to improving the experience even further. But at this point, the original ION is still better for Flash video playback. If you’re using the NG-ION as a more traditional HTPC, playing files stored on your network and not streamed in a Flash movie then you’re of course fine. Read our Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 Review for more on how the Next Generation ION performs in HTPC and other scenarios.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3765/new-driver-enables-smooth-1080p-flash-playback-on-nvidia-ngion

gz_easy

NV紧跟Flash Player步伐，Flash Player RC7已经于本月初发布了。

66666

Flash 平滑效率太烂了，480P全屏居然能吃掉30%CPU占用率（E5300）

Edison

HTML 5 同样有很多元素能被硬件加速。

66666

现在从效率上来讲....除了FLASH的话..用HTML5的动画对CPU要求更高.....
kvip 发表于 2010-6-11 00:18

   
同样一个FLV下载下来用MPC播放不仅平滑效果更好，CPU占用率明显更低。

作为一个第三方插件播放器来说，flash平滑效率差大家都能看到。

3118595

跪求翻译帝

Edison

这些简单的英文有初中水平即可。

arju

该死的flash赶紧被HTML5取代吧，否则手机上网永远都看不完内容

風的綫條

看看Apple的贝戈样，总觉得Flash迟早会死在HTML5手里

66666

android2.2已经可以完整支持flash，就是速度太慢

Edison

W3C 说过，HTML 5 标准的正式完成是 2022 年，各位慢慢等吧。

eternal0

如果非要归类,可能我肤浅的认为....本地播放器为客户端...而网页播放器只为插件或者中间件又者只是一个 ...
kvip 发表于 2010-6-11 00:48

本地播放器使用的渲染器都用到显卡加速了，播放时看GPU占用就能看出来。

eternal0

我认为在手机平台或者平板机上的tegra使用flash硬件加速意义更大！
64663452 发表于 2010-6-11 00:48

台机上也应该用硬件加速，在播放视频时这个工作本来就是显卡干的，只不过Flash做的太烂到现在才开始支持罢了。