[Openchrome-users] Slow performance with Flash player#

[Brian Candler]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 11:51:35AM +0100, John Robinson wrote:
> >Thanks for that - figures here don't look good:
> >
> >(II) VIA(0): Benchmarking video copy. Less is better.
> >(--) VIA(0): Timed   libc YUV420 copy... 15725702. Throughput: 37.7 MiB/s.
> >(--) VIA(0): Timed kernel YUV420 copy... 15610756. Throughput: 38.0 MiB/s.
> >(--) VIA(0): Timed    SSE YUV420 copy... 8894087. Throughput: 66.7 MiB/s.
> >(--) VIA(0): Timed    MMX YUV420 copy... 9003383. Throughput: 65.9 MiB/s.
> >(--) VIA(0): Ditch 3DNow! YUV420 copy... Not supported by CPU.
> >(--) VIA(0): Timed   MMX2 YUV420 copy... 8775754. Throughput: 67.6 MiB/s.
> 
> Hmm, that really doesn't look good. On my EPIA M-II 10000, which is 
> pretty similar to your EPIA M 10000, I get:
> (II) VIA(0): Benchmarking video copy. Less is better.
> (--) VIA(0): Timed   libc YUV420 copy... 7644387. Throughput: 77.6 MiB/s.
> (--) VIA(0): Timed kernel YUV420 copy... 7638392. Throughput: 77.7 MiB/s.
> (--) VIA(0): Timed    SSE YUV420 copy... 2826591. Throughput: 209.8 MiB/s.
> (--) VIA(0): Timed    MMX YUV420 copy... 4419723. Throughput: 134.2 MiB/s.
> (--) VIA(0): Ditch 3DNow! YUV420 copy... Not supported by CPU.
> (--) VIA(0): Timed   MMX2 YUV420 copy... 3888107. Throughput: 152.6 MiB/s.
> 
> And I'm running some very old stuff:
> 
> Jun  8 03:07:59 out kernel: [drm] Initialized drm 1.0.1 20051102
> Jun  8 03:07:59 out kernel: [drm] Initialized via 2.9.1 20060111 on 
> minor 0: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266] integrated 
> CastleRock graphics

For comparison, I just tried booting from a Fedora 7 Live CD, to get a newer
kernel than my Ubuntu 6.06.

Linux version 2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 (kojibuilder at xenbuilder4.fedora.phx.redhat.com)
...
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[drm] Initialized via 2.11.0 20061227 on minor 0

This gives X benchmarking results which are even better than your M-II:

$ grep -A6 Bench /v/fedora-Xorg.0.log
(II) VIA(0): Benchmarking video copy. Less is better.
(--) VIA(0): Timed   libc YUV420 copy... 4209131. Throughput: 140.9 MiB/s.
(--) VIA(0): Timed kernel YUV420 copy... 4155820. Throughput: 142.7 MiB/s.
(--) VIA(0): Timed    SSE YUV420 copy... 2440055. Throughput: 243.1 MiB/s.
(--) VIA(0): Timed    MMX YUV420 copy... 3768653. Throughput: 157.4 MiB/s.
(--) VIA(0): Ditch 3DNow! YUV420 copy... Not supported by CPU.
(--) VIA(0): Timed   MMX2 YUV420 copy... 2622051. Throughput: 226.2 MiB/s.

Fedora did let me install the flash player (even when running from CD). But
I got the same results - approx 1.1 frames per second for the talking head
at the start of the BBC parenting video site. I then rebooted into Ubuntu
and retimed it, and in fact it was marginally faster, about 1.2 frames per
second.

So anyway, the conclusion seems to be:
- Adobe Flash player video performance sucks on anything less than a high-
  performance CPU
- VIA/OpenChrome performance has improved significantly for recent kernels

At least I know it's not something I did :-) Many thanks to everyone who
took the trouble to reply.

Regards,

Brian.