608291 - [D3D] Missing pref to force layers acceleration on blocklisted hardware

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[ydbltztzwen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101029 Firefox/4.0b8pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101029 Firefox/4.0b8pre

I'm on a X3100 which is blacklisted for any driver version, even though it runs just fine (for weeks!) when using gfx.direct2d.force-enabled. However, on pages with lots of text, performance is a bit worse than in software, and DirectWrite text rendering isn't as pleasant to my eyes as classic GDI.

Therefore I'd like to run with layers acceleration, without Direct2D and DirectWrite, as I do on some other machines. Normally this can be accomplished by setting gfx.direct2d.disabled, but on blackilsted hardware this disables layers acceleration too. I can't find a setting combination that lets me do this. To be honest all these config settings are a bit of a mess. I'd rename gfx.direct2d.force-enabled to gfx.disable-driver-blacklist and make it do just that.

I'd also add GUI options to enable partial acceleration. In the wild Direct2D is going to cause a lot more trouble than D3D and a lot of people are going to dislike DirectWrite (just look at IE9 beta reports for both of these issues). No reason not to use basic layers acceleration on these cases.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

Disabling Direct2D does -not- disable D3D9 layers acceleration. I'm not sure why it's not working for you, presumably your device/driver combination is blacklisted for D3D9. This is a separate issue and has nothing to with Direct2D.

If D2D is on you always get D3D10 layers, this is why it may -appear- that gfx.direct2D.disabled is related to Layer acceleration. However this is not true.

Comment 2

[ydbltztzwen]

(In reply to comment #1)

I read that as "there's a separate blacklist for D3D9 without an override pref", is that correct?

In that case this bug should be about adding such a pref.

Comment 3

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> 
> I read that as "there's a separate blacklist for D3D9 without an override
> pref", is that correct?
> 
> In that case this bug should be about adding such a pref.

This is correct. I'm all for morphing it into that kind of bug :).

Comment 4

[ydbltztzwen]

I just found 604771 which sort of does this, but it uses environment variables and I'd think a preference would be more convenient, maybe layers.force-enabled. I'm updating the summary to reflect that. Thanks for your time!

Comment 5

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

We have layers.acceleration.force-enabled now.