CPU utilization unbearable in Firefox/Chrome for video

[tortillasoup]

Using a Lenovo T400 laptop with a Intel Core 2 Duo processor locked @ 850mhz, I cannot watch HBOGO.com on this laptop without pegging the processor @ 100% AND having dropped frames, stuttering, etc. I.e. the experience is completely unusable. Meanwhile, if I use Internet Explorer 11, I'm not only able to watch HBOGO.com perfectly fluid, but the CPU utilization is only 50%! This problem transfers over to youtube as well. Both Chrome 51 and Firefox 47 don't do youtube 1080p all that well in this specific configuration setup. Even if I force H264 decoding, the problem persist. One thing I do to improve performance in Internet Explorer is to force compatibility mode for youtube which forces flash player instead of HTML5.


All this talk of HTML5 being faster I've yet to see it. But even that not withstanding, HBOGO.com is devoid of HTML5 and still struggles on Chrome and Firefox.

Disabling all extensions or enabling some or others typically doesn't have an effect. The only time there is a chance for an effect is if I use H264ify to force H264 playback.

Update: Changing "Override software rendering list" to enable in Chrome://Flags fixes the issue. There isn't this option that I'm aware of that works in Firefox. Turns out, older Intel GPUs (pre Core i series) the Intel 4500MHD video card has issues with GPU sandboxing so they outright disable video acceleration on these.

 

[Bardock]

if acceleration is a problem cant you right click the video and turn it off? Mabye that does it?

 

[Ketchup]

The AIO in my kids room has a C2D and I had to get an ad-on that forces Flash in order to get Youtube to play well on that machine (FF). It has an old ATI card, and videos run without issue now.

 

[coffeemonster]

I know there are some browser extensions that allow opening streams in players like VLC, but I don't know if it would work with HBOGO. You can paste URLs in VLC and it is always lighter on CPU than watching through the browser. I use livestreamer + GUI for twitch.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

I luckily discovered that same flag while having the same issue.

264ify my also help.

 

[tortillasoup]

Anyone know where I can download Chrome 38 or earlier for windows? I read somewhere that after a certain build in Chrome 38, hardware acceleration was completely disabled on Windows XP. I've got some machines with Windows XP that are browsing the internet much more slowly than I remember and it's because they're no longer using hardware acceleration. I just tested an XP machine with a Radeon 9800 pro and on youtube, 480p was the only video I could watch with Firefox/Chrome 40+. I just installed a Beta version of Chrome 25, enabled the hardware acceleration flags override and now I can watch 720p video at 50% CPU, browsing the web is also a lot faster after enabling all the hardware acceleration flags such as Enable CSS Shaders, GPU Compositing, threaded compositing, GPU accelerated SVG, Smooth Scrolling.

 

[TheRyuu]

Anyone know where I can download Chrome 38 or earlier for windows?

Probably not. Something that old will have many many unpatched vulnerabilities making its use inherently unsafe and outright dangerous. Chrome doesn't have an ESR channel like Firefox (Chrome has always been about a rapid release schedule/cycle which isn't normally an issue for most (all?) people).