Closed Bug 554064 Opened 15 years ago Closed 15 years ago

[DirectWrite] Scrolling with mouse wheel frequently becomes 'choppy'.

Categories

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

x86_64
Windows 7
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: streetwolf52, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a4pre) Gecko/20100322 Minefield/3.7a4pre Firefox/3.6 Build Identifier: 20100322040139 Any page that I am currently viewing might start to scroll in a choppy manner even though I have smooth scrolling enabled. Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Go to different web pages and see what happens when mouse scrolling. 2. 3. Actual Results: Random sites do not always scroll smoothly. Expected Results: All sites should scroll smoothly. I believe this might be a regression as I recall not having this problem 3-4 weeks ago. I tried safemode, new profile, d2d/dw on/off. Most of the time I can get the page to scroll smoothly by doing little things like bringing up the W7 taskbar, hovering over the W7 taskbar preview, scrolling for a short time on the page. Sometimes it will just correct itself. Sometimes the page will go from smooth to choppy for no apparent reason. It almost seems that smooth scrolling is being disabled for very brief periods of time. Scrolling outside of FF is fine btw.
Version: unspecified → Trunk
Summary: Scrolling with mouse wheel becomes frequently becomes 'choppy'. → Scrolling with mouse wheel frequently becomes 'choppy'.
Correction... It's not reproducible sometimes but happens frequently.
A site that is very often affected is msnbc.com. I was just there and scrolling was fine. I paused for a moment to read something on the page and scrolling became choppy.
It might be that this mainly, if not always, happens when my FF window is maximized. I've been running with a smaller window and so far the 'choppiness' seems to have gone away. Not 100% sure at this time. I run at 1920x1200 btw if that makes a difference.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.3a4pre) Gecko/20100321 Minefield/3.7a4pre Works fine for me I think.. are you zooming in?
I zoom text but not full page zoom. My guess this is a Windows 7 thing. I see you are on Vista
Appears problem only happens when I have DirectWrite/D2D enabled. Another consequence is that I intermittently lose menu separators.
Blocks: 527707
Component: General → Graphics
Summary: Scrolling with mouse wheel frequently becomes 'choppy'. → [DirectWrite] Scrolling with mouse wheel frequently becomes 'choppy'.
What kind of hardware are you on?
Intel Core i7 Quad 920 @ 4.0 Ghz., 9 GB Triple Channel RAM, nVidia GTX260 (896 MB), Samsung 24" WS LCD, OCZ Agility-EX SSD, Windows 7 x64.
If you want to talk i'll be on #gfx.
QA Contact: general → thebes
It appears that Flash is somehow involved in my choppy scrolling when dw is enabled. Happens more frequently if I was on a page using Flash.
And it seems to happen when FF is in a maximized window or in full screen mode.
I've just discovered that if I use a Windows 7 Basic Theme as opposed to an Aero theme my scrolling problem goes away. Also some other 'glitches' also disappear like missing separator lines in menus and other visual anomalies. I can even run with d2d/dw enabled with none of the problems I have when using an Aero theme. I've always felt that Aero was causing these problems for me. I was under the impression that the taskbar while in Aero might be the culprit. As you know the Win7 taskbar is a different animal when in Aero mode. When I turn Aero back on all my problems return. Is 3.7 with Aero still a work in progress? Is there a bug report that might address these issues in more general terms other then scrolling for example?
I think I found out what is causing my scrolling problem. I have an nvidia GTX260. The nvidia control panel has a performance management feature that has two options. One is called Adaptive which throttles down the GPU/Memory frequency to a pretty low level when top speeds aren't needed. The other is a Maximum Performance option, no throttling at all. The control panel comes with many profiles for programs including Firefox. Both the Global profile and Firefox uses Adaptive. When I changed Firefox to use Maximum Performance my scrolling problem was gone. Evidently d2d/dw needs the Max from the get go. This probably explains why scrolling would eventually right itself because the speeds were forced to Max as I scrolled. I think the process is a gradual increase. Once I went to a page and just hung out there without doing anything for a little while the scrolling problem would come back presumably because the speeds dropped down to the minimum again. This Power Management feature only appeared in the last 2 or 3 drivers. So those on older drivers always have the max which might explain why no one else reported this. This could also explain other problems with d2d/dw. I don't know who supplies nvidia with the programs on their list. Perhaps it needs to be changed or maybe FF needs a way to see if Adaptive is being used and maybe change it to Max. Just thinking.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
At best this should be WORKSFORME, but I wonder if we should reopen it to see if we can hint to Windows that we want more power allocated to us?
Resolution: FIXED → WORKSFORME
Or are you using more GPU then you need too?
I monitored what adaptive power was actually doing. Core drops to 300 (normally 720), Mem drops to an amazingly low 100 (normally 1216). So my guess it's the memory drop that's the problem and not the Core drop. So far I haven't found a way to adjust how much core/mem drops to with Adaptive Power.
As I stated, Nvidia ships profiles for a bunch of programs including Firefox. Now it might be possible that these profiles control how far Core and Memory drop to with Adaptive Power Management. If so, the FF profile probably has no idea of the use of d2d/dw so it drops things very low as we are talking about a browser not the latest 3D game. This is all conjecture on my part.
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