I have no idea what I'm doing.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Flash 10.1 beta 2, Mac and Linux now available

Adobe has released an update to their beta Flash (GPU accelerated Flash).  They're up to Flash 10.1 beta 2.  Binaries are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

With the latest nvidia drivers (on Windows 7) I saw quite a performance improvement with Flash 10.1 beta 1.  http://orsontyrell.blogspot.com/2009/11/flash-101-gpu-acceleration-non.html
Now that binaries are available for the Mac (Flash 10.1 beta 2) I'm able to do some similar tests.  I ran these tests on a MBPro that has an integrated GeForce 8600M GT.

Flash 10.0.42.34


Flash 10.1 beta 2, 10.1.51.66

 
Unfortunately I'm not seeing any gains in performance.  Playback of the 2012 HD trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz86TsGx3fc) runs the CPU to around 45% with both Flash 10 and Flash 10.1 beta 2.

So what's the problem?  I suspect it's the nvidia drivers that are released by Apple.  I can't remember the last time I've seen a graphics driver update for OSX.  On the Windows side it seems there's an update every other month.  In my previous test of Windows Flash 10.1 beta, the drivers are what made the difference.  Upgrading from Flash 10 to Flash 10.1 didn't show any improvements, but after I upgraded the graphics drivers to the latest WHQL, I saw a huge improvement.  I'm hoping for an update to the OSX graphic drivers, but I'm not holding my breath.  In the meantime, this just gives us another reason to use bootcamp. 

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