1579279 - Firefox uses GPU resources even when minimized(unlike Chrome)

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Graphics, enhancement)

Description

[lugtug]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.132 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a complex website such as discord in Firefox(such as playt1.com/discord)
2. Minimize firefox.
3. Run a game which is GPU intensive
4. Notice the framerate is lower than without firefox running.

Now Repeat the process with Chrome.
Notice the framerate is not lower than without Chrome.

Actual results:

Firefox hogs the GPU even when minimized

Expected results:

Firefox should not be using GPU resources when it is minimized
Chrome does this, and the experience is must better.
I would prefer to use Firefox, but this GPU issue is really obnoxious.

Comment 1

[Yannis Juglaret [:yannis]]

Hello,

Thanks for reporting this issue. I think this description falls into the area that ongoing work in bug 1688997 is trying to address. There was activity in this area recently with bug 1924932 for example. Can you confirm if you still manage to reproduce the issue today in Firefox 136? What about Firefox Nightly 138?

Thank you!

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:bhood, since the bug has recent activity, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[:hello]

I recently made the switch to firefox from chrome and I noticed the same behaviour.The fact this issue has been reported 6 years ago and is still here is a bit well..odd.
Anyways here is what I did and the workaround for it.
I always have a twitch stream in the background and 1 monitor and while I play games I noticed if I alt-tab back into my game while the twitch tab is in focus in the background (even minimised) I noticed the framepacing of the game getting effected.Especially when I move the camera around.I'm sensitive to framepacing so I noticed something was off immediatly.

The working around is to open a second tab (be it empty or a low resource site like reddit for example) and have that focused while the twitch/heavy site is playing on the other tab.This fixes the performance issues if you're playing a game at the same time.As long as the demanding tab is not in focus frames in games wont be effected.
https://imgur.com/a/BNknFqB like so. an example

Like the poster said 6 years ago chrome doesn't have the same issue.With chrome you can just have the twitch stream in focus/out of focus/minimised (whatever) in the background without effecting the frames/framepacing of the games.

Hopefully this helps figuring out what the actual issue is and we can get this issue finally fixed.

Comment 4

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:bhood, since the bug has recent activity, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 5

[:hello]

Issue still exists 6 years later.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1kuevzo/firefox_uses_gpu_resources_even_when/

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:bhood, since the bug has recent activity, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 7

[:hello]

(In reply to BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte] from comment #6)

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:bhood, since the bug has recent activity, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

For anyone who might look this issue up
I always have twitch stream in the background minimized.Every since I started using firefox I noticed the same issue OP is describing when heaving media played even when minimized.
With chrome I could just have the stream minimised in the background and games would be fine.
With firefox if the tab the stream is on is focused (even if minimized) it starts to effect the framepacing of games I play.
One way I found to go around the issue is to open a 2nd empty tab and have that focused while the stream or anything intensive is playing on the other tab.Aslong as you keep the empty tab focused then games wont get effected.
Makes no sense honestly.Minimised should be minimized and there should be no difference if 1 tab is focused or not.Chrome doesn't have this issue.

Comment 8

[:hello]

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ou0dul/comment/h6zn9nn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1

Thread from 4 years ago related to this issue.Tells you how long this bug has been an issue.

Comment 9

[Yannis Juglaret [:yannis]]

Redirecting to :sotaro for evaluation as the assignee of bug 1688997 which I think is related.

Comment 10

[:hello]

Still An issue 1 month later.