What about Youtube videos on X60 ?

[prog-amateur]

Hello X60 owners,

I am very interested about this laptop because of its small size and also the libreboot compatibility. However, the only thing I am not sure is about its ability to play Youtube videos.
I know that one of the most performant CPU for this model is the Intel Core 2 Duo T7200, 2GHz.

So please, could you confirm if you can play Youtube videos at 720p/1080p and 30fps/60fps without choppy frames ?

This is really important for me (also if it simply can't read anything more than 420p/30fps, do you know a workaround ?). Thank you very much for your kind feedback.

[axur-delmeria]

If you're watching youtube through a web browser, you're sure to have problems with 720p and higher.
The ancient GMA 950 lacks any form of video decode acceleration, so the CPU has to do all the work. Unfortunately, the web browser adds a significant CPU load, further burdening the processor.

Try specialized youtube applications like minitube.

[Arc]

Guessing you plan to run GNU/Linux. On my X60, I have been able to play 1080p videos up to 10Mbps bitrate by using mpv and forcing it to use OpenGL ES with the config file. GMA 950 can use OpenGL ES 2.0. You can play YouTube videos with mpv with the aid of youtube-dl. In browser is a different story, but 720p in Firefox has been alright for me.

Drop these two lines in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

Code: Select all

vo=opengl
opengl-es=yes

I even can watch 720p vids on the X41t, it was pretty nice. Understandably, it does chug battery more than usual, though! If you're on Windows, latest video drivers will probably help, and to remove the overhead of a browser maybe use something like VLC for playing YouTube? I think it can do that.

[axur-delmeria]

Drop these two lines in ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

Code: Select all

vo=opengl
opengl-es=yes

I discovered this exact configuration the other day, after installing Debian 9 in a X60sF Frankenpad with probably the slowest CPU available--a Core Solo U1300 @ 1.06GHz. It managed to play some 720p video despite the anemic clock speed.

[jaspen-meyer]

I am playing 1080p video with an L7400 processor, smtube and the mpv (with the config file listed above).

[linuxlibre]

The above mpv config does not make any noticeable difference with a GMA950 on a 7400 core2duo.
I purchased a BCM970012, h264 accelerator mini-pcie card. Firefox uses ffmpeg in recent versions, which should make YouTube watchable in 1080p.

GMA950 only does OpenGL which can't help with h264 decoding at all, it's for 3D. There is GPU mpeg-2 motion compensation, this does not apply to h264.
Can't answer why mpv has a OpenGL option, perhaps native OpenGL2.1 have features which helps with h264 decoding? (GMA950 is OpenGL 1.4)

1080p @ 3mbps is playing fine though with my 1Ghz cpu frequency. I think it's at 1Ghz locked because I got no battery installed. Perhaps at 2.16Ghz even 10mbps is watchable.

[axur-delmeria]

1080p @ 3mbps is playing fine though with my 1Ghz cpu frequency. I think it's at 1Ghz locked because I got no battery installed. Perhaps at 2.16Ghz even 10mbps is watchable.

Using a 90w charger will allow the X60 to run at full speed even without a battery.