Minimum specs for streaming 720p youtube videos? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 12:52:12 am
content: I've been trying to put together a computer using old parts to stream youtube.I started off with a Pentium 4, 3.0ghz, 2gig ram, 512meg graphics, running a fresh install of windows XP...It failed.However, it seems the hardware may have been bad, as the setup got slower and slower, to the point where it wouldn't run!Now, I have a 1.8Ghz Athlon, 2gig ram, 512meg graphics....FAIL!In fact, it barely manages 480 res?What is actually required? dual core minimum?

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 12:58:59 am
content: Anything with a 2 core cpu and a nvidia/ati videocard will play youtube at 720p no probs. (assuming adequate internet speed)(I would expect a 3ghz+ single core cpu to also play 720p but i cant say i've tried, decoding H264 can be slow without a CUDA videocard or 2 cpu cores)But, after you install windows on the PC make sure you...- Install the proper videocard drivers (Never use the ones windows installs!)- Install the proper chipset drivers for your motherboard (same as above)- Install flashIf you skip one of those 3 things the video playback maybe crap, even on a good machine.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 01:18:50 am
content: One computer has an ATI Radeon HD 2600, the other has something similar, I can't remember now.Both had proper drivers installed.The AMD 1.8Ghz actually seems to run better than the 3ghz P4, but as I said, I think something in the P4 had issues... anyone know of a decent bit of software to find which hardware is letting it down?thanks!

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 01:44:44 am
content: Quote from: Psi on December 10, 2013, 12:58:59 amMost decoders aren't multithreaded..

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 01:46:20 am
content: When you say it "fails", do you mean the CPU gets maxed out at 100%? If so, that's odd, because it shouldn't be difficult to play back HD video on reasonably modern hardware. To make sure the streaming isn't the bottleneck you should try playing back locally stored video files off the hard drive, or playing a DVD.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 01:59:17 am
content: Any computer with a somewhat modern video card will do 720p and probably even 1080p - the trick is not to use the processor to decode the video, but the video card's built in hardware decoder.For example, a Radeon 5450 coupled with an old Core 2 Duo will work. The hardware decoder on the Radeon card will do everything... about 5-10% of cpu will be used to just upload the video frames to the video card.Flash has hardware acceleration in it so it has no problems using such video card. For regular locally stored videos, I personally use Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 02:09:11 am
content: P4 2.0GHz (Northwood) 256MB RAM + GeForce2 64MBWindows 98SE720p and below OK, 1080p starts laggingCan't do anything else while it's playing, but that's a bit of a moot point as you should be watching the video anyway...

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 02:14:00 am
content: I say it fails, in that it ends up at somewhere around 10fps at a guess...The youtube bar shows that the video is loaded well beyond the part its trying to play, so its not a streaming issue.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 02:29:28 am
content: They all play DVDs just fine.. and I've tried Firefox as well as Chrome, neither was any better.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 02:36:15 am
content: Try using youtube-dl to download it and then playing it with MPlayer.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 02:43:44 am
content: 360p video on the 1.8ghz Athlon and the cpu is at 100%I don't want this just for video. Its also for everything else! But YouTube was one requirement.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 02:50:17 am
content: I guess the trick is with the hardware decoding as mariush said. To give you an idea, here is my PC playing a YouTube video at 720p. This is a Core i3-2100 low end system with Intel on-board graphics. It is the least powerful system you could imagine, and yet it is impossible to stress it with any normal task I can throw at it. Sometimes you have to face up to the fact that old hardware is obsolete and pay a few hundred $$$ for a new system. These days $500 will get you something that blows older systems out of the water.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 05:49:43 am
content: 720 and 1080P video plays fine on most Pentium 4 class systems that I've seen.

author: TMM
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 05:59:15 am
content: Quote from: AmmoJammo on December 10, 2013, 12:52:12 amWhich model Athlon? Athlon64 3000+ (single core, 1.8GHz) should do it easy. If you mean an AthlonXP 1800+ (1.53Ghz actual) then that is way too slow. The 3.0Ghz P4 should be able to run it.Even if the graphics card doesn't support H.264 decoding it should be fine i would think?edit: Just tested it on an AMD Opteron 170 (server version of a 2.0GHz Athlon64 dual core), 2GB ram, Nvidia 9600GT graphics. I forced firefox and flash to run on 1 core and it was around 50% CPU usage on that core. Video runs smooth. So a 1.8GHz single core Athlon64 should run 720p no worries.Also on youtube you can right-click the video and click 'stats for nerds'. It will tell you if you have hardware acceleration or not. If it shows software video decoding right click the video, go to settings and enable it. Refresh the page and see if it then runs hardware video decoding.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 06:26:54 am
content: Its an Athlon xp2200.

