612603 - A lot slower scrolling in firefox4 than firefox 3.6

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Simon Strandman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b7) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b7) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b7

On my netbook, a samsung NF310 with a Atom N550 CPU and a Intel GMA 3150 graphics card, Firefox 4 is a lot slower compared to firefox 3.6 when scrolling on pages. I've tried both 4.0 beta 7 and a build of beta8pre from today (20101116) and both have the same problem. Enabling or disabling hardware acceleration doesn't seem to do much difference. This is with smooth scrolling enabled but even without it firefox 3.6 is faster.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Can you go to Troubleshooting Information from the Help menu, copy the part that says Graphics, and paste it here, please ?

Comment 2

[Simon Strandman]

Here it is:

  Graphics

        Adapter Description
        Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 3150

        Vendor ID
        8086

        Device ID
        a011

        Adapter RAM
        Unknown

        Adapter Drivers
        igdumdx32

        Driver Version
        8.14.10.2117

        Driver Date
        4-19-2010

        Direct2D Enabled
        false

        DirectWrite Enabled
        false

      GPU Accelerated Windows
      0/1

Apparently acceleration isn't enabled. :/

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It's not enabled because of this:

538   IMPLEMENT_INTEL_DRIVER_BLOCKLIST(gfxWindowsPlatform::kWindowsXP, deviceFamilyIntelGMA3150,  V(6,14,10,5260))

I believe that maps to 8.14.10.5260 for the "Driver Version" output in about:support for the Intel drivers.  That's the minimal version that doesn't have serious bugs if you try to use hardware acceleration with it; yours is older than that.  :(

That said, it's odd that the scrolling is slower than 3.6....  I would expect it to be no better, but also no worse.

Comment 4

[Simon Strandman]

Okay, unfortunately I can't upgrade the driver since samsung only provides this version and the brightness fn-keys doesn't work with the driver from intel :/

"538   IMPLEMENT_INTEL_DRIVER_BLOCKLIST(gfxWindowsPlatform::kWindowsXP, deviceFamilyIntelGMA3150,  V(6,14,10,5260))"

Does this affect windows 7 as well? Because that's the OS I use (ie. not "WindowsXP").

Yea, I guess it's also a problem that an unaccelerated firefox4 is slower than 3.6.

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> Does this affect windows 7 as well?

Ah, good catch.  The relevant Win7 line is:

552   IMPLEMENT_INTEL_DRIVER_BLOCKLIST(gfxWindowsPlatform::kWindows7, deviceFamilyIntelGMA3150,  V(8,14,10,2117))

So your version should be ok, at first glance.  bjacob, any idea what's going on there?

Comment 6

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

I might be wrong, but the X3150 looks like it might have a maximum texture size of 2048; we require 4096.

Comment 7

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

I think Joe nailed it!

We should expose more information as to why a feature (here D3D layers) failed to initialize. It's at least the 3rd time that I see a whole discussion generated by this issue of graphics cards not supporting 4K textures.

Comment 8

[Simon Strandman]

I just tried 4.0b9pre vs. 3.6.14pre (most recent snapshot as of today) and the problem is still there. It's more visible when I enable aero.

Comment 9

[Jaroslav Benc]

Attachment: Slow scroll example

Same using FFbeta10 on Thinkpad X61, hardware acceleration and smooth scrolling disabled. Attached example scrolls fast on FF 3.6 and also FF4beta5. 

Adapter Description: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
Vendor: ID8086
Device ID: 2a02
Adapter RAM:Unknown
Adapter Driver: sigdumd64 igd10umd64 igdumdx32 igd10umd32Driver Version8.15.10.1867Driver Date8-6-2009
Direct2D Enabled: Blocked on your graphics card because of unresolved driver issues.
DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.1.7600.20830)
WebGL Renderer(WebGL unavailable): GPU Accelerated Windows0/1

Comment 10

[Jaroslav Benc]

Attachment: Updated test case with FPS using window.mozRequestAnimationFrame

I've just found and used window.mozRequestAnimationFrame (implemented in FF4beta4+ by Boris) wich demonstrates slow scrolling in FF4beta11. Tro to open this page in FF4beta4pre (20100826041432) and then latest FF4beta. Try to scroll rapidly and see the window title with FPS info. Sometimes I get 0 frames per second on the latest FF and not more than 30-40 on the FF4beta4pre. 

Personally I'd mark this bug as major as scrolling is a significant interaction with users and can degrade overall speedup in FF4.

Comment 11

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

So this affects ThinkPads with the default set of drivers?

bz: you nominated this, so I'm assuming you're asserting that the web content patterns that scroll slowly are pretty prevalent on the web?

Comment 12

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> So this affects ThinkPads with the default set of drivers?
> 
> bz: you nominated this, so I'm assuming you're asserting that the web content
> patterns that scroll slowly are pretty prevalent on the web?

As far as I understand it this is mainly happening without hardware acceleration. I.e. this would affect any machine that for one reason or another would not get hardware acceleration. However how prevalent the content is is something I don't know much about.

(In reply to comment #9)
> Created attachment 511291 [details]
> Slow scroll example
> 
> Same using FFbeta10 on Thinkpad X61, hardware acceleration and smooth scrolling
> disabled. Attached example scrolls fast on FF 3.6 and also FF4beta5. 
> 
> Adapter Description: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
> Vendor: ID8086
> Device ID: 2a02
> Adapter RAM:Unknown
> Adapter Driver: sigdumd64 igd10umd64 igdumdx32 igd10umd32Driver
> Version8.15.10.1867Driver Date8-6-2009
> Direct2D Enabled: Blocked on your graphics card because of unresolved driver
> issues.
> DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.1.7600.20830)
> WebGL Renderer(WebGL unavailable): GPU Accelerated Windows0/1

Make sure you don't have DirectWrite enabled when hardware acceleration is off, this is not a default/supported configuration.

Comment 13

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Mike, I don't know.  I'm asserting that someone who knows something about graphics (not me) should triage this bug and decide the answer to your question....

Comment 14

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I can't see us blocking on something this generic; please renominate if there are more details.

Comment 15

[Ali Juma [:ajuma]]

Simon or Jaroslav, are you still able to reproduce this in the latest Nightly?

Comment 16

[Simon Strandman]

I don't use that netbook anymore so I can't test it atm! I'll leave a comment if I can test it on similar hardware again.

Comment 17

[Ali Juma [:ajuma]]

I'm going to close this for now. Please do reopen if you're still able to reproduce.