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Slow Flash Performance on 1.5GHz G4

Coolnat2004

Coolnat2004

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 12, 2005
479
4
I have had this issue for a while. No matter what I try, Flash movies are SLOW on my 1.5GHz PowerBook G4. I have 1.5GB of RAM, Leopard, and the latest Flash (Flash 9). Every video and game that I run in Flash is choppy unless I set the quality to "low". This occurs in Safari, Camino, and the standalone Flash Player application itself.

Does anyone else have this issue, and does anyone know how to solve it?
 
K

kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
Flash for OS X is very badly optimised. It uses a lot of CPU sometimes, and only the latest and greatest CPU's handle the bad optimisation.

Hopefully Adobe will get off their arse and do something about it, and while their at it bring out Shockwave Player for Intel Mac's too.
 
A

Apple Guy

macrumors newbie
Mar 1, 2008
6
0
Is there any way to increase the flash performance? I would love to play some cool flash games
 
boast

boast

macrumors 65816
Nov 12, 2007
1,407
860
Phoenix, USA
I remember I had this problem on linux, but it was due to the new change in flash to use hardware acceleration.
 
JB413

JB413

macrumors newbie
Feb 15, 2008
15
0
I also have this problem. Flash runs slow on my Powerbook G4 1.5 Ghz with 2GB DDR Ram.

I have searched the internet only to find no answers or solutions.
 
A

ArtM16

macrumors newbie
Apr 10, 2010
2
0
I found some workarounds (at least for my 1.5Ghz G4, 1GB ram, with Leopard 10.5.8)

Install a G4 Optimized version of one of these browsers:
Optimized Firefox 3.6.3 for G4
and/or
Optimized Camino 2.0.2 for G4

Install Flash 10.0.4
- many people are saying that Flash 10 is too slow, but you need it to run latest web apps, Hulu, or to watch HD videos - there is little choice here, but its ok because it should still work for most 1Ghz+ powerbooks

Launch any flash video (YouTube, Hulu, etc.).
When the video comes up right click on it, you should see a Flash Plugin Menu. Go into:
- settings: enable hardware acceleration (disable it if it causes problems)
- settings: increase storage limit to 10MB
- quality: set to Medium or Low (depending on your system)

Change your computer power settings:
Make sure power is set to "Normal" or "Better Performance". If set to "Battery Energy Savings" videos can still get a little slow.

My configuration:
1.5Ghz G4, 1GB ram, with Leopard 10.5.8
G4 Optimized Firefox 3.6.3
Flash 10.0.4 (quality medium, enabled hardware acceleration, 10MB storage)
(computer power setting on "normal" when watching videos)

With these settings I can watch any YouTube video or Hulu video with pretty decent frame rate, even in Full Screen!

Hope this helps. I will try to post again once my 2GB ram upgrade comes in.
 
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