Am I using my netbook wrong?

[Sequences]

I have a Lenovo S205 netbook with the following specs:

• Windows 8.1, most recent upgrades
• AMD drivers are 13.6 I think.
• AMD E450
• 8GB RAM
• 128GB SSD

I wasn't entirely clear on how weak the CPU was when I bought it over 2 years ago, but that's another story. I assumed that this laptop is at least capable of allowing me to do any single task without problems - such as watching Netflix or Amazon video.



Unfortunately, I cannot watch Netflix or Amazon video on this netbook without serious lag and stuttering, rendering video unwatchable. The only place where video is smooth is Youtube. My question is, am I missing something here? I would think streaming video would be super easy on a somewhat modern APU.

 

[Blain]

I've used a Foxconn E350 based SFF watch Amazon videos without any issues.
It did have a SSD, but only 4GB memory running Windows 7.
I connected it via HDMI to watch @ 1080p on an LG TV.

 

[kommisar]

I believe this is caused because netflix uses silverlight5 technology and that technology does not implement hardware acceleration on amd apus. See, for example:

http://connect.microsoft.com/Visual...pear-to-do-hw-acceleration-of-netflix-content

 

[Sequences]

I've used a Foxconn E350 based SFF watch Amazon videos without any issues.
It did have a SSD, but only 4GB memory running Windows 7.
I connected it via HDMI to watch @ 1080p on an LG TV.

Is it laggy or choppy at any point? My experiencewith Amazon videos is usually bad, but there are some good days.

I believe this is caused because netflix uses silverlight5 technology and that technology does not implement hardware acceleration on amd apus. See, for example:

http://connect.microsoft.com/Visual...pear-to-do-hw-acceleration-of-netflix-content

I was not aware of that and will look into it. Thanks.

 

[ninaholic37]

Try the netflix app for Windows 8:
http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/d8d75bb2-c5cd-44f2-8c26-c1d1ae5b13fa

 

[Raduque]

Definitely use the Netflix app on Windows 8+. It's way more efficient than watching through the browser.

 

[sm625]

My question is, am I missing something here? I would think streaming video would be super easy on a somewhat modern APU.

Nope. You're not missing anything. Just your everyday conspiracy between intel (+apple?) and all the major software corporations to deliberately bloat and make obsolete all older/underpowered hardware so that it will need replacing. Of course that will never be proven unless bilderberg notes get leaked. But in the end, conspiracy or just stupidity, you are left with an unusable system. I have one too. I have a penryn CULV notebook that used to run all of it just fine. But now it doesnt. I wont hold my beath waiting for a class action. What I might try is recloning my original HDD I've had sitting on a shelf since 2009 when I bought the machine and replaced the HDD with an SSD. It will have all the old versions of flash, silverlight, etc which may run faster, assuming it lets me run them. I think silverlight forces the bloat on you. Others may not.

 

[John Connor]

I have a Dell Mini 9 and it plays YouTube video well. I haven't tried Hulu or other streaming services, but I heard that what makes a netbook slow isn't the CPU but the MOBO.

 

[s44]

In 2014, you need a Chromebook, not a netbook.

 

[John Connor]

Meh

 

[gmaster456]

Try using the windows 8 netflix app as others stated.

I have an old Pentium D machine sitting here with the following specs

Pentium D 820 2.8Ghz
4gb RAM
AMD Radeon HD5450
Windows 7 Professional SP1

I can't imagine that system being any more powerful than yours and it plays netflix with the latest silverlight and youtube with the latest flash without any problems.

 

[JeffMD]

I have a Lenovo S205 netbook with the following specs:

• Windows 8.1, most recent upgrades
• AMD drivers are 13.6 I think.
• AMD E450
• 8GB RAM
• 128GB SSD

Sequence. this APU is a tad more powerful then the T2300 I had on my last laptop, so I know what you are struggling with. One glaring thing I see is that you are running windows 8. Did the laptop come with this? If not I would probably drop back down to windows 7.

Anyways, I would say the apu probably has enough power to do 1080p video that is fully decoded in hardware. The difficulty is overhead, and videos that cannot be decoded in hardware. The later happens when video get encoded with exotic settings (happens less now, but early h264 movie rips would require a ton of b frames to be in memory to decode the next frame while video cards only did like 7, enough for the bluray spec). The former is still a problem now however.

