CPU Spikes to 100% While Watching Videos

NachoWagon

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Aug 11, 2014
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Hi everyone, I've encountered a problem recently. I use my computer mostly to watch videos, and I don't install updates often. About 2 weeks ago I was watching a Youtube video and got some lag spikes while watching it, I didn't think much of it. A few days later the lag in the video playback was so bad I couldn't watch in fullscreen anymore, I could still watch videos in non-fullscreen but only in 480p, and even then there is still small CPU spikes in playback. This has been happening on both IE and Chrome, and on all sites that play video. Especially on HBO GO where the problem never goes away.

I realized that the problem is my CPU usage. If im sitting on Chrome with two tabs open neither playing video then CPU is around 0%-25%. When I start playing a video in 1 tab by itself it'll be fine for the first 3 minutes with CPU around 60%-75%, After that I hit random CPU spikes of 100% that cause my video to become choppy for about 8 seconds and this problem continues to reoccur every 20 seconds give or take. Some would presume this is a problem with internet connection. The only problem with that is my internet has been great for the past year and a half, even when I test the speeds they're great. I don't know what to do, I've updated video drivers, Flash, Java, nothing fixes it. Thank you for reading all of this, any help is GREATLY appreciated.
 

Eggz

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Youtube and other web-based video is very CPU intensive, and it's not GPU accelerated. What CPU, RAM, and GPU do you have in there?

Enough YouTube videos at 1080p will lag even the fastest CPU made right now.
 

NachoWagon

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Aug 11, 2014
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My computer: Windows 7 HP Pavilion dv5 Notebook PC 64-bit

My processor: AMD Turion(tm) II P540 Dual-Core 2.40 GHz

My RAM: 4.00GB

The computer itself is a few years old, but has been doing the job fine for all that time. 4 weeks ago it would play a youtube video in 720p with 12 tabs open in chrome with no lag in the video.
 

cmi86

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I would try rolling back to an older version of flash and see if that resolves your issue. I remember this happening a few years ago with a buddies PC. Worked great for years and then one day after updates flash was just unbearable. Turns out the flash code was updated pretty heavily and his computer was no longer capable of running it smoothly.

You can also try right clicking on a flash video, settings and select enable hardware acceleration, might help.
 

Eggz

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I just did some testing with Shockwave on YouTube. It's definitely software-based. I tried pulling up this video several times - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6zR2T9vn2c

Three are in 4K and 5 are in 1080p. Last month, that would have completely maxed out my CPU, but it won't go above 40% (usually around 18%), and the video is really choppy. I also keep getting this message saying Shockwave crashed - like a lot! At the same time, it's using about 17 GB of RAM. Not sure what the hell they did over there at Adobe recently, but the Shockwave software definitely has some issues.
 

NachoWagon

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Aug 11, 2014
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I watched the video in the link you provided. I was able to watch 1080p without any interruptions and it stutters at 1440p. But like I said YouTube will run perfectly sometimes, other times it won't play 480p without being choppy. The problem originated on Netflix for me so it was Flash Player and Silverlight. The whole issue is very inconsistent, I don't know what to think at this point.
 

NachoWagon

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Aug 11, 2014
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I've just downloaded malwarebytes and ran a full scan. Alot of malware was detected and promptly removed, system was restarted. YouTube ran fine (as it usually does after a restart) but HBO GO still seems to have the problem Im thinking rolling back to an older version of flash might be in order. Thats the only thing I think could work at this point.

Update: Just did a clean install of Flash Player problem was still there, reverted to an older version of Flash and that didn't work either.

 

d_snypa

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Jan 1, 2015
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Specs: Inspiron 15r, i5-2410 CPU @ 2.30GHz, 8GB RAM, 64-bit Win 7 OS, Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU
I had this same problem. Choppy video playback, also glitches on the desktop (not smooth display) It worked fine until August of 2014-ish. I had to reboot my computer to make the problem temporarily go away. After about 5-6 hrs the problem would return

I've tried all fixes except uninstalling Java because I was having the same problem in Chrome, IE, and Firefox.

Since I've updated to Windows 10, I've gone 6 days with no problems. I'm glad because I almost bought another pc.