Summary
While testing Supermium on Windows 7 x64 with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 (Kepler), hardware video decoding appears to initialize correctly, but the GPU Video Engine usage remains at 0% in GPU-Z during playback.
The browser reports DXVA initialization and platform video decoding, yet the GPU video engine never shows activity.
Environment
- Supermium: latest available version
- Windows 7 Professional SP1 x64
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 2 GB DDR3 (Kepler)
- NVIDIA Driver: 474.44
- CPU: (insert your CPU model)
- RAM: (insert RAM amount)
Browser Configuration
Hardware acceleration enabled.
Additional Chromium flags tested:
- Override software rendering list
- GPU rasterization enabled
- Zero-copy rasterization enabled
- Accelerated video decode enabled
Test Method
The same YouTube video was tested repeatedly under identical conditions:
- Resolution: 1080p
- Codec: AVC1 (H.264)
- Playback speed: 1x
- Fresh browser session
- Background applications closed
- GPU-Z logging enabled
- HWiNFO64 monitoring enabled
Expected Behavior
GPU-Z should report Video Engine utilization while DXVA hardware decoding is active.
Actual Behavior
GPU-Z reports:
- GPU Load changes normally
- Video Engine Load remains at 0%
The browser reports:
Using D3D9 device for DXVA
Selected VDAVideoDecoder
kIsPlatformVideoDecoder = true
codec = h264
which indicates that hardware decoding is being selected.
However, GPU-Z never shows any Video Engine activity.
Additional Findings
Chromium media logs:
Starting Initialization of DXVAVDA
Using D3D9 device for DXVA
Selected VDAVideoDecoder
kIsPlatformVideoDecoder = true
Supermium successfully selects the platform decoder.
No browser crashes occur.
Playback remains smooth.
The issue appears to affect only Video Engine reporting or the decoding path used on legacy NVIDIA hardware.
Comparison
Firefox correctly reports Video Engine activity on the same machine.
Supermium reports successful hardware decoding but GPU-Z remains at 0%.
Question
Could Supermium be using a DXVA path that does not expose Video Engine usage on Kepler GPUs?
Or is this expected behavior on Windows 7 with legacy NVIDIA drivers?
I can provide:
- chrome://media-internals logs
- GPU-Z logs
- HWiNFO64 logs
- Additional testing if needed.
media-internals.txt
about-gpu-2026-08-02T15-57-44-016Z.txt
GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt
HWiNFO-Supermium.json
Video Decoding Technical Report.txt
Summary
While testing Supermium on Windows 7 x64 with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 (Kepler), hardware video decoding appears to initialize correctly, but the GPU Video Engine usage remains at 0% in GPU-Z during playback.
The browser reports DXVA initialization and platform video decoding, yet the GPU video engine never shows activity.
Environment
Browser Configuration
Hardware acceleration enabled.
Additional Chromium flags tested:
Test Method
The same YouTube video was tested repeatedly under identical conditions:
Expected Behavior
GPU-Z should report Video Engine utilization while DXVA hardware decoding is active.
Actual Behavior
GPU-Z reports:
The browser reports:
which indicates that hardware decoding is being selected.
However, GPU-Z never shows any Video Engine activity.
Additional Findings
Chromium media logs:
Supermium successfully selects the platform decoder.
No browser crashes occur.
Playback remains smooth.
The issue appears to affect only Video Engine reporting or the decoding path used on legacy NVIDIA hardware.
Comparison
Firefox correctly reports Video Engine activity on the same machine.
Supermium reports successful hardware decoding but GPU-Z remains at 0%.
Question
Could Supermium be using a DXVA path that does not expose Video Engine usage on Kepler GPUs?
Or is this expected behavior on Windows 7 with legacy NVIDIA drivers?
I can provide:
media-internals.txt
about-gpu-2026-08-02T15-57-44-016Z.txt
GPU-Z Sensor Log.txt
HWiNFO-Supermium.json
Video Decoding Technical Report.txt