1437520 - GPU clocks pegged at 100% while watching HD Youtube videos

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect, P2)

Description

[Scott Benson]

Attachment: GPU-Z + Youtube screenshot

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:59.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/59.0
Build ID: 20180208193705

Steps to reproduce:

I am running an AMD R9 290 on the newest driver, 18.2.1.  Windows 10 Pro, newest official build.

If I watch a Youtube video in HD resolution (720p and above), my GPU & video memory clock speeds jump to their maxes.  If I pause the video, the clocks stay maxed.  GPU load for HD video is minimal (5% or less).  If I drop down to SD video (480p), the clocks go back down to near-idle.

Chrome does not exhibit this behavior, however Edge does.  In Firefox, YT is playing vp9 codec videos.  The YT interface selected does not change anything (i.e. Material or old-style).  I am using GPU-Z to monitor.  Hardware acceleration is enabled in all browsers.


Actual results:

Youtube maxes out my GPU clocks and causes the GPU to run significantly hotter and use more power than it should.


Expected results:

The GPU should stay near minimum clocks, hovering in low-usage mode, as its utilization is very low.  I am using GPU-Z to monitor.  If I disable hardware acceleration in Firefox and restart, then the GPU clocks go back to normal (low).

Additional conversation: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/7mh4vw/rx480_clock_stuck_on_opening_firefox_youtube_video/

Comment 1

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Thanks for the report. We've seen this on some systems and are investigating.

Dan, another one for your list.

Comment 2

[Up Down]

Hello, similar problem here.
Windows 7 x64, Firefox ESR (52.8), GPU AMD R9 280x (latest drivers, but happened with previous "latest" and so on).

High GPU temps when watching certain videos. These are AVC1/MP4 (for example "avc1.4d401f (135) / mp4a.40.2 (140)" - from Youtube's stats for nerds). It does not have to be Youtube, even the crappiest barely moving "gifs" can make GPU sweat a lot (https://i.imgur.com/IplSOf5.gifv - this seems to be also MP4). Most Youtube videos I checked were VP9/OPUS, while Youtube live streams were AVC1/MP4 causing extra stress, with at least one exception - NASA Live stream, VP9/MP4a (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtU_mdL2vBM) and this played very well.

When you start Firefox, play that MP4 video and close tab, problem usually goes away, although quite slowly (couple of seconds vs immediate effect compared to games), but the more time passes by, tabs opened/closed etc, the less are chances of getting rid by closing just that MP4 video tab. Might need to restart Firefox or even computer.

HWINFO shows that the main suspect is GPU Memory Clock, which jumps to max with MP4 (but not with VP9) and tends to get stuck at max.

Firefox Quantum seems to suffer all this as well.

Comment 3

[Up Down]

Sorry, forgot one thing - In my case video quality didn't matter. If it is AVC1/MP4 results are same whether quality is 1080p or 144p.

Comment 4

[Up Down]

Turns out that this is AMD driver bug. Went down to v15.12 and problem gone.

Comment 5

[Graham Perrin]

Also: 

1400000 - High memory usage in GPU process with many YouTube tabs
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1400000>