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How do I know if the GPU is insufficient?

O

Omnius

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 23, 2012
564
30
I was watching a movie(streaming) and I noticed that at about an hour in, it was skipping frames pretty badly, while sound appeared to be fine. It was properly cached. It seems to me this happens when watching large streaming videos.

Is this possibly a gpu issue? How do i really monitor if I'm saturating the gpu's ability? I couldn't find anything in activity monitor that appeared as straight forward as monitoring cpu use or ram use.

Is a mac mini (3,1) simply insufficient for this task?
 
Omnius said:
Is this possibly a gpu issue?
Click to expand...
Save the video, if possible. Then open the video file with VLC or QuickTime X. If you see the same problems, it is certainly a GPU problem (unlikely).

Note: Safari and YouTube HTML5 are probably not suitable. Try Firefox & the newest version of the Flash Player plugin.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
Save the video, if possible. Then open the video file with VLC or QuickTime X. If you see the same problems, it is certainly a GPU problem (unlikely).

Note: Safari and YouTube HTML5 are probably not suitable. Try Firefox & the newest version of the Flash Player plugin.
Click to expand...

Would Google chrome be an equivalent to Firefox for such purposes?

I dont think I can just save a streamed video.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
No.

The Flash Player plugin supports realtime protocols and HTML5/Safari does not support these protocols. That is the reason why i recommend Firefox + the Flash Player plugin.
Click to expand...

Safari's Flash plugin doesn't do this? Nor Chrome's built-in Flash player?

Mr. Retrofire said:
Save the video, if possible. Then open the video file with VLC or QuickTime X. If you see the same problems, it is certainly a GPU problem (unlikely).

Note: Safari and YouTube HTML5 are probably not suitable. Try Firefox & the newest version of the Flash Player plugin.
Click to expand...

Your initial post was comparing local file playback versus native Flash playback.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
Safari's Flash plugin doesn't do this? Nor Chrome's built-in Flash player?
Click to expand...
WebKit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, ...) can do everything. That is not the problem. The problem is, that WebKit-based browsers and the Flash Plugin cause many problems (RAM usage, aggressive caching, et cetera) if you use both together.

SnowLeopard2008 said:
Your initial post was comparing local file playback versus native Flash playback.
Click to expand...
No, i did not compare anything. The OPs problems sound like network problems. But i found that it is usually a problem with Safari/HTML5 or Safari/Flash. The main reason is, that Safari copies a lot of data in internal caches, which requires more memory, and the OP has probably not much free memory. The HTML5 video support in Safari is also a joke, so the best option is Firefox+Flash plugin, if you want to avoid browser-related video problems.

Omnius said:
I dont think I can just save a streamed video.
Click to expand...
You can download the video files with JDownloader (if you use YouTube). I recommend the H.264 encoded MP4 format.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
WebKit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, ...) can do everything. That is not the problem. The problem is, that WebKit-based browsers and the Flash Plugin cause many problems (RAM usage, aggressive caching, et cetera) if you use both together.


No, i did not compare anything. The OPs problems sound like network problems. But i found that it is usually a problem with Safari/HTML5 or Safari/Flash. The main reason is, that Safari copies a lot of data in internal caches, which requires more memory, and the OP has probably not much free memory. The HTML5 video support in Safari is also a joke, so the best option is Firefox+Flash plugin, if you want to avoid browser-related video problems.


You can download the video files with JDownloader (if you use YouTube). I recommend the H.264 encoded MP4 format.
Click to expand...

Nevermind, you have gone off on a huge tangent.
 
Omnius said:
I was watching a movie(streaming) and I noticed that at about an hour in, it was skipping frames pretty badly, while sound appeared to be fine. It was properly cached. It seems to me this happens when watching large streaming videos.

Is this possibly a gpu issue? How do i really monitor if I'm saturating the gpu's ability? I couldn't find anything in activity monitor that appeared as straight forward as monitoring cpu use or ram use.

Is a mac mini (3,1) simply insufficient for this task?
Click to expand...

How is it on your 5,2? If it's fine there, and they are using the same Internet connection, then yes I'd say there is a problem with the 3,1.
 
Omnius said:
I was watching a movie(streaming) and I noticed that at about an hour in, it was skipping frames pretty badly, while sound appeared to be fine. It was properly cached. It seems to me this happens when watching large streaming videos.

Is this possibly a gpu issue? How do i really monitor if I'm saturating the gpu's ability? I couldn't find anything in activity monitor that appeared as straight forward as monitoring cpu use or ram use.

Is a mac mini (3,1) simply insufficient for this task?
Click to expand...

Just throwing this out there but how much RAM do you have?
 
paulrbeers said:
Just throwing this out there but how much RAM do you have?
Click to expand...

That mini has 4GB of ram. When running the video, the only application that is open is chrome. The 4GB of ram is nowhere near maxed.

----------
ActionableMango said:
How is it on your 5,2? If it's fine there, and they are using the same Internet connection, then yes I'd say there is a problem with the 3,1.
Click to expand...

