Those with ancient computers, can you play Youtube videos?

[timzak]

Just wondering how old/slow your computers are that can still watch a Youtube video at a decent framerate.

I've got an HP Pavilion 6535 that I rescued and loaded Debian Lenny on. Did a minimal install with XFCE. It uses about 44 MB of ram after a fresh boot. Using Kazehakase and flash 10, Youtube videos play at basically 1 fps (slide show).

Specs:
Celeron 466 Mhz, 256 MB ram, 20 GB 7200 rpm hard drive, Voodoo3 PCI video card (disabled onboard Intel video).

I'm trying to find out if this is normal, expected performance for this machine. Anybody with a similar spec machine able to play Youtube videos at a decent framerate?

[Twitch6000]

Just wondering how old/slow your computers are that can still watch a Youtube video at a decent framerate.

I've got an HP Pavilion 6535 that I rescued and loaded Debian Lenny on. Did a minimal install with XFCE. It uses about 44 MB of ram after a fresh boot. Using Kazehakase and flash 10, Youtube videos play at basically 1 fps (slide show).

Specs:
Celeron 466 Mhz, 256 MB ram, 20 GB 7200 rpm hard drive, Voodoo3 PCI video card (disabled onboard Intel video).

I'm trying to find out if this is normal, expected performance for this machine. Anybody with a similar spec machine able to play Youtube videos at a decent framerate?

My friend has a similar spec machine and his frame rate is better when using DSL and Puppy Linux.

[Ed. Yang]

1FPS is too low...

I've on-hand experience with a Fujitsu laptop with only 500mhz cpu, and integrated video that's too old to play youtube flash vids smoothly. But i can still achieve roughly about 20fps or so with xubuntu.

I guess there might be something got to do with your screen size as well as it's video card...

[khelben1979]

On my old Powerbook I finally could watch youtube videos with Debian Lenny for the first time. I'm not sure what the fps is but I would guess it lies around four or five.

I experience this as pretty cool that it's actually possible, although I prefer watching them on my other system which is far more powerful (5 year old PC).

[nitehawk777]

It also depends on your internet connection. I just have dialup,....so video doesn't work smooth, even on my better computer. It will play for a second or two,...then take a second or so to stop and "load" some more,....etc. etc.

EDIT: actually, I just installed Debian Etch on this "good" P4 computer,...so I'll have to test it on videos. (Been using my older PIII).

[dburnett77]

Just wondering how old/slow your computers are that can still watch a Youtube video at a decent framerate.

I've got an HP Pavilion 6535 that I rescued and loaded Debian Lenny on. Did a minimal install with XFCE. It uses about 44 MB of ram after a fresh boot. Using Kazehakase and flash 10, Youtube videos play at basically 1 fps (slide show).

Specs:
Celeron 466 Mhz, 256 MB ram, 20 GB 7200 rpm hard drive, Voodoo3 PCI video card (disabled onboard Intel video).

I'm trying to find out if this is normal, expected performance for this machine. Anybody with a similar spec machine able to play Youtube videos at a decent framerate?

Should work, watch out for misconfig. Flash is not demanding on processors, as even a modern cell phone is acceptable.

I'd say there's viral activity, or some such. Try a re-install, and don't touch anything.

[timzak]

Thanks for the replies...

Internet speed is not an issue as I'm on a 5 meg connection. Right now this machine is playing OGG files through Audacious. No other apps open or running, and it's using 19% cpu and 54.5 MB ram total according to conky.

While Kazehakase is running a Youtube video (search "marble run" and run the first video), cpu usage is pegged at 100% (kazehakase using about 90% and Xorg using the other 10%), total system ram usage is at about 85-90 MB. So there's plenty of ram available. I did notice if I play a video with no sound, the cpu usage is still at 100%, but kazehakase is using about 65-70% and Xorg is using 30-35%. In the video with sound, the sound plays at normal rates, so the sound finishes ahead of the video, since the video is chopping along at 1-5 fps.

At no point is the ram close to being maxed out. Even if I replay the same video (so it's cached, eliminating the internet connection), I get similar performance as described above.

The sound card is an original Sound Blaster Live! PCI card. The Voodoo3 PCI card is set up properly for 3D performance (whatever it's capable of) according to this post:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...30&postcount=1

[cmat]

I'm thinking it's the ancient video chipset. There is no hardware acceleration given the default drivers and video is slow. I have a ATI Mach64 in a 333Mhz PII and it plays Youtube videos well. Even though the card is 14 years old.

[khelben1979]

In my case it's because YouTube uses gnash and not the flash player from Adobe since it doesn't support this architecture.

I also do recall that when Debian chose to leave the XFree86 server in favour of x.org, 3d acceleration got slower when I was to play movies with Mplayer. Nowadays I don't know which one of these 2 x-servers which is the fastest.

[K.Mandla]

Flash 10 at 450Mhz on a K6-2 works well enough for me. I don't watch YouTube except once in a while, so it's acceptable.

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/12...-25-on-a-k6-2/