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High CPU usage when watching Twitch streams?

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drew-chan Malaysia1517 Posts May 14 2012 14:33 GMT #1 First my system uses an intel e8400 processor. When watching a single twitch stream, at any resolution, the cpu usage spikes up to 70% when i am focused on that window, when i remove focus on that window it drops to about 40%. If I close the stream or pause it it drops to about 4%. It happens even on 240 and it is really frustrating. Any idea on what could cause this?

EdenPLusDucky 571 Posts May 14 2012 14:39 GMT #2 Are you running the latest version of flash player? Right click the stream, go to settings and disable hardware acceleration.

drew-chan Malaysia1517 Posts May 14 2012 14:48 GMT #3 I'm using the latest version of flash player, disabled the hardware acceleration, still the same cpu usage numbers.

Nimix France1809 Posts May 14 2012 14:50 GMT #4 I have spikes too when watching streams on chrome, and I have an i5 2500k with hardware accel disabled too. Of course its not 70% spikes but still, I guess it's normal..

drew-chan Malaysia1517 Posts May 14 2012 15:32 GMT #5 Problem is that i never seemed to have such high cpu usage until today, and the awesome part is that when I pop out the video and resize it, the larger i set the window too the higher cpu usage it uses. Keep in mind that these are all using the same resolution, only the window size changes.

udgnim United States8024 Posts May 14 2012 16:01 GMT #6 have you switched to a different browser recently? I've observed different browsers have different CPU use with flash. Also, flash is a piece of shit. Most unstable thing I deal with on my computer.

Wabbit United States1028 Posts May 14 2012 16:07 GMT #7 Well of course your CPU usage is high if you disabled hardware acceleration. That means it's using software to decode the video data - software that runs on the CPU and is probably not optimized well. You want to keep hardware acceleration enabled (uses the video card - or more accurately, whatever GPU your system has, be it motherboard-integrated, on-CPU-die, or on a discrete video card) unless you experience issues that are directly caused by keeping it enabled.

drew-chan Malaysia1517 Posts May 14 2012 16:18 GMT #8 Well i tried both with hardware acceleration on or off. Performance issues persist on both settings. Seems to happen when i popout the video window.

Bloody Sweden194 Posts May 14 2012 16:24 GMT #9 I used to have lag spikes while watching streams too. It was having twitter/facebook tabs while watching, that caused it for me.

puudutus Finland1 Post November 17 2012 09:06 GMT #10 I know this is an older thread. But for people suffering from this issue or anyone else who want to save some CPU power.. Firefox seems to use MUCH less CPU when watching HD quality streams. My laptop has an i5 3250m and wacthing two HD streams on Chrome take the CPU usage to over 90% (and the pc activates Turbo Boost). On Firefox about 50-60% cpu usage and no need for Turbo Boost (actually the clocks are usually at a little over 2 ghz) with the exact same streams. Just tested this this weekend watching WCS streams which are 720p+ quality.

entanglement Spain1 Post January 06 2013 05:09 GMT #11 I think this has something to do with Chrome. When I'm watching a stream with 720+ I basically get a heated laptop that sounds like its going to die, but on Safari its quiet. I tried both hardware acceleration enabled/disabled with similar results. Sorry for replying on an old thread but maybe if someone using chrome reads this, they can open safari/firefox/whatever to view the streamI think this has something to do with Chrome. When I'M watching a stream with 720+ I basically get a heated laptop that sounds like its going to die, but on Safari its quiet. I tried both hardware acceleration enabled/disabled with similar results. Sorry for replying on an old thread but maybe if someone using chrome reads this, they can open Safari/firefox/whatever to view the stream

Draxtier Canada10 Posts May 12 2013 15:38 GMT #12 I use Chrome on a system running 64 bit Windows 7 and was experiencing the same issues described in this topic and found that my CPU was the bottleneck causing poor performance. Looking around the interwebs, I found a suggestion to disable the built-in flash plugin Chrome uses by default and instead have Chrome use the stand-alone flash plugin. I tried that out and it worked, improving the performance of twitch.tv streams immensely, especially when ads are running. It worked wonder for me, but of course, YMMV. Here's how you do it: Open a window in chrome, navigate to "chrome://plugins" and be sure the details pane is expanded. There should be a plugin listed there as Adobe Flash Player with the file "pepflashplayer.dll" listed as the location. Disable that plugin. Remove any traces of older installations of flash by following the directions given here on the Adobe forums. Download and install the latest version of the stand-alone flash plugin from Adobe. That should do it. To confirm that you have chrome's built in flash plugin disabled, and the stand-alone plugin enabled, open up "chrome://plugins" again and you should see something like this: Hope that helps.

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