The 5,2 is hardly apples to apples with a mac mini 3,1. The 5,2 is running a better gpu, has double the ram, and is on a better overall chipset.
 
Omnius said:
That mini has 4GB of ram. When running the video, the only application that is open is chrome. The 4GB of ram is nowhere near maxed.

----------



The 5,2 is hardly apples to apples with a mac mini 3,1. The 5,2 is running a better gpu, has double the ram, and is on a better overall chipset.
Click to expand...

Action was simply stating that if the 5,2 had no issues then mr retrofire's belief that it is your network is bunk. So now it's just a matter of figuring out what is wrong with your mini...
 
paulrbeers said:
Action was simply stating that if the 5,2 had no issues then mr retrofire's belief that it is your network is bunk. So now it's just a matter of figuring out what is wrong with your mini...
Click to expand...
I wrote
Mr. Retrofire said:
The OPs problems sound like network problems.
Click to expand...
So i did NOT SAY, that something is my belief.

paulrbeers said:
So now it's just a matter of figuring out what is wrong with your mini...
Click to expand...
No. It is also possible, that the software is the problem.
 
paulrbeers said:
Action was simply stating that if the 5,2 had no issues then mr retrofire's belief that it is your network is bunk. So now it's just a matter of figuring out what is wrong with your mini...
Click to expand...

I'll try to be more accurate. The choppiness begins after a video has been playing for an extensive period of time. Videos that are longer seem to experience choppiness sooner (about 40 minutes on a video that is 3 hours long as opposed to about an hour in on videos that are an hour and 20 minutes long). The sound never skips a beat and functions fine. The cpu usage clocks in around 60-65% at that time. There appears to be a free gig of ram.

I noticed an improvement in performance using firefox as opposed to chrome. I found on the activity monitor that I'm using right about 180-190 of the 256 for VRAM.

I don't see why it would be the internet connection because I allow it to be fully buffered.

----------
Mr. Retrofire said:
WebKit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, ...) can do everything. That is not the problem. The problem is, that WebKit-based browsers and the Flash Plugin cause many problems (RAM usage, aggressive caching, et cetera) if you use both together.


No, i did not compare anything. The OPs problems sound like network problems. But i found that it is usually a problem with Safari/HTML5 or Safari/Flash. The main reason is, that Safari copies a lot of data in internal caches, which requires more memory, and the OP has probably not much free memory. The HTML5 video support in Safari is also a joke, so the best option is Firefox+Flash plugin, if you want to avoid browser-related video problems.


You can download the video files with JDownloader (if you use YouTube). I recommend the H.264 encoded MP4 format.
Click to expand...
On a side note, I'm not sure I've spent more than 3 hours using youtube in my entire life combined.
 
Omnius said:
I was watching a movie(streaming) and I noticed that at about an hour in, it was skipping frames pretty badly, while sound appeared to be fine. It was properly cached. It seems to me this happens when watching large streaming videos.

Is this possibly a gpu issue? How do i really monitor if I'm saturating the gpu's ability? I couldn't find anything in activity monitor that appeared as straight forward as monitoring cpu use or ram use.

Is a mac mini (3,1) simply insufficient for this task?
Click to expand...

What OS are you running? How much RAM and hard drive space are you running on this Mac mini? How fast are your hard drives? How much do you have open while streaming? Does this happen repeatedly and/or does this happen on a different browser?

In theory your Mac mini should be able to stream media for an hour just fine, the GeForce 9400M that it has, while not a discrete GPU, is still more than capable enough for those tasks. But answers to the questions I just asked will help pinpoint your ACTUAL problem.
 
Yebubbleman said:
What OS are you running? How much RAM and hard drive space are you running on this Mac mini? How fast are your hard drives? How much do you have open while streaming? Does this happen repeatedly and/or does this happen on a different browser?

In theory your Mac mini should be able to stream media for an hour just fine, the GeForce 9400M that it has, while not a discrete GPU, is still more than capable enough for those tasks. But answers to the questions I just asked will help pinpoint your ACTUAL problem.
Click to expand...

As we discussed in the thread, only chrome had been open. Later only firefox was open. It's running a 256gb solid state drive with about 90gb free on the mac osx partition. it's a fully updated copy of lion.

I'm coming to the conclusion the problem is with certain flash movie players. I noticed no such issue running a test playing hulu (my thoughts are that certain flash movie players just suck).
 
Last edited:
Omnius said:
As we discussed in the thread, only chrome had been open. Later only firefox was open. It's running a 256gb solid state drive with about 90gb free on the mac osx partition. it's a fully updated copy of lion.

I'm coming to the conclusion the problem is with certain flash movie players. I noticed no such issue running a test playing hulu (my thoughts are that certain flash movie players just suck).
Click to expand...

Lion also sucks, but not so much to cause the problems you are having. If you have 4GB of RAM in that sucker (which you should totally consider if you haven't), you should move to Mountain Lion. As for playback drops, I'd look in the Console logs to see if anything was up. Sometimes that can be GPU related, other times it can be drive related; though a 256GB SSD with 90GB free makes me think it isn't.
 
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