02-26-2009, 01:19 AM

I've searched all over the internet but have yet to come across an answer. I love my Mac, but why is it that when I play a video in a web browser on my MacBook, (be it Flash, QuickTime, etc.) my CPU usage is anywhere from 60-80%, yet when I play the same video on a laptop running Windows, the CPU usage is always in the single digits?

I realize that video takes a toll on the CPU with integrated video cards, but it doesn't seem to have the same effect on Windows based laptops with integrated video cards. Is the CPU usage possibly just calculated differently, or is the Mac architecture somehow just really inefficient at this?

Thanks in advance,
Mike.

02-26-2009, 03:41 AM

I wouldn't know, but maybe Windows offloads the decoding, if any, to hardware accelerators which come with the GPU. Mac OS is not the best in that(using hardware acceleration), or so I have heard.

What's the browser you're using anyway?

02-26-2009, 08:53 AM

Thanks for the reply! I've tried monitoring this using both Firefox and Safari.

Mike.