626352 - Chrome area toolbars flicker when switching tabs

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[kolubinowicki]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110116 Firefox/4.0b10pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110116 Firefox/4.0b10pre

I can see that toolbars area randomly flicker when switching tabs.

( It looks like toolbars area is filled with Aero glass effect )

Check attachments for more info.

Windows 7 32bit

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110116 Firefox/4.0b10pre
Adapter Description ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1300
Vendor ID 1002
Device ID714a
Adapter RAM 128MB 
Drivers atiumdag atiumdva atitmmxx 
Driver Version 8.593.100.0 
Driver Date 2-10-2010 
Direct2D Enabled false 
DirectWrite Enabled false 
GPU Accelerated Windows 1/1 Direct3D 9

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open at least 2 tabs
2.Switch tabs until flickering occur.

Actual Results:  
Toolbar area flicker filled with glass effect

Expected Results:  
Tabs switch without flickering.

Comment 1

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screenshot when flickering occur

Comment 2

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screencast A 30fps

Comment 3

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screencast A 1fps Slow Motion

Comment 4

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screencast B 60fps

Comment 5

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screencast B 1fps Slow Motion

Comment 6

[Steve Scott (pxbugz)]

Your GPU driver is quite old, I'd try and make sure you have the very latest driver first. Here http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/737-28041SupportforATIMobility.aspx was the best I could do so if your laptop manufacturer doesn't supply a newer driver and this is indeed a bug with the driver then it may end up being blacklisted for d2d acceleration.

Comment 7

[kolubinowicki]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Your GPU driver is quite old, I'd try and make sure you have the very latest
> driver first. 

Those driver is the latest official driver that I could use with my GPU  and those also apply to all family of ATI card:

ATI Radeon 9500 Series
ATI Radeon 9550 Series
ATI Radeon 9600 Series
ATI Radeon 9700 Series
ATI Radeon 9800 Series
ATI Radeon X300 Series
ATI Radeon X550 Series
ATI Radeon X600 Series
ATI Radeon X700 Series
ATI Radeon X800 Series
ATI Radeon X850 Series
ATI Radeon X1050 Series
ATI Radeon X1300 Series
ATI Radeon X1550 Series
ATI Radeon X1600 Series
ATI Radeon X1650 Series
ATI Radeon X1800 Series
ATI Radeon X1900 Series
ATI Radeon Xpress Series
ATI Radeon X1200 Series
ATI Radeon X1250 Series
ATI Radeon X2100 Series



>Here
> http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/737-28041SupportforATIMobility.aspx
> was the best I could do so if your laptop manufacturer doesn't supply a newer
> driver

I use driver modded with Mobility Modder - ATI Version v1.2.0.0 from http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php and I can use last official supported AMD driver on notebook.


 and this is indeed a bug with the driver then it may end up being
> blacklisted for d2d acceleration.

D2D is already off, then you must blacklist all above ATI family card.

Comment 8

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

I'm not yet convinced this is a driver issue and can't be worked around on our side. On the other hand I'm confused because my own old x1650 laptop I dug up is fine.

Thanks for all the great footage though, could you make a screencast with the taskbar visible?

Comment 9

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screencast C 30fps Taskbar region

Flickering don't occur in taskbar region.

I also noticed that:

-Tabs flicker more often after scrolling page with flash plugin. 

-After browser restart and tabs reloading, when I don't scroll any page, it is hard to reproduce flickering when switching tabs.

Comment 10

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Screencast C 1fps Taskbar region Slow Motion

Comment 11

[kolubinowicki]

Attachment: Border of glass region (comment 11)

Please check the attachment for explanation

then 

could it be possible that behavior presented in attachment (filling browser window with glass) in some way is randomly triggered when tabs are switched?

Comment 12

[anthonydam]

As said before, upgrade your  gpu drivers please.

And/or disable 2D acceleration (option>advanced>uncheck "use hardware acceleration")?

Comment 13

[kolubinowicki]

I'll change the status for the bug as RESOLVED WORKSFORME because:

1)After landing Bug 623338 - Block all old drivers for ATI, NVIDIA, and only whitelist the big three, to control risk;
the hardware acceleration for Firefox is switched off by default. With software renderer above rendering artifacts don't show up anymore. 

2)ATI suspend updating the drivers for whole family of cards (see Comment 7)...   

3)Hardware accelerated scrolling pages is slower than software renderer.

https://bug626245.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=515041

So, no GPU hardware acceleration could be used at the moment for computer configuration from Comment 1