4K video playback on old PC

I have a notebook with i7-620M and Quadro FX880M. I have tried playing 4K video on youtube, but it was not watchable at all. Is it because of CPU, GPU or both? Is there anything I can do to be able to watch 4K videos?

 

Are you even using a 4k display?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The i7 620M should have enough oomph to play such files... The Quadro is another story (if I had to guess)... Is this on the built in screen of the notebook or on an external monitor?

Have you tried playing 4K youtube videos directly connected with a Lan cable? If you're only connected wirelessly, that may be the issue too (or, your ISP is low).

Can you test a 4K video playing directly from a file downloaded to the desktop?

The five year old platform is definitely in question, but as you can see from my questions above, other factors may be at play too.

 

At the moment I am trying it on notebook screen hence it is 1080p.
I use LAN cable and I have 500 Mbps up/down speed.
I have downloaded the same video I was testing on youtube and ran it with VLC. It runs almost smoothly, but at some places it is a bit choppy. During this video playback CPU was loaded at about 60%.

So local playback is almost good, but online playback is not possible. Is there anything else I can do to fix these issues?

Btw, I am on Win8.1, I have SSD and 8GB of RAM installed and I use Chrome.

 

I'm curious: If you don't have a 4K display, why are you even bothering trying to play 4K video? It'll look the same as 1080p video on that display, but consume much more resources.

 

4K YT video looks better than 1080p video even on a 1080p screen because of higher bit rate and downsampling.

 

Simple. I am considering buying 4K external monitor.

 

Do you have the proper drivers installed for your old platform and new O/S?

To me, sounds like your router or the ISP or your wireless driver is the issue and especially; the gpu (hardware/driver) too.

Considering that I would be upgrading the cpu/platform if/when the cpu load was at ~67% or higher - I think the platform may just be too old. If the ISP/router is working as it should, of course.

You may also want to try playing youtube with IE. Much better browser than the infinitely updated/updating chrome.

 

The Quadro FX880M. can handle only 1600 resolution

NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M | NVIDIA

I also tried to run 4k video two weeks ago and none of my GPUS (laptop & desktop) can run this video. One of my laptop even got BSOD each time with this resolution.

 

Are you viewing Youtube as Flash or HTML5? Flash videos become increasingly more hardware demanding as resolution increases, and if you're viewing Youtube 4k videos in Flash and downloading and converting them to something else, that could explain why the videos are more watchable locally. You should have much better performance by watching Youtube videos in HTML5.

The age of your system can also come into play because the current hardware acceleration for 4k videos was not coded in to the hardware as much when you bought the system. This means the system needs to do more work instead of having a default "shortcut" like current systems do.

 

These GPUs can support 4k resolution

4K | Supported GPUs | GeForce

 

When you say unwatchable what exactly is happening to the videos? Pixilation? Freezing? Does it load but won't play?

 

I have the following drivers installed: 9.18.13.2731 (2013-09-18). That is the latest driver that notebook manufacturer offers.

NVIDIA site suggest that there is much more recent driver for this GPU: 341.21 (2014-12-05). However, I am not sure if using that driver won't have negative effects like overheating etc.

There is nothing wrong with my ISP and I am not using wireless, I am using LAN.
Speedtest.net by Ookla - My Results

It is even worse with IE. Besides the freezing/lag that I am getting with Chrome, I am also getting terrible pixelation.

I am watching it as HTML5.

In Chrome it lags badly. At some places it plays video a bit faster, at some places slower, but nowhere near 24 fps. I would guess that on average it is 5 fps.


SteveT, that list does not include Quadro GPUs at at all. However, you seem to be right saying that my video card does not support 4K resolution. It says up to 2560 x 1600.

 

nepO

I noticed that most of my pcs use hardware acceleration (GPU) to run video with resolution 1440p or lower. But with 4k, the hardware acceleration is disabled and the cpu is always full load.

