Flash hardware acceleration and optimus.

I have recently noticed that my battery drains much quicker when watching flash video or leaving a tab open with a flash video paused etc. When I checked the Nvidia GPU Activity tray icon, it said it's being used by 1 program, and shows the Google Chrome logo with a little video icon on it. I realized this is because Flash 10.1 and my 260.99 drivers support hardware acceleration so playing flash video turns on the 335m. I'm not sure if turning off hardware acceleration in flash is the right way to fix this, I don't mind hardware acceleration just when I'm on battery I'd rather use the Intel Graphics especially since it can handle flash no problem, is there a way to keep hardware acceleration on but using the Intel Graphics, or better yet only when I'm on battery? Does the Intel IGP even support hardware acceleration?

 

I can't speak to Chrome specifically, but yes you're right in that it's completely unnecessary for the 335 to be used for Flash acceleration. The Intel HD is more than capable. I fixed this for firefox by adding plugin-container.exe to the white list and forcing it to the IGP so now nothing in my browser sessions will cause the 335 to kick in. I'm not sure if there's something similar you can do with Chrome.

 

Added chrome and flash to the Nvidia control panel and forced it to the Intel Integrated Graphics and it seemed to work, not sure which one fixed it, but I realized it wasn't working before because I forgot to restart chrome.

 

I am using Chrome and have a similar issue. Where did you find the Flash exe file, I am having trouble locating it in order to add it to my whitelist. Thanks in advance!

 

Stain run chrome and a flash program. You can ctrl-alt-delete go to the process and it will give you a name and destination when you click open file location.

 

Thanks for the reply. I had tried that and was unable to locate the flash process (although I had a whole bunch of processes going at the time). I see Chrome.exe but did not see anything with Flash in the name. I'll try again when I am back at home later tonight.

I could just whitelist Chrome and see if that helps, but I was hoping to just whitelist Flash (although I cannot think of a situation where my browser would require the Nvidia card, I still was hoping to just whitelist Flash).

Thanks,
Stain

 

Hmmm, yeah. No love.

Using my work laptop and watching a youtube video (which causes the M11xR2 to fire up the Nvidia card), I do not see any flash processes. The only one that opens is another Chrome.exe process. I guess I'll have to try whitelisting Chrome.exe, although I am still curious how Aerotype was able to whitelist Flash.

Cheers,
stain

 

Give Process Explorer a shot. It can sometimes help reveal process associations that aren't evident with Task Manager.

 

Thanks Slickie. Using Process Explorer I found the Flash process when using Internet Explorer. It was buried well within the Wininit.exe process. I did not find the process when running flash through Chrome, but I'll whitelist the Flash exe that shows up with Internet Explorer and see if that exe carries over to Chrome when I am home later tonight.

It looks like the Flash exe has a filename specific to its version (Flash Util 101_ActiveX.exe). I guess that means I'll have to add each new version of flash to the whitelist as they are released.

Thanks again! I'll report back how it works.

Stain

 

Whitelisting chrome.exe for integrated graphics encompasses Flash as well. Just tried with a youtube vid.