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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1128 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I thought it was just my PC being old but my recent experiences of YouTube making my PC sounds like it wants to take off combined with this comment suggesting that it's not just my PC has inspired me to move over to a desktop YouTube client. I've chosen FreeTube because it comes with ad block, SponsorBlock and ("most") age verified videos enabled. Seems alright so far.

Check your GPU in the task manager "resources" tab while YouTube is playing, and right click the video to show "stats for nerds."
You'll probably see either vp9 or av01 under "codec".
If you see "video decode" being used in task manager, you have hardware acceleration for that codec. If you see high CPU use and only "3d rendering" being used on the GPU graph, you don't.

You won't get hardware accel for av1 on an old PC (Intel 10th gen or older), and it's really hard on the cpu. Try to turn it off in settings or with a browser addon.
If you have a vp9 video but hardware accel isn't working, you either have a really old PC (intel 6th gen or lower), or one of a list of problems:

*Browser isn't set to support hardware accel. Chrome is especially bad for this out of the box. Your standalone YouTube player is gonna be a good fix for this one.
*Browser running on an old GPU (GTX 9xx or lower, or an AMD from before 2018, because they added support stupidly late). This is why I have to set my browser to run from igpu instead.
*You sacrificed the wrong breed of goat while dedicating your PC to Satan, and the hardware is now cursed.

Helpful tips, thanks. I've added on an addon to block av1 and it's made an improvement but I'm on a 2012 AMD processor with internal Radeon 6550HD graphics so can't expect much, however watching videos is typically the most intensive usage it outside of pending updates for Firefox. What is that about anyway? Until recently the fans revving up would almost always be a sign that Firefox was getting impatient to update and it would settle down again after restarting.

In addition to the matters SteveKirk brings up, I'd check what resolution YouTube is streaming at. There's been some changes in the last few months resetting default resolution values, and it'll quite often favor resolution values that you neither need nor want on many systems. 480p or even 360p is a lot easier on your processor and bandwidth if you're not reading text or looking at fine details of the video.

I stick to 480p on YouTube as I've no need for higher resolution. I'm not motivated enough to drill down into the technical aspects but it definitely seems that the problem is worse or at least only noticeable on YouTube. Other video sites don't seem to cause the same problems even at higher resolutions.

Holy shit, you'll need to block vp9 as well, force it to use h264 (which uses way more bandwidth). Last time I had to do that was with a 4th Gen laptop from the landfill that thankfully killed itself in shame.
Wish I could mail you a better system, or we had enough people to do local trades.

My last PC was one of those '12 amds, a 5800k with the Radeon 7660D. Can't imagine using one in current year!

Ha yeah I was expecting that kind of reaction. Awkward video codecs aside it still runs well enough for my needs. Have been thinking I'm probably due to start looking for a new one but I'm not a gamer, 3D designer or video editor so I'll probably pick another unenhanced low-mid performance box and run it for another decade.

My priorities lean more towards low power and small size so probably something like a commodity Dell/Lenovo micro, in 12 years I've never once used any expansion slots beyond adding more RAM, and I so rarely use optical media these days that it doesn't justify an internal drive. The great thing about being so far behind the curve is that practically anything offers a big leap forwards for what is basically peanuts.

If you're anywhere around the northwest US, I can get you a system that's about 100% faster single core, on an itx board for a micro build IIRC, and a GTX 970 if you've any use for it. If you're not maybe some other motter local to you could

Appreciate the kind offer but it's purely inertia and the lack of any significant magnitude in my current dissatisfaction that's keeping me from upgrading. It's more due to choice than necessity. I'll get around to it once I've gotten around a few higher priority projects.

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