New Intel driver (mostly) fixes Chrome's GPU video acceleration

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that Google Chrome's GPU acceleration, particularly in the case of video playback, has been completely borked for some time now. YouTube videos stuttered extremely frequently, especially 60fps and 4K videos and the CPU tended to warm up dramatically, annoyingly causing the fans to ramp up. This was particularly frustrating as Internet Explorer 11 would play videos smooth as butter, with little effort on the CPU's part. Well, no longer thanks to Intel!

I'm happy to confirm that the new Intel 15.36.18.64.4156 drivers has seemingly fixed GPU video acceleration in Chrome. I immediately tried to playback a 1080p60fps YouTube video after installing the new drivers and was pleasantly surprised to see no stutter whatsoever. It was as smooth as Internet Explorer 11 had been on the previous 15.33.30.64.3958 drivers. I verified this change by looking at GPU-Z and noting that GPU usage had jumped to ~70-75% (same as IE11 on the previous driver had been) whereas previously it would sit at ~30-35%. Similarly, CPU usage dropped by roughly a third (from ~75% to ~50%) compared to the older driver! I'm yet to try 4K videos, but hopefully they'll yield the same improvements - I'll update this post when I get around to it (soon).

The release notes specifically mention added support for the VP9 video format and HEVC video playback, which neatly explains the greatly improved video watching experience in Chrome:

What's more, even basic scrolling in webpages feels significantly smoother with the 15.36.18.64.4156 drivers vs the old 15.33.30.64.3958 drivers, which was a major unexpected bonus! The general web experience with Chrome now feels much more akin to Internet Explorer 11, which until now was miles ahead of both Chrome and Firefox in this regard.

I highly recommended that you install the latest Intel drivers if you haven't already done so. It's worth it!

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...HD-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-8-1-64-bit

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2870...pport-chrome-video-acceleration-and-more.html

 

Thanks for this. I was wondering why CPU usage during YT playback was so much lower on my P650SG than on my Y500.

Now if only Nvidia would do the same

 

Sadly, 4K video is still stuttery as ever on Chrome (IE11 runs it fine, so it's not a matter of buffering). Just tested it out. 90-100% CPU usage. So it didn't fix everything.

There's a quote by Intel rep that explains why Chrome's 4K video rendering is so bad;

https://communities.intel.com/mobil...-content?content=/api/core/v3/contents/319932