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A
Anonymous
August 13, 2010
Question

Why is Flash such a performance hog?

  • August 13, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 670 views

Youtube videos, where the music plays and the image is a still picture uses 95% of my CPU.

(AMD K6 3+  @ 550MHZ).  It's an audio file to all intents and purposes - the video is static.

Playing an MP3 in Winamp uses only 3% of the CPU.

What on earth is Flash doing with all those CPU cycles?

It really is a detestable piece of software.

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    1 reply

    T
    theangel28
    Known Participant
    August 13, 2010

    I have the same problem mate.

    I use Ubuntu and Flash Player and iPlayer Desktop (which uses Adobe Air) - these Adobe programs guzzle resources like a powerful vacuum cleaner.  Every single other installed program runs perfectly, not a single problem with the other programs.  Same as you, I find the CPU usage is sky-high for Flash.

    Thankfully, Linux is faster than Windows, so even when the Adobe stuff is eating up resources, the rest of Linux is still responsive, just whatever is using Flash does slow down a bit.

    Are you using the latest version of Flash player?

    If you are a home user, you can use something called "Secunia personal software inspector" from secunia.com to keep all the installed programs up to date (something Linux does but Windows does not) - it will make sure you always have the latest version of Flash player every time it is released, which is regularly - as it has more security holes than a sieve!!

    A
    Anonymous
    August 13, 2010

    Well I've got an old Windows 2000 box that I've yet to

    upgrade. I'm not running the new version, and this is the

    reason:

    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/665140?tstart=30

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