back to article GPU-powered Chrome lets you watch YouTube longer

Google has pushed version 23 of its Chrome web browser to the Stable release channel, bringing GPU-accelerated video playback to the Windows platform and giving users finer control over what data that sites can collect about their browsing habits. Chrome has been able to use the GPU to accelerate web-page rendering for some …

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  1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Power consumption

    It's not necessarily true that GPUs use less power than CPUs but it is generally true that any instructions carried out directly by hardware will use less power because they use fewer cycles. Hardware acceleration does, of course, depend on support in the hardware which for videos means support for the various codecs. Would be interesting to know what's supported just h264 or also webm.

    In other news: Opera 12.10 was released.

    http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2012/11/05/12-10-final-released

    Support for SPDY and FlexBox are my favourites.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Power consumption

      And of course, Opera has full browser GPU acceleration for some time (although disabled by default). As usual, Chrome gets all the headlines, but the real browser innovations are happening in Oslo.

      1. HMB

        Re: Power consumption

        Disabled by default, i.e. not working completely reliably yet.

        Chrome wasn't the first browser to get this anyway, IE has had full browser acceleration since 9, which is a while ago now.

        I used to get Opera to test websites against. When it was the one with the worst rendering with the most bugs I stopped bothering with Opera testing. The sites were strictly HTML5, CSS3 and worked beautifully on IE9, Chrome, Safari & FIrefox.

        So nearly a great mail client though, shame about the issues.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Power consumption

          Just to point out, Opera is by far the most standards compliant browser there is.

          It's consistently top of HTML5, ACID, and TEST262 tests, beating all other browsers. If your site doesn't work in opera, it's because you are crap at writing websites.. I hear McDonalds are hiring.

          Opera is the ONLY browser to do full browser hardware acceleration (including UI) and on all platforms, the others just do canvas, or bits of canvas. Yes it's disabled by default, simply because on lower-spec hardware, it's slower than their highly optimized software backend (which blows the socks off all the hardware rendering browsers already...). On decent hardware GPU, Opera is massively quicker.

          http://test262.ecmascript.org/

          http://html5test.com/

          http://acid3.acidtests.org/

          http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hardware-Acceleration-in-Opera-12-It-s-Complicated-275608.shtml

          1. MrWibble
            Trollface

            Re: Power consumption

            Only one thing more rabid than an Android fanboi is an Opera one.

            1. Captain Scarlet
              Trollface

              Re: Power consumption

              Sorry MrWibble but two Opera fanbois ere!

              1. handle

                Re: Power consumption

                "Yes [hardware acceleration is] disabled [in Opera] by default, simply because on lower-spec hardware, it's slower than their highly optimized software backend"

                Sounds fishy to me, If it were clever it would do its own tests, and decide whether or not to use hardware acceleration, not rely on the user to opt in to it.

          2. Select * From Handle
            FAIL

            Re: Power consumption - No its not.... i just ran the tests...

            i got the latest version of opera and made sure i had the latest chrome and ran all those tests u linked... these are my results.

            http://test262.ecmascript.org - Both passed the ch07 tests fully

            http://acid3.acidtests.org - Both got 100/100

            http://html5test.com/ - Chrome =434 - Opera= 404 (419 when hardware acceleration enabled)

            Hardware acceleration is disabled by default as well, which unless you know about it and can be bothered to Google how to turn it on (as it isn't in settings>prefs) makes it a Fail for me...

            are you sure you are looking at Opera when you compare the results...?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The option I want is

    To make the javascript/etc changes temporary. In the fuck-google-update (and google instant too) version I'm running my only option is to grant permissions permanently, and when I'm done, manually remove them.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Suggestions

      Make your change, and make a note to yourself that you want to change it back later.

      Or, investigate where the setting is stored; if it's in the Windows Registry, then you can probably use Registry Editor to save and restnore different versions of the setting - if you do it while the browser isn't running. Changes to a program's Registry settings while it's running are liable to be ignored and overwritten.

      Or, create a separate user account with different settings for the browser - I assume they are set per-user - and run a copy of the browser with the other user account's credentials. One user has Java (for instance) switched off, another user has it switched on.

  3. Anonymous Custard

    A better thing to fix - First page lag

    Personally the thing I want is for them to repair whatever they did a few weeks back which is now causing Chrome to sit there with "Sending Request" in the status bar for a fair amount of time before it decides to load the first page you try and go to after opening the thing.

    It's obviously doing a DNS search or something similar, which depending on time of day (and your ISP/DNS set-up) can take ages. IE and FF don't do it, but it happens irrespective of ISP used (my travelling netbook does it whether I'm at home or on the road).

    Please Google can you sort this one out! I know from looking on the net and their forums that I'm far from the only one getting hacked-off with this glitch, especially when I just want to quickly look something up and it takes minutes rather than seconds.

    1. pixl97

      Re: A better thing to fix - First page lag

      Run wireshark, or whatever packet capture software you have for your operating system and see what it's doing. That's going to be the only way to tell what is really going on. I've not seen these issues on any computer I use, so there is obviously a set of circumstances that must happen for this to occur.

  4. JimmyPage Silver badge

    Speaking of Chrome ...

    Has anyone else noticed this annoying "feature" which has crept in which makes tabs a little bit loose ? You click on a tab, and something makes Chrome detach it into a new browser window ? It never used to do it, and I've been using it for over 2 years.

  5. Dave 126 Silver badge

    Curious headline

    Chrome uses its built-in Flash player for Youtube, and that has had hardware video acceleration for a few years now. That said, I have noticed that it has been broken recently, resulting in high CPU in full-screen video. No big problem, another browser is just a click away.

    If we didn't have all these flash adverts, I don't think my browser would accelerating. When it comes to Flash, my views echo that of the late turtle-neck guy, along with menus and laptop screen ratios.

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: Curious headline

      *cough*

      Adblock plus

      *cough*

  6. Radelix

    @anon 8:58 and JimmyPage

    whew, I'm glad Im not the only one with those issues. I thought it was caused by me running chrome off a thumbdrive and the USB access times were poo. Yes Google please fix the 2 errors they said

  7. handle

    Ironic?

    ...that Chrome is going to all this trouble to control cookies, etc, whilst simultaneously feeding your inside leg measurement back to Google. If I understand it correctly, Chromium is the way round that one.

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