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Vindictus flash ads on the main page
MechMantis
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
These just kill my performance, especially when two of them show up on the page at the same time.
The plugin-container.exe process pegs at 50-60%, which is symptomatic of Flash taking one of my two cores and EATING IT ALIVE. It gets bad enough that I need to kill Firefox and restart it to do anything (basic browser buttons like "reload" and "back" take 20-30 seconds to register), hoping I don't get two Vindictus ads again.
For reference, running WinXP Pro with an Athlon64 X2 4600+ with two gig of RAM.
The plugin-container.exe process pegs at 50-60%, which is symptomatic of Flash taking one of my two cores and EATING IT ALIVE. It gets bad enough that I need to kill Firefox and restart it to do anything (basic browser buttons like "reload" and "back" take 20-30 seconds to register), hoping I don't get two Vindictus ads again.
For reference, running WinXP Pro with an Athlon64 X2 4600+ with two gig of RAM.
MechMantis on
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I went the "completely remove Flash from my system and never worry about it again" route, myself.
Flash performance is such a wildcard, I often don't notice bad creatives until someone says something. I'll have a talk with the Vindictus creative team to see if we can reduce the CPU overhead.
It's NoScript you're thinking of. It allows you to block or allow assets on a page by each source. Problem in this case is that while the ad is made by the Vindictus people, it doesn't mean the ads are being loaded from their host - their ads are probably lumped in to load from the same place all the other PA ads are located.
Try Flashblock. It displays a little play button you have to click before flash plays, and you can specify a whitelist for sites as well.
This one's caused by two of the new Magic: The Gathering ads being played in both banner ad spots during their "Burn?" segment. Same hardware as before, so I have no idea what's up.
Just one is a-okay, but when two of them show up and are playing the super-processor intensive section at the exact same time, it gets problematic.
Maybe find some way to keep two of the same ad playing at the same time?
It almost looks as if they're generating the flames dynamically... they probably should convert it to a flv if they want to retain the effect.
I'm hoping there was no sacking involved.
edit: still not getting it, so I guess I have to wait until whatever CDN server I'm getting catches up.
Also I've noticed that all of their (WotC) ads have some kind of fire-like effect.
The RedBox one has blue fire around the lich or whatever the crap that thing is, which also eats my CPU.
And the other Magic one has only a small amount of green fire, but it still causes some minor slowdown.
The worst effect of this is a bit of slowdown in the ads themselves, but it's definitely weird.
PROTIP:
Don't use flash for hi-resolution particle effects.
By the way, I am still getting the CPU chewing fire ad and can't get the new poison one to show up at all. Am I cached to hell or is there a direct link we can view?
It looks like it is back in the rotation. I'll send a few emails around.
UPDATE: It is now pulled. The green particle effect ad still exists, but it seems to be less cpu intensive than the fire and lightning campaign.
I wouldn't advise this as a long term solution, but I'm glad your browser stopped crashing.
EDIT: Heck, even just the Where Will You Stand? ad adds horrible waits to scroll times.