Windows 7 - Flash, video playing, sound and generally high CPU Usag

Sorry to but-in, but what information do you get from task manager? A screenshot would be handy (processes tab) as it can/will highlight any process which is using high CPU.

I'm no longer at home so I'll have to post a screenshot later today but some of the notable processes eating CPU include:

dllhost.exe
systeminterrupts
explorer.exe
any of the webbrowsers

hey all i just registered because I have the same issue. I recently reinstalled flash 10 and firefox 3.5 completley to see if that did anything. I dont know when this started but recently i've been viewing a lot of HD stuff.

I've got a pretty beefy computer but this really blows when im watching HD flash stuff. Hardware acceleration is a joke too.

heres a test, load up this Youtube Movie
YouTube - The Hunt For Gollum

press HD and just skip to about half way or something. my fps blow, full screen or not it drops to about 10 fps and then they will be small times of "good fps" then it will drop. Nothing running in the background either.

Gonna have to try out chrome

yes its same with my p4 flash usage gets high ... like 50-80% but w.e its a p4 lol...

I guess its like 5-20% on dual core? and 5-10 on quad? :P

Laptop: core2 duo 1.6 ghz 25% non hd 40% hd and gpu accel has no effect on either and the frames are still choppy on that vid. And yes it does use both cores pretty evenly.

ah lol 1.6 is too low :P... but still better than a 3.0 p4 I guess O.O

I get like 5-10% with a 2.5 core2duo overcloked to 3.0 :P

I picked that machine to point out how bad the P4 is, my only other choice that was on the low side was an AMD XP3200 which is about equal to the P4.

Hey Everyone,

I Just recently installed the final Windows 7 pro version thats going into market on 10-22. Every thing works well except, my cpu usage goes to 75%(I cant believe it) when I stream online videos, even from youtube or megavideo.

Has any one found a fix yet? I did not install any drivers except for Nvidia 8400M GS and for touchpad. I suspect a Lan card driver is missing and could not get it from Dell website for Win 7, and to make matters more complicated in terms for getting driver, I m using a 64 bit version.

My system specs are good I believe, at least to run windows
they are
Dell/ Vostro 1310
Windows 7 Pro Final
Intel T9300, 2.5 G.Hz Core 2 Duo
3 G.B. RAM
128 MB Nvidia 8400M GS

Thanks,
Rakesh Mallela

I have the exact same problem on my Media Center machine, my laptop doesn't have an issue. Video playback goes CPU bound with streaming flash video sites (youtube and australian broadcaster abc (www.abc.net.au/iview)).

I can play back the video stream fine for a brief period (HD videos normally about 30sec - 1min, Standard def videos about 3-5minutes), then all of a sudden GPU support gets turned off and the flash video becomes CPU bound. Eg, I can be watching a video at a nice 25-30fps rate, then when the gpu gets turned off it drops down to 3-9fps.

I can play back Blu-Ray discs fine on my Media Center machine and recorded HDTV from media center, 1080p H264 video and 1080i Mpeg2 video, with cpu usage of only 30-40%.

My hardware specs on my media center machine
CPU: P4 3.0 Ghz
Motherboard: Intel i965 chipset
Ram: 2Gb
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Video Card: ATI HD 2600 PRO 512MB (AGP)

My laptop (which works fine)
CPU: P4 3.0 Ghz
Motherboard: Sis 648 Chipset
Ram: 1.5Gb
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Video Card: ATI 9600 Mobility 128 MB Ram

Any idea's

Well some good news as far as video playback, not for adobe flash, but the flash video's. I can download the flash videos and play them back in both VLC and Arcsoft Total Media theatre without any of the video playback issues. So it looks like its Adobe Flash thats the problem.

I can download a youtube 1080p h.264 video and play back the clip under Arcsoft Total Media Theatre 3 and only be using 11% of my CPU (an old P4 3.0Ghz Hyperthreaded cpu) as Arcsoft provides hardware acceleration of the clips.

Now if Arcsoft can provide hardware acceleration on an ATI HD 2600 Pro AGP video card, surely ATI and Adobe can do the same for flash and also fix the bug in flash that makes flash stop using the video card GPU after a short period of time.