4K playback issues, need help

[geoto]

Hello guys,

I'm experiencing occasional stutter when watching 4K videos both on YouTube and from my SSD, with MPC-HC. On YouTube (Chrome), I've been dropping frames on heavier videos like 4K/60P, but the ones that are 4K/24/30P seem to be perfect, maybe 1 frame drop from time to time, otherwise zero. The 60FPS ones are a different story.

My CPU is i7 6700K, and from what I've read from Intel and other sites, it supports smooth playback at 4K and 60 frames per second. My internet connection is also pretty good ~60-80mbps, depends. I also want to note that I'm using the integrated graphics card on the CPU, as I do not have a dedicated one.

For days I've been trying to find out why this happens and I've gotten nowhere. I opened Task Manager 5 minutes ago, and I noticed that every time there's frame drops, my CPU usage spikes up. Please, take a look at this screenshot:

http://postimg.org/image/r9pnl6f4v/full/

I guess I'm having some progress on the issue. But the question is - why does this happen? Isn't the CPU powerful enough to play 4K/60P buttery smooth? Why the spikes? Does the iGPU have any role in decoding? Isn't the 6700K solely responsible? A few quick notes - all system drivers updated, latest bios, no overclocks, everything's stock, no other tabs in Chrome, no other apps running, @ High Performance, CPU temps are perfect ( low 20s, even 18-19c, when Idle - when watching those videos - no more than 50-60c). Tried other browsers - no change. Tried flash - worse.

I hope that someone can help out. 

Thanks in advance!

G
 

[Imakuni]

2 minutes ago, geoto said:

Hello guys,

I'm experiencing occasional stutter when watching 4K videos both on YouTube and from my SSD, with MPC-HC. On YouTube (Chrome), I've been dropping frames on heavier videos like 4K/60P, but the ones that are 4K/24/30P seem to be perfect, maybe 1 frame drop from time to time, otherwise zero. The 60FPS ones are a different story.

My CPU is i7 6700K, and from what I've read from Intel and other sites, it supports smooth playback at 4K and 60 frames per second. My internet connection is also pretty good ~60-80mbps, depends. I also want to note that I'm using the integrated graphics card on the CPU, as I do not have a dedicated one.

For days I've been trying to find out why this happens and I've gotten nowhere. I opened Task Manager 5 minutes ago, and I noticed that every time there's frame drops, my CPU usage spikes up. Please, take a look at this screenshot:

http://postimg.org/image/r9pnl6f4v/full/

I guess I'm having some progress on the issue. But the question is - why does this happen? Isn't the CPU powerful enough to play 4K/60P buttery smooth? Why the spikes? Does the iGPU have any role in decoding? Isn't the 6700K solely responsible? A few quick notes - all system drivers updated, latest bios, no overclocks, everything's stock, no other tabs in Chrome, no other apps running, @ High Performance, CPU temps are perfect ( low 20s, even 18-19c, when Idle - when watching those videos - no more than 50-60c). Tried other browsers - no change. Tried flash - worse.

I hope that someone can help out. 

Thanks in advance!

G
 

Try disabling Hardware Acceleration. Under chrome, Settings -> Show Advanced -> System -> Uncheck "Use Hardware Acceleration..."

[geoto]

@Imakuni - Just tried it. Much much worse. Dropping loads of frames every 2 seconds. : (

EDIT:

I just noticed that even on videos that are 720/1080 @ 60FPS it stills drops a lot of frames, even though CPU usage is like 10-15%... I even tried switching the codec - from VP9 to MP4/VC1 (through a YouTube extension), and it still drops frames. So it mustn't be the codec either. It doesn't matter if it's full screen or not. I guess there's ALSO a problem with the videos being 60 frames per second. I just ran a 4K@30P video for 40 minutes on repeat and there wasn't a single frame drop, so yeah.. what the hell.

Can anyone clarify if the 6700K isn't powerful enough to play 4K60P perfectly (by itself)? Maybe I need a dedicated graphics card too, in order to play those video smoothly? Because if the iGPU is helping, which I assume it is, since Hardware Acceleration is enabled (and when I disabled it, clips got completely unwatchable).. this should mean that it's not strong enough to help out the CPU. Which leads to the conclusion (if that's true) that you definitely need a dedicated graphics card for stutter-free playback and no dropped frames, especially at 60P. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Here's a live example -