author: TMM
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 06:54:05 am
content: Quote from: AmmoJammo on December 10, 2013, 06:26:54 amI think you're out of luck there, just not enough processing power. It's worth looking into the P4 again in my opinion.If you can get your hands on an Athlon64 or Intel Core you'll be laughing.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 07:01:50 am
content: The Athlon started randomly rebooting anyway. Lol. Swapped power supply, same issue. I think its scrap

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 09:48:54 am
content: I thought I was going to fix it with this:Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (dual 2.7ghz)2gig ram, and a motherboard, that I bought for $35...Unfortunately, all I got was this:Bad memory? or bad internal graphics? I'm tipping memory, as it crashes when it displays that nonsense...

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 10:02:16 am
content: Yeah, probably bad memory, video shouldnt cause it to crash during setup.I guess it doesn't start wandows ey?

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 10:06:43 am
content: Swapped memory for a stick from my main PC, exact same issue.It will even crash on the very first screen you see when turning on the computer, where it shows you the specs of the internal graphics...

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 10:12:00 am
content: There is an option in youtube somewhere to use a light version of the web interface and different codecs.I'm not sure if it will be any better but its worth a try.

author: Legit-Design
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 10:15:06 am
content: Raspberry pi plays 720P youtube with ease on OpenELEC, might be 1080p but I'm sure on openelec it is at least 720p. But OpenELEC interface can be little bit slow, updates will make it better all the time. Be sure to always use up to date openelec, speed might improve dramatically.As for your instability issues:Please take some accurate pictures of the capacitors surrounding the processor. (so we can make sure they are not definitely faulty, might be still faulty even if they look good)Run memtest for the memory on a known good machine. Make sure memory sockets are clean, be sure to try different sockets. Take picture of the contact between processor and heatsink. Inspect motherboard closely with really good lighting and magnifier.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 10:35:45 am
content: My experience with the youtube (or any Flash) player is that it's incredibly crap.My laptop (Intel C2D P8400, Nvidia 9200M GS, 4GB RAM) is still capable of running youtube. Flash takes 48% @ 1CPU at 480p video's, 24% when minimized.And anywhere from 16%, 24% average to spikes of 80% with 720p fullscreen, on a 1280x800 monitor. It runs pretty smoothly, but the fan kicks in pretty quickly for just playing a video.1080p eats this CPU because screen is to small and it has to crop the images. This laptop also has HDMI out which is fast enough for 720p/1080p playback to 1080p TV's. That probably is done via the Nvidia card though.This laptop is almost ready for true retirement, but it has to hold on for a few months or so. Even with this machine my general experience is slow as hell. Browsing with Firefox EATS the CPU, where 4 years ago it was running very smoothly. Funny how software gets increasingly heavier/slower, and we always throw more hardware at it to fix it.I also had to add an old Vertex 2 SSD to it to make starting firefox not too painful - otherwise it would take like a minute with the old 5400rpm 25MB/s laptop drive.That being said, running an Athlon X2 or P4 in 2013 is useless. This laptop still has a dual core, which means that if Firefox decides to eat 1 CPU core, there is still one left to see my mouse cursor move.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 11:43:17 am
content: I don't know what to do with this, I might just give up on it altogether..I'll pull the graphics card out of my main PC tomorrow, and see if this AMD works with that, if not, I think I give up!

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 12:00:36 pm
content: Was that mobo sitting on aconductiveantistatic bag when you were trying to test it?

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 01:22:15 pm
content: Like amyk says... put the motherboard on a piece of cardboard or something. That bag can short out connections on the back of the board.You can burn a cd with memtest to test your computer's memory :http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

author: KedasProbe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 03:44:17 pm
content: Are you sure you have the correct memory speed and clock timings set?Maybe set them manually and try again.

author: rollatorwieltje
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 07:58:42 pm
content: My Dell D8600 laptop (Pentium-M 1.7GHz, 1GB ram) barely runs 360p. When Youtube introduced 720p it ran reasonably well, but over time the player has become increasingly worse. When I download the 720p mp4 it plays fine in VLC with about 80% cpu load.I'd say anything with a dual core cpu should be fine. Not that Youtube uses multiple cores, but even the single core performance of those processors beat the old single core P4 / Athlon 64 stuff.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 09:53:00 pm
content: Antistatic bags aren't conductive.I manually changed the memory from DDR2-400 to DDR2-800...It actually seemed to run for a lot longer, and memtest got 46% of the way through (ran for about 7 minutes)It reported the timings as 6-6-6-18 (and said it was DDR2-900?)