You can create a restore point and try the latest NVidia driver to see if it support 4k. If you have problem with this driver, you can always rollback to the initial configuration.

 

1080p is much worse. Just look at this example video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vrdgDdPApQ

How much bandwidth is actually needed for those 4K videos, anyone? Here at work those example videos work somewhat on my work laptop (i5 2520m/8GB, igpu, 500Mbit internet). At home my own laptop (i7 2630q/16GB, Quadro2000 and 100Mbit internet) they don't really play at all. I'm just watching the hourglass waiting for something to happen. Wired connection on both, of course.

 

Don't use that crap. Install the latest drivers.

 

Update to latest 347.12 driver or use the 344.75 one which has been working perfectly for me and then try... if it still doesn't work, well time to upgrade your hardware...

 

I agree with the rest; use the latest drivers available from NVidia. But I wasn't only talking about the video drivers; I meant all the drivers on the system. Chipset drivers, WLAN drivers, audio drivers... all of them.

A new O/S without the latest drivers for all the hardware on your system is a very crippled system in my experience.


Yeah, your ISP side of things seems alright.


With a lowly i3 based NUC (w/16GB RAM and a 30% OP'd 256GB M4 along with Win8.1x64 Pro), the proper/current Intel drivers and the 4K video from youtube linked by TomJGX, I can play any and all resolutions with no issues and this with a 50/10 ISP connection.

See:
Intel DC3217IYE Next Unit of Computing, Barebones Computer Kit at Memory Express

See:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&keyword=DC3217IYE


Btw, with the test 4K video I can easily see quality differences all the way up to 4K and even on a 1080p monitor too, with no lag and less than 18% cpu load. This is with IE and the latest Windows Updates from January 13, 2015.


Have you done any 'optimizations' to your O/S? Do you have the latest drivers for all your hardware?

If all the above criteria are fully met and you still have issues, the age/capabilities of the platform itself are the only thing that can be holding you back.


Good luck.

 

I have updated NVIDIA driver, I have checked for Windows updates and I have checked all other drivers with third-party tool. Everything is up to date now.

Results: local 4K video playback is almost perfect now, CPU load during local CPU playback is about 50%. Direct video playback on youtube that has resolution above 1080p is still too laggy to be watchable.

 

Try GPU-Z for monitoring your GPU usage. If the GPU usage is low ( under 40%) and the cpu usage is very high, it means the hardware acceleration is not working. For unknown reason, I have problem to run youtube with chrome. Maybe there is something to do with HTML5 compatibility.

 

OK, played this video on my 7 year old HDX at full 2160p with no issues. It did studded a bit at the beginning, but once buffered, ran smoothly.


CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9000
GPU: Geforce 9600 GT

CPU average = 88%
GPU = 3%



Hope this helps.

 

SteveT, During youtube playback GPU load is <=2%, during local playback ~ 25%. That explains why video on youtube is unwatchable. But the question remains - why?

Krane, that video on youtube is also unwatchable on my system. I tend to believe that something is wrong with my system.

 

Have you tried different browsers? Are they all updated? Did you try watching the video with flash and html5?

 

These 4k videos use vp9 codec. Maybe this codec is still too new for the current gpu driver. I noticed that the gpu acceleration was disabled if I play the 4k video. But I have no problem to play the same videos with lower resolution and the gpu acceleration always kicks in.

 

So it looks like updating drivers did have some positive effect. I have tested three internet browsers again and here are the results:
Chrome - worst case, video is totally unwatchable, plays as HTML5
Firefox - better than Chrome, but still unwatchable, plays as Flash (does not allow to play higher resolution than 720p using HTML5 for some reasons)
IE - video playback is almost without lags, but during high movement video quality drops to something like 720p and then comes back to high resolution, plays as HTML5, CPU load ~ 80%, GPU load ~ 35%

Youtube video that I have downloaded and was testing as a local playback is encoded with AVC.

 

This is a gleature of YouTube's HTML5 player in Firefox.