293222 - High CPU usage and huge slowdown when viewing GIF files with transparency

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Goi]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3

When viewing pages with GIF files images or backgrounds, CPU usage goes up to
100% when scrolling up/down the page with the scrollbar, or when dragging a
window on top of the Firefox window. This doesn't affect JPEG/PNG images as
much(CPU usage is still pretty high, but no slowdowns/lags), and this doesn't
seem to affect everybody as well.
A few other pages that exhibit this problem:
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/cdewbery/
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
http://img17.paintedover.com/uploads/17/ese.gif

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Load up website with GIF files within page
2.Drag a window(eg task manager) on top of Firefox and/or drag scrollbar up/down
quickly
3. Note high firefox.exe CPU usage and immense slowdown

Actual Results:  
Firefox rendering slows down/lags significantly, CPU usage goes up

Expected Results:  
No slowdowns/low CPU usage

Comment 1

[Goi]

I believe this problem happens with transparent GIF files. I'm not sure if the
example sites that I provided all used transparent GIFs, but I tried taking a
screenshot of my desktop and saving it as a GIF file. It rendered quickly
without any problems. I then selected a portion of the image and pasted it in a
new file and saved it with transparency, and this new file exhibited the problems.

Comment 2

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Slow for me on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.7)
Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
Fast/Acceptable for me on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US;
rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050506 Firefox/1.0+
Not sure exactly what patch fixed this, so Resolved WFM.

Comment 3

[Goi]

What version are you using that has the fix? A nightly? The release 1.0.3 still
has this problem.

Comment 4

[Goi]

OK, this bug is reduced but not fixed.
http://img17.paintedover.com/uploads/17/ese.gif still exhibits the problem with
the latest nightlies

Comment 5

[Recall]

I can confirm this bug, it seems to be related to nvidia cards. A temp
workaround is to turn down video acceleration in Direct X by one notch.

It only appears to affect nVidia cards, but it only affects frefox, no other
browser causes this problem.

This page http://www.powerskater.com/other.htm = 0% CPU usage in any other
browser. In FF it shoots up tp 60-70%

Another example
http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=miscgeneral&Number=5364735
Horrendous cpu usage 100% with FF all other browsers it fine.

This is NOT a isolated case, here is numerous links, I really would like this
fixed. There are alot of nvidia owners out there. Opera, IE etc all work fine.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=298249&highlight=cpu+usage+gif

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=299025&highlight=nvidia

Comment 6

[Mitch Pond]

I never had this bug until I switched my video card from an nvidia GF4 4600 to a
GF 6800. After the switch, it's slow as molasses. I tried switching back, and
had no problems whatsoever. My old card was not a directx 9 card and the new one
is. Could that have anything to do with it? Same driver version, too. Tried with
old and new drivers.

Comment 7

[DarkLuminus]

Attachment: gif

For me this is a Hardware acceleration issue, possibly DX(9) related. With
Hardware acceleration on full the gif i have attached gives +50% CPU usage
(with hyper threading). However with the acceleration one notch down i get
almost no CPU usage. Other non Gecko browsers do not display high CPU use and
it is not seen on Linux (tested on latest Ubuntu) only Win32 and possibly in
conjunction with newer DX versions.

XP SP2 DX9c, P4 3.2, NV 5950 Ultra 77.77
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050822
Firefox/1.0+ ID:2005082206

Don't know about the transparency part so sorry if this is not the right bug.

Comment 8

[Peter Brodersen]

I experience the issue as well, using GeForce 6800 GT.

The bug is also present in an old Mozilla (1.7), so it is not a Firefox only issue.

The hardware acceleration explanation sounds feasible. When checking for
performance in Windows Task Manager, enabling kernel time, I mainly see high
kernel usage.

Comment 9

[Recall]

Nvidia finally fixed the gif problem! 81.84 drivers have dropped the cpu usage
down to 4-5%

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=326295

Comment 10

[DarkLuminus]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Nvidia finally fixed the gif problem! 81.84 drivers have dropped the cpu usage
> down to 4-5%
> 
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=326295

I can confirm the 81.82 and 81.84 drivers (likely all 80xx drivers) gives no or
low CPU usage on the before problem gif's.

I have no idea but the new Extension NV_packed_depth_stencil might have
something to do with it ?.

81.84_ForceWare_Release_Notes
http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/81.84/81.84_ForceWare_Release_Notes.pdf

packed_depth_stencil
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/NV/packed_depth_stencil.txt

Comment 11

[Goi]

I can also confirm this with 81.84 and my 6800GT

Comment 12

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

WFM per previous comments

Comment 13

[Kevin Brosnan]

*** Bug 311694 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Uli Stärk]

Attachment: Screenshot of Windows Task Manager

Comment 15

[Uli Stärk]

I can confirm this bug. I've attatched the screenshot "while_playing.PNG" there you can see how Firefox kills itself.

The memory usage will rise to max and then either the broser crashes, or the memory suddenly falls back up normal and Firefox continues playing the gif.

I'm surprised that this bug has the res works 4 me ... this IS a serious bug. Maybe there is a potential behind.

Please also check bug #300141, its the same issue.

Comment 16

[Stebs]

(In reply to comment #14)
> Created an attachment (id=206404) [edit]
> Screenshot of Windows Task Manager
> 
Did you read the whole Bug?
This is now WORKSFORME because old Nvidia Drivers were the culprit, you have to use 81.84 Drivers or newer. With these, I have 0-1% CPU with the same Skater-gif (and ~20% with IrfanView).
Do you use a Laptop (saw Bluetooth in Screenshot) with Nvidia Graphics?, then sometimes the "official" Drivers are quite old, but you should be able to find up-to-date Drivers that work with your Laptop (often 3rd Party Releases like "NGO" etc.)

Comment 17

[Uli Stärk]

I've an Intel onboard graphics chip - so this can't be an nVidia driver issue.

No, I didnt read the whole bug carefully, I must admit. I just saw that there are several posts regarding nvidia drivers, but the origin of this bug, has got nothing to do with this driver i think.