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 11:16:11 pm
content: On Linux:4.4 GHz quad core overclocked Core i7 Extreme Editionwith 3 x SLI GTX 780and at least 12 GB of RAMshould just about manage 1080p.(at least, that's what it seems like...)

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2013, 11:33:48 pm
content: I hit F2 when memtest first started, ran through the whole test (taking about 18 minutes) and it all passed.Restarted, booted from the windows XP installation CD, 30 seconds in, it crashed....But, I'm wondering, that even though the power supply rails all measure ok, could this in fact be the issue? (the HDD wasn't powered when I did the full mem test)

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 12:01:58 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on December 10, 2013, 11:16:11 pmMeanwhile, I do 1080p on a knackered old laptop.PEBKAC.

author: ampdoctor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 12:30:17 am
content: it's not an old hardware issue. I've watched these yt videos on a single core athlon with 2g of pc3200 memory, 512meg dedicated nvidia graphics card and xp without issue. Almost the same as your initial system. However, I wouldn't try it with a 20 yr old doorstop that sweats bullets just trying to get xp to load. hell, I just got done watching Dave's 555 timer video while rendering a 90meg file in rhino on a dual core intel with onboard video and 4 gig's of ram running xp. The render was huffing a bit but the video played just fine.In short, though you probably don't want to hear it, is that it's in all likelihood either user error or you're doing something grossly wrong with your builds because with the systems that you've outlined it should be a non-issue.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 01:28:11 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on December 11, 2013, 12:01:58 amIt was obviously an over-exaggeration. But on stock 12.04 Ubuntu, I cannot play smooth youtube 1080p on a ThinkPad X201 which is not an old laptop, it possesses a 2.4 GHz i5 and 3 GB of RAM. It stutters and pauses constantly; if it does play, it eats up 100% of CPU. This is with proprietary Flash player on ~70 Mbit broadband.I just don't know why VLC can do 40 Mbit 1080p video at 10% CPU, yet Flash cannot manage a couble of Mbit of streamed 1080p. It's crazy.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 02:01:02 am
content: Quote from: tom66 on December 11, 2013, 01:28:11 amMine is a thoroughly knackered old Core 2 Duo, and it can handle 1080p with Flash, if only barely.I suggest not bothering with the flash player at all. Both the flash and HTML5 versions of Youtube are incredibly unreliable on any OS. Just download.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 03:17:31 am
content: with an external graphics card plugged in (pci-e) it actually got about 90% through installing windows...now, when it crashes, it just freezes on the screen it was on...tried reseating the cpu, memory slots have been "dusted" tried both slots...I think this board is just bad :/

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 07:01:49 am
content: try turning off a lot of the unnecessary integrated peripherals, some times devices can cause the setup to crash when it tries to load their drivers, if they aren't correct. Got built in fire wire? usb? raid? lan? etc? need these things to install windows? nope, turn em off.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 07:25:20 am
content: This crashes at the bios splash screen.It crashes while in the bios.It crashes while detecting hard drives.It crashes on the inbuilt graphics details screen, the first thing it displays!It is plausible that the inbuilt graphics was causing one issue, and some other hardware is causing an issue when installing windows...

author: Legit-Design
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 07:41:56 am
content: Quote from: AmmoJammo on December 11, 2013, 03:17:31 amYou still didn't provide picture or any information about the capacitors, mainly the ones surround processor socket. Bad caps still number one cause of motherboard failure/problems. Most modern motherboards have switched to solid type capacitors. You are using hardware from a time when this problem was at its peak. If you unsure about capacitors, please take a picture. Even if you might be sure, take a picture anyways. Some bad caps can just dry up without any sign of physical damage. Most will bulge slightly at the vent hole, venting holes should look like they are slightly concave.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 08:34:12 am
content: Half the capacitors on the board are solid state, the other half show no signs of failure.

author: Legit-Design
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 09:30:00 am
content: Have you tried mounting the MB in a case properly? I've heard people having problems when their MB wasn't mounted in a case, never seen any problems caused by that myself. Might have something to do with proper grounding of all the grounding points. Actually in the past I've ran my own computer without any issues without case for years. I actually had Asus motherboard from their overclocking line up. When people saw it they went nuts and wanted to know have I ran into any issues and so on. Also I always invested in a motherboard from a good known manufacturer. Good brand name motherboard will run for years, without any weird issues. I wouldn't trust any J&W motherboard.Mounting a computer in a case might have more to do with it spewing interference into environment, not so much receiving it.Have you checked the manual to see about any compatibility issues with memory and/or processor? Are there bios updates for that board?Like others have said already, might be time to announce it dead.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 09:42:15 am
content: I might try mounting it in a case tomorrow.I believe there are bios updates, but not something I'm going to attempt doing when it crashes so randomly.This motherboard, CPU, and memory were bought second hand for cheap, they apparently came from a working system, so it should all be compatible with each other.It seems there were a number of different revisions of this board, with considerably different layouts, so, the manual might be a bit vague

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 11:58:51 am
content: What's the chipset on that motherboard? I'm somehow reminded of the notorious nForce4/GeForce 61xx BGA issues...

