1229546 - Latest ATI driver screws up chrome rendering

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Caspy7]

Attachment: back-button.png

I don't know if much can be done with this or not, but a user in IRC reported that their back button is in the shape of an angled square (I'm attaching the screenshot).

Disabling hardware acceleration fixed the issue.
They report that their graphics drivers are fully up to date according to the manufacturer but that this last update from ATI fried some cards (and that people were pissed) - and ATI is crap in general.

They would not file an issue in bugzilla for ideological reasons but did provide the Graphics section of about:support 

    Graphics
    Adapter Description     AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
    Adapter Drivers aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx32 aticfx32 aticfx32 atiumd64 atidxx64 atidxx64 atiumdag atidxx32 atidxx32 atiumdva atiumd6a atitmm64
    Adapter RAM     4095
    Asynchronous Pan/Zoom   none
    Device ID       0x67b1
    Direct2D Enabled        true
    DirectWrite Enabled     true (6.3.9600.17999)
    Driver Date     11-17-2015
    Driver Version  15.300.1025.0
    GPU #2 Active   false
    GPU Accelerated Windows 1/1 Direct3D 11 (OMTC)
    Subsys ID       228e1458
    Supports Hardware H264 Decoding true
    Vendor ID       0x1002
    WebGL Renderer  Google Inc. -- ANGLE (AMD Radeon R9 200 Series Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0)
    windowLayerManagerRemote        true
    AzureCanvasBackend      direct2d 1.1
    AzureContentBackend     direct2d 1.1
    AzureFallbackCanvasBackend      cairo
    AzureSkiaAccelerated    0

Comment 1

[u279076]

Does rolling back the driver to the previous version work around the issue?

Comment 2

[Caspy7]

The user responded that they're not going to try that, but that they were sure it worked before and also stated:
> don't know which version broke it (I update the drivers often)

Comment 3

[u279076]

(In reply to Caspy7 from comment #2)
> The user responded that they're not going to try that, but that they were sure it worked before.

I'm not sure there's anything we can do if the user isn't willing to help troubleshoot the issue. This makes me wonder why'd they bother reporting a problem if they weren't interested in it getting resolved. That aside, I checked the inventory and we don't have anything matching what's indicated in comment 0. We'd have to purchase hardware and cross our fingers that what we bought reproduces the issue.

Since disabling HWA works around this we could probably blacklist but I'm less inclined to recommend this unless it's affecting a significant user population. Turning off HWA wholesale can leave users who aren't experiencing this bug with a poor web experience. Having a SUMO article and/or release notes might be a good idea in the meantime.

As I said, I'm not sure what we can do in this case. Milan, do you have any advice?

Comment 4

[Caspy7]

> I'm not sure there's anything we can do if the user isn't willing to help troubleshoot the issue. This makes me wonder why'd they bother reporting a problem if they weren't interested in it getting resolved. 

They weren't attempting to report the issue per se, but solve their problem and disabling HWA was a sufficient solution in their eyes.