1354008 - AMD E-450 blacklisted for no reason + cannot bypass/ignore blacklist

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Graphics, defect, P3)

Description

[RejZoR]

Attachment: Firefox_GPU_Forced.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Hardware acceleration of webpages and H.264 (Youtube) is entirely disabled because AMD E-450 APU is blacklisted as "problematic" GPU. I have tried to bypass it using this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers to no avail. It keeps on saying driver and GPU are blacklisted under Troubleshooting-GPU section and everything from webpages to Youtube is lagging like crazy, making it entirely unusable because GPU acceleration doesn't work at all in Firefox even though GPU has plenty enough grunt to play even 1080p60 videos smoothly using HW acceleration.


Actual results:

Webpages and Youtube are entirely useless because it all runs on CPU instead of GPU, lagging like crazy, making even playback of 480p videos next to impossible. In Chrome however, Youtube at 1080p60 presents no problem to this GPU.


Expected results:

AMD E-450 APU is unjustly blacklisted because a) I NEVER EVER had any problems for years with it be it crashes, lags or whatever using HW acceleration until you people disabled it without actually ever using this GPU to browse with Firefox. I have on the other hand and it worked perfectly fine. Secondly, when I force enable it in Google Chrome (they must be using same stupid blacklist), a) webpages work absolutely smoothly and a lot faster b) Youtube is playable absolutely smoothly even at 1080p60! All this without a single issue, crash or any kind of problem. I don't know who just threw this GPU on blacklist and forgot about it entirely, but don't tell me this GPU or drivers are problematic because they just aren't. Hardware acceleration works fine with it on Windows 10 Pro 64bit in Chrome with drivers that come from Windows Update.

Secondly, why is NONE of the settings (force-enable) in about:config able to bypass this idiocy in Firefox? In Chrome I was able to force enable ALL hardware acceleration capabilities with just few clicks in chrome://flags. But I don't like Chrome, I want to use Firefox which is just better with more configurable interface and better quality add-ons. But none of the settings to bypass/ignore the GPU blacklist even work.

So, what gives? Are you going to remove AMD E-450 APU from the GPU blacklist or make the controls to bypass it actually functional? I'm certainly not spending 400 € for new laptop just because someone decided to ruin perfectly good laptop with this stupid GPU blacklist.

AMD E-450 APU (with AMD HD6320 GPU)
8GB RAM
128 GB SSD
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Comment 1

[RejZoR]

So, Firefox 53 removed the message about blacklisted GPU/driver and Youtube still runs like garbage because blacklist is still in action aka no HW acceleration. C'mon Mozilla, who are you kidding at this point? You think hiding the blacklisting message in Troubleshooting page will stop me from knowing you're still blacklisting the GPU? Entirely unnecessarily may I add. Using Chrome with forced HW acceleration on "problematic" E-450 APU without a single hang, lockup or crash. Blacklisting it is just stupid.

Comment 2

[RejZoR]

C'mon, can someone bloody address this thing? I don't want to use Opera or Chrome (or anything based on Chromium) because it's all UX garbage. Firefox is good, but this GPU acceleration blocking is absurd. And the fact ignoring it doesn't work at all unlike in Chrome based browsers.

Comment 3

[Eric]

I don't have access to a copy of your hardware, so I can't reproduce your bug for myself.  It would be helpful for others (hopefully someone who also has an E-450 APU that they can do repros on) to see some more system information from your blacklisting bug.  On the Blocked Graphics Drivers wiki page you listed above, there is a way to spoof Firefox into reporting graphics driver information:

"On Windows, you can also spoof your graphics system information to help debug driver blacklisting issues (see bug 604771):
Create spoofed-firefox.bat in the installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox)
Set the new values of spoofed variables ending with a command to launch Firefox:
SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_WINDOWS_VERSION=60001
SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_VENDOR_ID=0x8086
SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_DEVICE_ID=0x0046
SET MOZ_GFX_SPOOF_DRIVER_VERSION=8.15.10.2302
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p -no-remote
Double-click spoofed-firefox.bat and create a profile if required
Click the Firefox button, then select Help, finally Troubleshooting Information and check the Graphics section."

If it's at all possible for you to perform this spoof, please reply with as much of that system information as you can.  Since I can't directly re-create this bug, the information from this spoof should help either myself or someone else on Bugzilla to duplicate and/or confirm the bug and get it resolved.

Comment 4

[mirh]

This is a duplicate of bug 1335925 (where you can also find how-to disable the thing)

And very likely all of this wasn't a random fancy. Bug 772330 looks as bad as it might be technically possible. 
For as much, I still haven't personally been able to reproduce the issue (even after downgrading to an unpatched BIOS), so I was wary to further add comments.

