2-year old laptop CPU, not fast enough for Skype?

[VirtualLarry]

I now suspect a possible bug in the Intel video driver, losing its ability to do HW acceleration of the video stream, over time and multiple hibernation cycles.

 

[mindbomb]

i found skype runs weirdly bad despite being the most popular video calling software. It wasn't multithreaded and didn't use any hardware acceleration it seemed.

 

[Shivansps]

My old webcam did not worked anymore so i could not get the results i wanted, for what ive noticed on the E2140, the CPU video decoder is Single Threaded, but a call also have a HIGH rendering usage on the GPU as well.

Let me explain that, if a start a video call on Skype on the E2140 and its crappy P4M890(Aka S3G UnicromePro), 1 core goes all the way to 90-100%, the other is about 30 to 70%, and the pc lags as hell, but its not because of the CPU, its because the video rendering that is killing the IGP, its video lag what its sufering, even placing both cores to 100% whould not case that.

The HW encoder is MT, the HW decoder might be ST, im not really sure, i dont think it needs to be MT, because even a basic decoder can handle it, the cpu encoder and decoder are ST, problably because using CPU decoders and encoders is something strange this day and age.

How if we talk about idle Skype cpu usage, is almost nothing on both the E2140 and Z3735D, kinda 2%, and the regular, no video call is also very low on both, but the E2140 handle it a lot better.

IDLE
Z3735D

Regular call
Z3735D

E2140

Video Call Only on the Atom
Z3735D

E2140

E2140 w/GT520

 

[poohbear]

well i bought an ultrabook laptop this year with an i5 4200u cpu & 8GB RAM, i'm pretty sure that'll last more than 2 years from now. Are you guys saying common programs like Skype are gonna need more than an i5 with HT in 2017? highly doubt that. Hope to hold on to this ultrabook for another 4-5 years atleast, so this 2 years lifespan thinking is way off.

 

[Shivansps]

the problem its likely gona be once they move to the h265 codec, but ill guess they gona make it MT if they do that, even a 7 years old E2140 can handle it today it whiout a problem if it has a gpu, because it not only need a HW decoder, the video rendering is also GPU heavy, im inclined to belive that the program itselft is not CPU heavy, still a C70 is one big piece of crap compared to both the Z3735 and the E2140.

 

[escrow4]

the problem its likely gona be once they move to the h265 codec, but ill guess they gona make it MT if they do that, even a 7 years old E2140 can handle it today it whiout a problem if it has a gpu, because it not only need a HW decoder, the video rendering is also GPU heavy, im inclined to belive that the program itselft is not CPU heavy, still a C70 is one big piece of crap compared to both the Z3735 and the E2140.

How do you know that GPU can even decode x265? If you have an old 2140 you won't have a fancy Maxwell GPU that can offload it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm thinking the graphics drivers might be borked, having no h.264 video acceleration can be pretty demanding on your CPU. The CPU itself should be fine with Skype imho.

This was the correct answer, btw. My Intel video drivers, seem to have issues with "losing" video decode acceleration for Skype, after a lengthy period of running / hibernation cycles, without rebooting. Would likely also explain the high "kernel time" CPU usage.

Skype is now operating properly on my laptop, with under 50% total CPU usage while on Skype, on my 1007U laptop.

 

[tweakboy]

That is how it is, accept it.