Dropped Frames in Flash

Even with 2 gigs of ram, an upgraded bios, the latest GMA500 drivers, the latest version of flash, and Windows 7 I still get tons of dropped frames in You Tube. What has anybody done to fix this.

 

I've read somewhere on this forum that it the CPU. It is to slow for Flash, Youtube is handled by the CPU instead of the GPU. I can't find the post anymore where I've got this from but please correct if I am wrong.

 

Flash Player 10.0 does not use the hardware accelerated graphics features of gpu's like the GMA500. Adobe has promised that Flash 10.1 will be able to use at least some of these features on some gpu's and the hope is that the problems that you note will be much improved with the new software release. There is no guarantee that the GMA500 is on the list of improved gpu's, we will have to wait and see. Since 10.1 is supposed to support smartphone applications and since the GMA500 started out as an extension of a smartphone gpu, I figure we have got a shot at an improvement. Flash is used in YouTube, Hulu, and the BBC Player among others so the problem is pretty big. Last I heard, release of 10.1 is quarter one-ish 2010, although pre-release versions will likely be seen in the wild before that as content and software developers are brought into the beta cycle.

Failing hardware gpu acceleration, the Flash unpack is left to the Z520 and the poor little guy just sinks under the load.

 

Great post Nick. Thanks. Funny though, I have also purchased a Gateway LT31 recently and that netbook is similar. I do NOT have the same problem with that netbook, so I think it is a combination GPU / CPU problem. What say you?

 

The Gateway LT31 has (had? I though they were out of production as of Sept.) an AMD Athelon L110 processor ( suspicions arise that it is simply a slow Athelon X2 with one dead core, but that is a discussion for later ) and an ATI X1270 GPU. The Out-of-Order execution of the Athelon processor is likely to eat the linearly executing Z520 alive even at similar clock speeds, or so a friend who used to design Intel processors assures me. Couple this with a GPU that was derived from the ATI X700, which is to say experienced, and you don't have any of the silly driver issues that the GMA500 sees today. The box may look the same but the mobo is definitely different. I am going to guess that the CPU has more to do with the performance improvement than the GPU in the LT31.

 

Demand has put the LT31 back into production. The LT3113h has one gb RAM, & Windows XP. They currently bundle it with a 3-cell battery, and since the CPU is definitely NOT low power, and since Acer has crippled AMD Power Now, the battery life is about 1h35 or so full charge. But the price is hovering around $329 in Canada ($299 USD). That makes the LT31 irresistible. A 6-cell battery runs around $50-$60 and would be a great investment. A ram upgrade is inexpensive these days. And voila - real notebook power.

I still wish my 751H were a tad more powerful. But after BIOS revision, adding RAM, and moving to Windows 7, it still stalls on demand\! - LOL!

 

For your 751h you may find that a combination of Firefox, AdBlock+, and NoScript will tame some of the browser glitches. I am not talking about the system level BSOD kind of things, but the normal, "Wow, what just happened to my browser?!" things.