Surface Pro 3 and 4k Youtube playback

[jmai87]

Hello! Have a question for everyone.

I have a SP3 base model (i3, 64gb, 4gb, etc). Should I be able to stream 4k Youtube videos without stutter in Chrome? On my iMac I can easily stream 4k/60fps with no problem (75mbps cable line) but on the SP3, 4k is an unwatchable stutter fest, and 60fps videos run fine but causes the SP3 to heat up considerably, and causes the OS to slowdown quite a bit as well.

Am I expecting too much from my meager base SP3?
Also, is Youtube CPU or GPU restricted?

Perhaps it's time to upgrade...

 

[quikah]

Works on my Surface 3, but I don't use chrome. Try Edge/IE. Chrome uses VP9 codec I believe which the Intel display drivers don't have hardware acceleration for. Edge/IE will use h.265 which has acceleration in the display driver. I think there is an extension for chrome to force h.265.

 

[jmai87]

Thanks for the info! If I have to use Edge/IE I'd rather upgrade. I pretty much live in the Google online ecosystem. But yeah I'll try it in Edge tonight and try to narrow it down.

Although part of me wishes it doesn't work so I can justify an SP4. :|

 

[ChronoReverse]

Upgrading probably won't help too much since even Skylake doesn't do full decoding in hardware.

 

[mmntech]

Intel's Skylake and Nvidia's Maxwell only do partial hardware decoding of h.265. I'm fairly sure the same applies for VP9 at 4K. I don't expect full support until Nvidia and AMD roll out their Pascal and Arctic Islands microarchitectures next year.

4K video though is a bit pointless on the Surface Pro (2K display) unless you're hell bent on high image quality.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Intel's Skylake and Nvidia's Maxwell only do partial hardware decoding of h.265.

Not completely true. The GTX 960 and 950 have full hardware decoding.

 

[quikah]

Intel's Skylake and Nvidia's Maxwell only do partial hardware decoding of h.265. I'm fairly sure the same applies for VP9 at 4K. I don't expect full support until Nvidia and AMD roll out their Pascal and Arctic Islands microarchitectures next year.

4K video though is a bit pointless on the Surface Pro (2K display) unless you're hell bent on high image quality.

This is hard to get a straight answer on for some reason. I don't think this is correct. Skylake has 8-bit decode and partial 10-bit decode of HEVC according to wikipedia.

I know my Surface 3 has some sort of hardware decode for HEVC, it can play youtube 4K using very little CPU (output to my 4K TV through the displayport).

VP9 hardware decode seems almost non-existant which makes it kind of useless, not sure why so few are supporting it.

 

[mmntech]

Not completely true. The GTX 960 and 950 have full hardware decoding.

Ah, my source was incorrect then. Carry on. :whiste:

 

[MarkXIX]

I have an SP3 with i5 and I've never had an issue streaming 4k on YouTube. In fact, I'm amazed that it works so smoothly.

However, I rolled back to Windows 8.1 because I found Windows 10 to severely degrade the battery life of my device as well as cause the fan to run almost constantly just surfing web sites.

 

[gorcorps]

Just a question OP, did you upgrade to Win 10? The only reason I ask is that I'm also on Win 10 on my SP3 (it came preinstalled) and Chrome is unstable and has a lot of issues. I don't have problems with chrome on any other computer, but for some reason I'm having lots of problems on the SP3 and I'm leaning towards being a windows 10 problem.

Haven't tried firefox yet.

 

[jmai87]

Just a question OP, did you upgrade to Win 10? The only reason I ask is that I'm also on Win 10 on my SP3 (it came preinstalled) and Chrome is unstable and has a lot of issues. I don't have problems with chrome on any other computer, but for some reason I'm having lots of problems on the SP3 and I'm leaning towards being a windows 10 problem.

Haven't tried firefox yet.

Yeah I did upgrade to 10 as soon as it was available, I had used 8.1 on it for a few months prior. Chrome works just fine for me on 10, although I will admit Edge is a LOT faster and smoother than Chrome on 10. It's almost shocking how quick it was to open and use the few times I used it. I'm still committed to Chrome though since I use it on all my devices, including my Mac and iPhone, and I use extensions not available on Edge.

4K video though is a bit pointless on the Surface Pro (2K display) unless you're hell bent on high image quality.

I use my SP3 in bed a lot for Youtube and streaming services, and 1080p content was never an issue, even at 60fps. I recently upgraded my internet connection to a 75mbps line and can finally watch 4k content on my 27" mac, and so I wanted to test it on the SP3 as well. It may just be a placebo but I did see a small difference in quality watching 2k/4k content on the 2k screen, despite it being a stuttery mess before the internet upgrade.

Upgrading probably won't help too much since even Skylake doesn't do full decoding in hardware.

I read that chrome/Youtube is CPU and not GPU dependent and figured the faster processors in the SP4 would help...

I have an SP3 with i5 and I've never had an issue streaming 4k on YouTube. In fact, I'm amazed that it works so smoothly.

However, I rolled back to Windows 8.1 because I found Windows 10 to severely degrade the battery life of my device as well as cause the fan to run almost constantly just surfing web sites.

My SP3 has always run hot even before my 10 update! Then again I'm constantly running 20 tabs on Chrome lol. Youtube 60fps makes the device EXTRA hot and system bogs down though.

 

[darkswordsman17]

4K Netflix uses HEVC/h.265, while I'm fairly sure that lower quality levels don't, so yeah you probably are seeing improvement (and likely would even at 1080p if they actually streamed content using h.265). You aren't getting the full benefit of it, but frankly you really aren't even with a true 4K display either as it'll be a tradeoff just from being streamed.

Chrome has had various issues off and on for like a year or two. Honestly, I can't believe there isn't a bigger uproar over after all the people that supposedly dropped Firefox for it. But then, while all the browsers have their issues, I think they're all pretty decent, and I'm not sure why people go so crazy over every single thing with regards to Firefox but I hardly hear much about Chrome. Will be interesting to see how Edge evolves and if it pushes the others. I also hope that WP/WM 10 actually puts a dent in the iOS/Android dominance as that will hopefully push Apple to keep opening up and Google to get serious about fixing Android (and by that I don't mean just them fixing the performance issues that they caused in their interim update after they just got done saying how they worked so hard to improve that).