Comment 5

[hamtyler67]

Hello, I face the same issue, with the AMD E-450 Radeon 6320. 
I am not sure to understand, did you find any solution ? 

It is really frustrating, blacklisting this APU family leads to stutter any webpage and videos too (even low quality video stutter). Please keep in mind that it is not easy to buy a new laptop, not everybody has the budget for that. Firefox is used in many countries where salary are not very high. 

I don't have any computing knowledge but I am ready to cooperate and test anything if it can help people like me to use again Firefox to browse and watch videos smoothly. Maybe we can work to disable the GPU blacklisting or something else ?

Please think also about us, but also about environment (why to upgrade a laptop just for web browsing if this laptop is able to handle hardware acceleration ?) and take a few time to help. 
Thank you so much for your kind help.

Comment 6

[mirh]

TL;DR (if you cannot bear to follow what I wrote in bug 1335925)
If you are on linux, get either kernel ≥3.16.52, ≥4.13.11, or everything after v4.14-rc7 and you are fine. 
If not any with firefox (that still lacks accelerated video decoding), at least with chromium-vaapi (soon® to become public, hopefully). 

If you are on Windows... It depends. 
Putting aside I own one of their relevant laptops, of all the OEMs I checked, only ASUS (and asrock) seemed to have ever released fixed BIOS. 
I hope for you to be wrong, but if your model hasn't one... sluggishness would really be the last of my worries if I were you.

Comment 7

[hamtyler67]

Thank you very much for your feedback. 
I am running Xubuntu 17.10 with kernel 4.13.0.32, so I have installed ukuu (an app allowing me to upgrade kernel), and I am installing the latest one, kernel 4.15. 
I will keep you informed about my test.

Comment 8

[mirh]

In that case, I think this issue has nothing to do with you anymore. 
Just force UI acceleration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks#Enable_OpenGL_Off-Main-Thread_Compositing_.28OMTC.29
And wait for VA-API decoding to be added https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_acceleration#Software

Comment 9

[hamtyler67]

Thank you Mirh, I really appreciate your support.  

Just for feedback (as promised), I have installed several kernels, and here are the results (Firefox 58 64bits) : 

- 4.15 : video stuttering at 1080p 60fps, 720p 60fps. Libre / Proprietary (AMD Microcode) drivers give the same result. Wifi not supported. 
- 4.14.11 : video stuttering at 1080p 60fps, 720p 60fps. Libre / Proprietary (AMD Microcode) drivers give the same result. Wifi not supported. 
- 4.13.11 : video stuttering at 1080p 60fps, 720p 60fps. Libre / Proprietary (AMD Microcode) drivers give the same result. Wifi supported. 

I have kept kernel 4.13.11 because it is the only one with Wifi support. I have forced UI acceleration following your advise, with no improvement, unfortunately. 

About VA-API, you say that I should wait for it to be added. Please, is there any way to add it manually ? 
I ask this because the discussion about VA-API has started 2 years ago, and last update is 2 months ago (if we can call it update) : 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1210726

Thank you again for your help

Comment 10

[mirh]

Video decoding on linux is only currently available on chromium-vaapi, nothing *else* you can do atm, sorry. 

Fixed kernel is just for you to be sure not to experience crashes, or god only knows what. It's not supposed to impact performance.

Comment 11

[hamtyler67]

Hello, I can confirm the following test on a Youtube 1080p 60FPS video :

1. Windows 10, Edge : works flawlessly
2. Windows 10, Firefox : stuttering
3. Linux kernel 5.xxx (Debian based distribution / Fedora), Firefox : stuttering

QUESTION: if the team gives this bug as P3 priority, is there any way to, at least, tell me where should I check in Firefox config to fix it manually ?

We are talking about a 64 bit CPU, it is still supported by Linux / Windows distributions. Please, could you help us ? We do not want to use Chromium/Edge browsers. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Comment 12

[hamtyler67]

Hello, any reply ?

I see the original reason why you have blocked this CPU (mainly due to his GPU) : on bug 840161

Also, on the Wiki, it is also mentioned "Firefox crashes multiple times per day".

But, please understand : blocking was talking about Firefox 19... Yes, Firefox 19 and today I hope that this CPU can handle Firefox with all the improvement made since all that time (~ 7 years).

Please, let me insist : could you tell us how to unblock this CPU ? Chromium/Edge work fine, why not Firefox ? Please, let's free this CPU after 7 years of injustice ! thank you