Youtube has the overhead of the web browser and html 5.0 engine ontop of its video decoder. Netflix is worse in that it is flailing around with the horribly outdated silverlight plugin. Now I have read a while ago they are moving to html5, no idea when that is happening though.

So the apu has just enough power to decode HD streams, but anything over the web browser is going to slow it down even more. BTW your RAM is great and the SSD makes it even better, you are definetly doing all that you can to prevent other processes from stealing away cpu cycles. However the apu has nothing extra to give.

 

[Sequences]

The netbook came with Win7. I put 8 on it because I figured Win8 series will better use bad hardware.

I tried out Netflix app and that works fine, just takes a bit longer than I like during startup but otherwise plays videos fine.

I'm rather surprised how such a product can actually be released into the market and what kind of use case the creators were targeting. It has so little to offer in terms of performance and readily falls over the minute I start "using it wrong".

I think I am at the mercy of codecs and media consumption program overheads. I can do some light java programming without trouble so at least it has that going for it.

Thanks everyone for the input. I guess the performance I am experiencing should not be entirely unexpected.

 

[John Connor]

Try Windows 7???

 

[Bateluer]

Two years ago, the AMD E450 CPU was pretty competitive against its competition, early generation Atoms with Intel GMA IGPs.

Both Intel and AMD have dumped loads of R&D dollars into lowering the TDP of their x86 parts and increasing the performance per watt, so its perfectly reasonable to expect today's CPUs for the netbook segment to run circles around the 2yr old parts and use less power doing it.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

I have a hp amd e350 with the same specs (8gb memory, 120gb ssd, windows 8.1)

netflix works fine for me, i dont have prime so i cant comment.

i wonder if its your wifi, can you connect it via ethernet cable? does it have the same issue?

 

[sm625]

Pentium D 820 2.8Ghz
4gb RAM
AMD Radeon HD5450
Windows 7 Professional SP1

I can't imagine that system being any more powerful than yours and it plays netflix with the latest silverlight and youtube with the latest flash without any problems.

Netflix/silverlight is much friendlier towards netburst. Dont forget that the P4 always had very strong SSE performance, beating athlon 64 in most cases. It jsut suffered in gaming and other branchy type code. But when it came to A/V pentium held its own. Even a single core P4 with HT can run netflix ok, due to sheer brute force.

 

[hoorah]

I have a small laptop with an AMD K325 chip, which I believe is the predecessor to the E-350/E-450 chips, so a little slower.

It has hybrid graphics, but even the low power integrated graphics had support for flash/.264 acceleration, so online video has always worked fine on it.

Lately though it seems like videos have become a lot more choppy, especially HD stuff. Not sure if its higher bandwidth files becoming more popular, flash code getting less efficient, or if I just have background processes 'creep' and need to do a reformat to clear things out. I'm running on an SSD, but if I have onedrive or dropbox scanning for file changes in the background it generally gets pretty slow.

I've been dragging my feet on replacing it because I'd like to go to a tablet, and it seems like most of the Win8 tablets are benchmarking similar numbers to my old small notebook, so not sure I will see that much of an improvement. Hmm.

 

[Sequences]

Two years ago, the AMD E450 CPU was pretty competitive against its competition, early generation Atoms with Intel GMA IGPs.

Both Intel and AMD have dumped loads of R&D dollars into lowering the TDP of their x86 parts and increasing the performance per watt, so its perfectly reasonable to expect today's CPUs for the netbook segment to run circles around the 2yr old parts and use less power doing it.

Two years ago, web pages were generally not as complicated as they are today. I think this has built up slowly over time and my aging hardware simply cannot keep up.

i wonder if its your wifi, can you connect it via ethernet cable? does it have the same issue?

I will give this a try.

I've been dragging my feet on replacing it because I'd like to go to a tablet, and it seems like most of the Win8 tablets are benchmarking similar numbers to my old small notebook, so not sure I will see that much of an improvement. Hmm.

I think I'm in the same boat for this one. Two years (especially on the low performance side) is a lot of time. I can't decide for my next laptop if I should pursue a beefier mobile chip.