Why is the flagship Intel NUC Hades Canyon nettop (HVK) not coping with 4K60P video on YouTube?!

[VCoba]

I have an Intel NUC Hades Canyon (HVK). I open a 4K 60fps video in Chrome and I see a bunch of dropped frames. The playback does not go as smoothly as possible. But why? Is there really not enough performance for this in such a powerful gaming nettop?

I asked to check another person who has a regular PC with an AMD Radeon HD 7970 video card (this video card was released back in 2011). He has no such problems. He has such videos played in Chrome as smoothly as possible and without a single dropped frame.

Link to video for the test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RsmsV2BYPY

[VCoba]

Someone with the same nettop, please check out how 4K60P videos are played in Chrome.

[JMäen]

Tried it out. I can confirm that playing that video in 4K60P in Chrome does indeed  result in dropped frames. However, I first played it via Firefox and saw little to no frame drops (it started dropping some frames when I started using other apps at the same time). So for me, there was a significant performance difference between Chrome and Firefox. As far as my Hades Canyon, I've 16 gigs of Ram, the latest Radeon drivers from AMD's website and I've turned Turbo Boost off via BIOS (to get zero fan noise in regular use).

[VCoba]

This is really sad. Only one thing is unclear, is Hades Canyon so weak or the guys from Intel just screwed up somewhere?

Now I would like to hear a response from an Intel representative.

[VCoba · Accepted solution]

I found a workaround for this problem for Chrome!
1. Turn on maximum performance in the system settings (see attachment).
2. Hide all windows under the main window.
3. As soon as the 4K60p video starts playing, immediately move the mouse cursor to the lower left corner to hide the semi-transparent YouTube interface.

In this video, I have only 5 dropped frames and perfectly smooth playback:

[VCoba]

Considering that AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH does not support VP9 hardware decoding, the entire load during video playback falls on the CPU. Is it really not enough 4 cores and 8 threads for this??? O__O

The person who has no problem with this has an AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card and an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor.

[Alberto_Sykes]

VCoba, Thank you for posting in the Intel® Communities Support.

In reference to your question, the Intel® NUC Kit NUC8i7HVK works with Radeon™ RX Vega M GH Graphics and as you can see in the link below is fully supports 4K at 60Hz:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/130409/intel-core-i7-8809g-processor-with-radeon-rx-vega-m-gh-graphics-8m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html

In order to rule out a possible problem related to streaming videos or a specific web browser, could you please locally download 1 of the following 3 videos showing on the link below and test them? 

Also, please test different browsers like Edge or Firefox.

Once you get the chance, please let us know the outcome of running them:

https://jell.yfish.us/ 

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[VCoba]

As far as I know, AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics card does not support VP9 hardware video acceleration. What is listed on this page only indicates which monitor with which maximum resolution is supported by this video card. In addition, the person above has already confirmed this problem in the Intel NUC Hades Canyon. This suggests that this problem is observed not only with me.

Now about web browsers. Edge is already based on Chromium, so it is not much different from Google's web browser. In Firefox, in 99% of cases, this problem is not present. The most important thing is not to run any resource-intensive applications in the background during video playback. Here's the proof:
271 dropped frames in Chrome: https://imgur.com/n3olKRn
0 dropped frames in Firefox: https://imgur.com/tY4hXfI

Tested on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVe8CCVfIbc

And why do you give a screenshot of the video in Full HD when I have problems with 4K with 60 FPS? o__O

[VCoba]

The question is, why does the flagship nettop, which performs well with modern AAA games in Full HD resolution, do so poorly with 4K60p video on YouTube? O_O What the hell???

[powerarmour]

@VCoba 

I drop only 3 frames in this video at 4k60 with my HVK running w/Chrome on Linux, so not too big of a deal tbh.

[Alberto_Sykes]

VCoba, Thank you very much for providing that information.

In order to provide the most accurate assistance and to respond to your question, we will do further research on this matter, for us to be able to do that, please provide the SSU report so we can verify further details about the components in your platform, please check all the options in the report including the one that says "3rd party software logs":

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows-?product=91600

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[VCoba]

Done! See Attachment.

And yes, some 4K60p videos have dropped frames in Firefox too

Firefox (45 dropped frames https://i.imgur.com/hxPfIFz.jpg

Chrome (212 dropped frames https://i.imgur.com/gFbbTvA.jpg

Link to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB-HEgFqeHM

[VCoba]

Yes, I forgot to add that all these problems occur taking into account the fact that I turned off protection against Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities, which also makes its own, rather serious contribution to the overall performance of the system.

[powerarmour]

@VCoba I wouldn't advise disabling the CPU mitigations for the sake of video playback IMHO.

The issue here is pretty clear, the Polaris 22/Vega M GPU in the Hades Canyon NUC's only supports partial VP9 acceleration, however the Intel IGP does, so it's possible you can just set that as your default preference (I think Display Settings/Graphics Settings/Graphics performance preference in Windows?) and set the browser as the app, that should work (provided you've enabled the IGP in the BIOS, I normally disable mine). You could also force another codec such as H.264 in Chrome (use the 
h264ify extension) which should have full acceleration.

Obviously in Linux this is less of an issue, as the CPU side is more performant anyway (faster scheduler/threading) so you can software decode most things on the desktop with the i7-8809G, even AV1 now.

[VCoba]

Intel HD Graphics does not work with Intel NUC Hades Canyon! All 6 outputs only work with AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH.

The h264ify extension does not support 4K video. Plus, it doesn't work on all videos, so it's not an option.

[VCoba]

By the way, the new MacBook Air with the M1 chip doesn't have such problems: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decoding.2269938/post-29490742

[powerarmour]

@VCoba Not strictly true, you can encode/decode and compute with the Intel IGP fine, the application just has to be manually switched to that GPU that's all.

[Alberto_Sykes]

VCoba, Thank you very much for providing the SSU report. 

powerarmour, Thank you very much as well for sharing your comments with the Intel® Communities support.

We will do now further research on this matter, as soon as I get any updates I will post all the details on this thread.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[VCoba]

Okay, I'll wait for an answer. As a last resort, I can try to overclock the processor through the BIOS, but for this I need instructions.

[powerarmour]

Actually, just to show it can be done, I've enabled the Intel IGP, enabled video decode in Chrome, and forced the IGP to decode via PRIME (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME)

Only 1 dropped frame now (which is only on initial startup), the rest is VP9 decoded in hardware via the IGP:

[VCoba]

I am using Windows 10 Home.