636959 - Google maps zoom in/out is slow and CPU consuminig.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Georgi Kolev]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110225 Firefox/4.0b13pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110225 Firefox/4.0b13pre

From around the time firefox4b8 the zoom in / zoom out in google maps on linux (using nvidia card.. the problem occures with both opensource and the binary driver) is loading the CPU and the browser stops responding for few seconds ('till the zoom is done.) ,witch can take up to 4-5 seconds.

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
The zoom in/zoom out must be done using the GPU not CPU , or make it less CPU consuming if the drivers don't allow you to use the GPU.

Comment 1

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110225 Firefox/4.0b13pre

WFM with an Intel integrated card. Can someone with a Nvidia card test this?

Comment 2

[Georgi Kolev]

It seems i've 'spoke' too soon :/ Sorry about that. The problem occures only on my box with the older nvidia card (fx5500) with both binary (173.xx) and nouaveu drivers. It takes about 5-10 seconds to zoom , and the browser is unresponsive while doing it. (The pc is with 3Ghz intel cpu)

I've made test on some other boxes, with newer video cards (with the nvidia 270.xx driver) and there it works fine ,it's doing the zoom for less then a second...

btw as far as I can tell , the problem is the 'zoom' efect that firefox4 is doing, with ff3 the zoom, seems more like refresh on the images then zoom. Is there any way to stop this zoom like effect ?

Comment 3

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110302 Firefox/4.0b13pre

Try going to : Preferences->Advanced->General and disabling "Use Hardware acceleration when available". There might be a problem using hardware acceleration for your specific FX5500(it's a 64bit one right?).

Comment 4

[Georgi Kolev]

:( nope, that dosnt help...  
Here info for my card:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 248 (1250ns min, 250ns max)
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
	Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
	Region 1: Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	[virtual] Expansion ROM at f9fe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
		Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
		Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
	Capabilities: [44] AGP version 3.0
		Status: RQ=32 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=3 SBA+ ITACoh- GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW+ AGP3+ Rate=x4,x8
		Command: RQ=32 ArqSz=2 Cal=0 SBA+ AGP+ GART64- 64bit- FW- Rate=x8
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
	Kernel modules: nvidia, nouveau, nvidiafb


Please tell me if I can send you any more info.

Comment 5

[George Carstoiu]

As I was saying, your card is a 64bit version one - as extracted from the information you've posted. One more that you may want to try is disabling Compiz and see whether your issue is still reproducible.

Also, I forgot to mention this, but after disabling hardware acceleration you have to restart the browser.

Thanks!

Comment 6

[Georgi Kolev]

I'm not using compiz, and i've restarted the browser after switching off the hardware acceleration... as far as I can tell , this didnt make any difference.
If you can compare the zooming of ff3 and ff4 you'll see that ff4 is doing zoom im on the images before realoding the new one, and ff3 didnt do that.
Do you have any other ideas what can I try?

Comment 7

[Georgi Kolev]

I guess i'll need to switch to ff3 for now :/
I really hope this gets fixed.... i've tested it on few boxes, and all of them have the problem (all of them are using nvidia cards, I haven't test this on ati/intel/..).
On maps with multiple layers on them , the speed gets even slower ...
I may be wrong but the problem appers to be the zoom in effect witch ff is doing when zooming... FF4 zooms in/out on all images and then reloads with the new one (for the bigger/smaller zoom) FF3 just loads the new images (for bigger/smaller zoom) without doing any zoom in/out on them.

Comment 8

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110404 Firefox/4.2a1pre

I just tried to reproduce it with a Nvidia card but I wasn't able. Did you try on the official release from mozilla.com?

Comment 9

[David.P]

Same here with FF5 on Nvidia Quadro FX 4500.

It takes several seconds for FF to simply load the tiles from the Google tiles server, where FF just sits there with 100% CPU doing nothing before the tiles get loaded/rendered. In Opera or Chrome, zooming or panning is about three times faster with less CPU.

I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with the zooming animation (actually for some reason I don't get any zooming animation anyway on Google Maps as e.g. on Bing Maps, with either browser).

This just seems to be one more of the mystical Gecko "Second's Silence" phenomenons discussed in Bug 490122, where the Developers are totally clueless, even after YEARS!

Comment 10

[Georgi Kolev]

@George Garstoiu, yes. The problem appears in all versions after 4.0b8 (5,6,and even the nightly build from today... it started when 4.0b8 was introdused <if that helps is any way). On newer computers its not suck a big issue ...but when your doing in on a older box ...... specialy when you have few layers of stuff (icons, poligons, lines and stuff like that) on top of the map .... 
To get to max zoom in , (on P4 3.0Ghz CPU with GeForceFX5500) it takes 30+ seconds... and ff is totaly unusable while doing it..

Comment 11

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:8.0a1) Gecko/20110711 Firefox/8.0a1

Georgi, can you please identify where exactly has this started happening? Instructions in the following link:
http://quality.mozilla.org/docs/bugzilla/guide-to-triaging-bugs-for-firefox/finding-a-regression-window/

Thanks!

Comment 12

[Anselmo Canfora]

see also:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=656266

Comment 13

[Francesco Castellana]

The first affected build i could find is the nightly:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b6pre) Gecko/20100910 Firefox/4.0b6pre
from
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2010/09/2010-09-10-03-mozilla-central/

I'm quite sure some change in the code from Google is involved, too, since this regression in zooming performance has never been exposed so much until some time during the last two months.

Comment 14

[Anselmo Canfora]

If I remember well the problem started with FF 3.5/3.6.

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

does this happen when started in safe mode?

Comment 16

[Georgi Kolev]

The problem seems to be fixed in 7.0.1 o/  :) (I havent tested it with 7.0 but i guess it will be fixed there too) :)

o/ o/ o/