608795 - OpenGL layers acceleration horribly slow at 100% CPU

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Ian Nartowicz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101013 Firefox/4.0b8pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101013 Firefox/4.0b8pre

When I force layers.accelerate-all to true, for example when GrafxBot tries to run, everything on the browser slows down about a hundred fold.  At an estimate, GrfxBot would take six hours to complete, although I haven't let it run through yet.

The CPU maxes flat out 100%.  Everything appears to work correctly if you wait long enough, although there are sometimes some bizarre shapes as the screen gets redrawn in stages.

The OpenGL Layer Manager initialised message in the console takes a minute or two to appear after the preference is checked and until it appears, everything runs more or less normally.

Renderer: GeForce FX 5200/AGP
Version: 2.1.0 NVIDIA 96.43.18
FBO Texture Target: TEXTURE_RECTANGLE



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open browser
2. Change preference layers.accelerate-all to true
3. Wait a minute or two
Actual Results:  
Everything slows down dramatically, opening menus, clicking links, even just showing the page after swapping between windows.

Expected Results:  
Everything should continue to work, hopefully even a little faster.

With the default settings (accelerate-all = false, accelerate-none = false) things seem to work OK, although it is hard to be sure without some reference.

The problem has been present throughout b7pre and b8pre since OpenGL for Linux was first put in.  Latest nightlies perhaps fractionally less slow?

Comment 1

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Could you paste the contents of the Graphics section of about:support as well?

Comment 2

[Ian Nartowicz]

Graphics
        GPU Accelerated Windows0/2

That's all it says.  I get the impression you wanted more than that?

Ah-ha!  I force accelerate-all and managed to get this:
Graphics
                GPU Accelerated Windows1/4 OpenGL

Comment 3

[Nickolay_Ponomarev]

Yeah, 0/x would mean that acceleration is not turned on. 1/4 is weird, did you restart after enabling acceleration? Also, you should always be testing with a recent nightly: http://nightly.mozilla.org/ . about:support is supposed to also have the driver information in addition to the acceleration status, so you're probably still using a rather old build.

Not sure what other information would be useful to get here. Joe?

(By the way, enabling OpenGL acceleration on Linux is tracked in bug 594876.)

Comment 4

[Ian Nartowicz]

No, I didn't restart.  Just opening a single new window takes a long time, so that would be the 1/4.  The other windows still respond fairly well, presumably not accelerated, and so I can reverse the preference change this side of armageddon.

Even in a build from this weekend, that single line is all the information there is in about:support for graphics.  Perhaps you want the message from the error console?

OpenGL LayerManager Initialized Succesfully.
Version: 2.1.0 NVIDIA 96.43.18
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer: GeForce FX 5200/AGP
FBO Texture Target: TEXTURE_RECTANGLE

Comment 5

[:aceman]

That card and driver version is blacklisted in Firefox, so FF will never automatically enable layers acceleration via OpenGL on it.
See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers . The blacklist is there to eliminate buggy/slow cards/drivers. So actually Firefox is working fine and there is no bug. You simply can't use the acceleration feature on that old hardware.
You are using the oldest legacy driver series from Nvidia. Can you get a newer driver for that card? http://www.geforce.com/Drivers will offer you some newer ones, but still only version 173.x . That is officially still not enough for Firefox. But maybe your forced acceleration will work a bit better.

Comment 6

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

This sounds a lot like bug 673608 (and hence bug 670645). Can you re-try with Firefox beta or aurora (http://firefox.com/channel) and tell us if that makes anything better?

Comment 7

[Ian Nartowicz]

Did this land in 8.0?  Seems OK now.  Not accelerated obviously, but still usable.

Comment 8

[Ian Nartowicz]

Closing. No longer seems to be an issue.