How to improve Flash 10 performance on AMD Athlon and Pentium 4 machines

[Oppilaa]

I have noticed a drastic difference in running Flash Player 10 on a Pentium 4 or Athlon XP machine and running the same on some other machine. Flash 10 performs too badly with both the above mentioned systems. I do have a Athlon XP machine present at my place, whenever I try to run Flash Player 10 on this machine it seems to be working to slowly in all aspects. Other than the slow performance the player sometimes also crashes badly without any prior notice or error message. While trying to play the video sometimes it takes the player long time to just load it and in certain cases the loading fails all the way. Suppose if fortunately the video is loaded properly then the video is bound to suffer from bad frame rates which become too annoying for me to watch the video.

Anyways first I thought that such incompatible issue of Flash 10 is only with Athlon XP machines but later on after researching I found that the exact same problem is with the Pentium 4 machines. One of my friends does have a Pentium 4 system at his place; I purposely told him to download and install Flash 10 into his computer for testing and guess what? I found all the symptoms and trouble into his machine that was faced by me in my Athlon XP system. Until now I have found only few similar cases including me and my friend but I am still doubtful whether the other Pentium 4 and Athlon XP machines are up with the similar scenario. Here the thread for all the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP users who installed Flash 10 and facing problem same as me please share your bitter experience and lets divert other users focus over here. I know there are still lots more people facing the same problem and also they are unable to get a proper solution for the same. Hope we get a solution here.

[DanielaA]

First of all I wouldn’t say that Flash Player is bad or something. As far as I know it is one of the best players with some greatest and unbelievable features. This player has surely nothing to do with the processors of the computer system. I think before commenting on the flash player you need to learn a lot about it first so that at least your concepts regarding the flash player working would be cleared. If you are not aware then let me tell you that flash player is nothing but a browser plugin. There are different controllers that make this player to work smoothly on any players, due to this reason Flash player become independent and possess “ready to play” kind of character. If you are having an Internet Explorer browser then you might need an ActiveX controller for it and if you have a browser other than the Internet Explorer then you might need SWF. But the only thing common in all browsers are the path at which the Flash Player files are placed, they are located in C:\Windows\System32\Macromedia\Flash. The only thing I am trying to convey you is that Flash Player is nowhere a problem for you and most importantly processors have nothing to do with the problem you are facing.

As far as I can make out, there is some sort of settings either missing or disabled or enabled within the flash player that is causing the problem and according to me I think it’s the hardware acceleration. I would suggest you to first have a look into the hardware acceleration from the Display setting, if its enabled then better you turn it off. After making the change close everything and then restart the Player, let me know the result.

[GALIENA]

Yeah, that’s a great option I must say. You can surely give it a try, even I was about to suggest you the same. Try to disable the hardware Acceleration. You can do this easily. There’s a test site for Adobe that you might find on official website of Adobe. On that page you will find a Logo, just right click on the Logo. Now you will get certain option and amongst those options you need to click on the Settings, you will be displayed with a small settings window. on that windows click on the display setting (a monitor icon). You will find just a single option, just uncheck that option and that’s it. Now you can do the same thing with all other browsers present into your machine.

Even I have done the same thing and I haven’t faced any lagging issue or crashing problem until yet with the playing. I can simply run it on any of my system (I have 3 different systems). My flash player version is 10.1.82.76 (updated it last month) and its working great.

[QUENBY]

Hey here I got another way of viewing the same Flash player settings window on your screen. Instead of searching out for that Adobe Test site better you just simply try to watch or open any video on internet onto a desired web browser. And when the video is open and playing simply right click on the video and select settings. You might get the same settings windows for the same purpose, now disable the hardware acceleration. There’s another simply idea for the same, on the flash Player application right click and then Select Settings from the Context menu. You will end up getting the same result.

[Hollyn]

Trying out the solution is fine but do you have any idea why people are suggesting you to disable the hardware acceleration option again and again. It is always very much necessary for a user or a person to know about the thing that he is going to try out. In the Adobe flash player display setting hardware acceleration is actually used to improvise the quality and also to speed up the playback of the video that are being played on it. However the hardware acceleration option is obviously checked by default in the display settings as people definitely prefers watching improved and high quality video. This option uses the graphics card that you have installed into you machine in order to show you more clear video beyond the capability of the Flash Player (Flash Player is not so advanced to display high quality pictures but this option makes it possible).

Now if in case you are facing any video related issues like worst display, lagging or bad picture quality or anything then it is better recommended to disable the Hardware Acceleration. During this point of time deselecting the option helps you to remove the entire driver or hardware related compatibility issue that comes with the Flash Player and causes the above listed issue. so whenever there’s any display or quality related issue just disable the option.