Why Am I Getting FPS Stutter? My MacBook Pro Handles This

[Madmick]

Edit: Solved. The issue was that Flash player was out of date.

So I just got my Radeon HD 7750 up and running. I don't have any games installed yet, so I thought I'd preview how it handles by watching a 1080p video of Crysis 2 on max settings from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMKx6eW7TzI

The video streams fine when it's a small window, but when I maximize it, I get frequent stutter (the screen freezes for nearly a second every 3-4 seconds) that effectively renders viewing on this setting nonviable.

I checked the dxdiag, and it says that the Radeon is properly functioning. I had nothing else running when I first went to view this. I booted my system, opened Firefox, and navigated straight to this video. I didn't even have any other tabs open. I don't understand why the system isn't handling this? I don't have anything overclocked at the moment, but these are my specs:

CPU: Q9400 Intel Core 2 Quad 2.67 GHz "Yorkdale"
GPU: HIS Radeon HD 7750 2GB DDR5
Memory: 4x1GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Display: 27" Planar PX2710MW 1920x1080 TFT LCD
Connecting Cable: DVI
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

I chose this video because I've viewed this vid on my 2008 MacBook Pro and I was excited to see how much this new setup improved the experience. My MacBook runs the video perfectly with a fluid frame rate, and yet it's specs are vastly inferior:

CPU: 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 512MB
Memory: 6GB (2x2GB + 2x1GB) 667MHz DDR2 SODIMM RAM
Display: 17" Built-In 1920x1200 Apple LCD
Connecting Cable: None
OS: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3


What gives?

 

[KompuKare]

While I can't comment on the specifics of the 7750 since I don't own one. Surely anything streamed fails at the first hurdle of a benchmark: repeatability.

Also, Mac OS is using what, Safari? Even if it's the same browser, for repeatability you'd want a media player like VLC or at least have Windows running on your MBP.

If you had the video on your actual HDD then we can comment on any stutter. But in in the meantime you can keep task manager or a GPU logging tool like MSI Afterburner in the background while playing the video.

 

[Schmide]

As much as I love Firefox, it sux at playing videos.

 

[maniac5999]

A video of crysis is completely different from actually playing crysis. All that the GPU is doing is passing the info from the interwebz (pixel 1 red, pixel 2 blue, etc) to the TV screen, which is totally different from figuring out lighting, shadows, etc.

 

[railven]

Make sure you're using the newest Flash Player software and that it is updated in Firefox (or whatever web browser you are using.)

Also double check your installed drivers. I've learned a lot of the time stuttering video playback is a codec issue most of the time (or in this case - Flash.)

 

[KingFatty]

Run the task manager to watch the moving chart/graph of your CPU usage - does it spike to 100% when you get a stutter? Also perform this evaluation for the GPU - you may need to install a utility to watch the GPU usage - does the GPU spike to 100% when there is a stutter?

Also, would be good to try something else besides youtube to check your system - do you have a 1080p video file you could run in Windows media player or something to verify smooth playback? Maybe try an MP4 video file that is encoded with H.264, and try playing it with windows media player, and see if your CPU and GPU usage remains below 100%.

Note: you may be unacceptable results from one software and great results from another - my HTPC system stutters playing 1080p bluray-level video through Picasa that overwhelms my CPU with software-decoding, in stark contrast to using software that can take advantage of my GPU for hardware decoding and allowing my CPU and GPU to remain under 100% (Windows Media Player and XBMC, for example, will let you do this).

At worst, use a utility to download the youtube video, then playback the downloaded file using Windows media player (instead of your web browser+flash).

 

[Ferzerp]

Not sure if serious.....

 

[Madmick]

Make sure you're using the newest Flash Player software and that it is updated in Firefox (or whatever web browser you are using.)

Also double check your installed drivers. I've learned a lot of the time stuttering video playback is a codec issue most of the time (or in this case - Flash.)

You're on fire this afternoon, Raiv. Yeah, I'd updated Flash in XP just before I installed Windows 7, and when I went to YouTube to watch this Crysis video, I navigated directly from Google, so I didn't realize I was out of date. When I went to the YouTube homepage, I got the prompt that I was out of date. So I updated and now I'm not getting the lag.

Sweet, my bad. Sorry to bother everyone.

 

[Madmick]

As much as I love Firefox, it sux at playing videos.

Do you prefer Chrome? I hear it's mostly caught up in terms of add-ons, and that's my primary reason for loving Firefox. They're both lightning fast compared to IE. I like Opera on Android, but I don't care for it on my Mac. I've haven't tried it out recently on a PC.

 

[railven]

You're on fire this afternoon, Raiv. Yeah, I'd updated Flash in XP just before I installed Windows 7, and when I went to YouTube to watch this Crysis video, I navigated directly from Google, so I didn't realize I was out of date. When I went to the YouTube homepage, I got the prompt that I was out of date. So I updated and now I'm not getting the lag.

Sweet, my bad. Sorry to bother everyone.

On my day off this week I decided to watch a DVD movie on my PC when suddenly I had no sound haha. It reminded me of the days when you had to connect the stupid digital wire from the drive to your soundcard or motherboard for proper sound. It was a codec issue (of course.) Fixed that and then got side tracked on Netflix, never even watched my movie haha.

 

[Schmide]

I love Firefox, it is my main browser. However, it can get easily bogged down depending on how much stuff you have loaded which will cause the stuttering you were talking about.