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 04:16:57 pm
content: Somewhat off topic...I just tested on an old laptop I have around, a IBM T40, Pentium 4 single core 1.5 Ghz, 1.5 GB DDR1 @ 266 mhz , Radeon 7500 .. using Media Player Classic Home Cinema I could play 960x540 30 fps videos with just some lost frames every couple of minutes and the processor was averaging 70% load.It could probably do 720p without stuttering if the videos are encoded properly (tuned for fast decoding, cavlc instead of cabac, lower h264 profiles etc).But the download from youtube would add to cpu usage, flash is less optimized .. flash in firefox can do 480p without stuttering but not much higher.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 09:17:29 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on December 11, 2013, 11:58:51 amIt's a GeForce 6150SE...

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2013, 09:32:46 pm
content: All makes sense now (kinda)Ran for 10 times as long using an external graphics card, as there was no heat being produced by the inbuilt GPU.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2013, 08:29:37 am
content: Quote from: AmmoJammo on December 11, 2013, 09:42:15 amThe case is often important for airflow over the board to help cool things. The CPU is not the only thing that gets hot. Did you know that memory sticks can get incredibly hot in operation?

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2013, 12:46:34 pm
content: Quote from: AmmoJammo on December 11, 2013, 09:17:29 pmThat's... not a good sign, to put it nicely..On the other hand you now have a reason to practice BGA reballing.

author: TMM
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2013, 03:16:26 pm
content: Looks like a memory problem to me. A64 has the memory controller on the CPU die so it is less likely that a chipset issue would be the cause of what looks like a classic memory related issue.Install one stick of ram in the slot closest to the CPU. Load failsafe defaults in BIOS. Try these memory timings - CAS = 4, Trcd = 4, Trp = 4, Tras = 9, Command Rate = 2T. Set the memory clock to 200MHz/DDR400. If that doesn't work try the other ram slot for good measure. If it still plays up it's probably the board. I have never seen an A64 memory controller fail, even under ridiculous overclocking/overvolting abuse.Quote from: hans on December 10, 2013, 10:35:45 amAs if! My family runs a whole fleet of Athlon64 (some single core, some dual) which are all cobbled together with hand-me-down parts from upgrading my own computer over the years. 2GHz single core, 1GB ram, onboard graphics and windows 7 is more than adequate for web browsing. As long as you don't need to encode video or process megapixel images and keep the windows install free of unnecessary junk, it's fine. The harddrive will cause more hold ups than the CPU if it is still original. 2005 era hard drives are slow, especially if it's the painfully slow 5400rpm variety.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2013, 09:21:27 pm
content: Adjusting memory timing does nothing. I have no doubt its the BGA.I might try reflowing it, without actually completely removing and reballing it. Doesn't work anyway, what's there to loose!

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2013, 11:49:35 am
content: A reflow isn't a bad idea. This is from the era when lead-free solder was still quite new and problematic.

author: ampdoctor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2013, 12:43:01 pm
content: At this point if it were me I would just call it a day and go to newegg or tigerdirect and buy another board...new, in the box, in unmolested plastic! Not some return, open box, or other oddball from fleabay that you can get on the super cheap.

author: AmmoJammo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2014, 01:52:41 am
content: I ended up giving up on the original dual core motherboard/cpu I bought for this, and just used the old Pentium 4.It, of course, couldn't play HD youtube videos, but that was ok, as I was unemployed at the timeAnyway! new job, so I bought a (very) second hand Dell dual core computer with no hard drive, for $60, and set that up insteadplus it came with a Windows Vista sticker on the side, so we'll call that a legitimate version of WindozeYes, old thread, but I've concluded that no matter how fast the single core cpu, it won't do HD youtube.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2014, 02:11:10 am
content: In my experience, VLC isn't very effective at offloading with VAAPI. On a system that supports VAAPI but not VDPAU (AMD or Intel graphics), I use a branch of mplayer with support for VAAPI.