651856 - FF4: Extremely slow JavaScript fades on large text pages

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[C. Martin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1

If you visit this page http://www.heinergoebbels.com/en/calendar and click on "performance history" Firefox becomes unresponsive for a very long time while it tries to render the page. The website loads contents via XMLHTTP and then fades them into the text area.
This problem was introduced with FF4 and is also present in the alphas of FF5 and FF6 but NOT in the 64 bit versions! Please note that no other browser (Opera, Safari, Chrome, not even versions of Internet Explorer 6-9) have this problem.
Turning hardware acceleration off does change nothing.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
0. Use 32bit FF4 or Aurora or Nightly / make sure JavaScript is enabled
1. visit http://www.heinergoebbels.com/en/calendar
2. click on menu item "performance history"
3. wait for a very long time
4. check with any other browser to proof that it's not the problem of a slow webserver but of extremely slow rendering by Firefox
Actual Results:  
Firefox takes ages to render the new page

Expected Results:  
Firefox should fade the page in quickly like any other browser including 3.x versions of FF

Windows 7 x64 SP1 on a very fast Intel 4 core desktop PC with an ATI HD 5870 GPU (latest drivers).
This problem seems to be specific to Windows 7 (maybe even 64 bit only?), at least I couldn't reproduce it under Windows XP, OS X 10.5 or Linux Mint 10.

I just want to stress that no other browser has this problem on my system.

Comment 1

[AndreiD[QA]]

Works fine on the x86 version:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:6.0a1) Gecko/20110420 Firefox/6.0a1

Comment 2

[C. Martin]

OK, now I also tested on a Windows 7 x64 SP1 notebook which has both an Intel and an Nvidia GPU and I cannot reproduce the problem with either of them.
Could this be ATI related? Or just a random glitch with my system? Could please some people with Windows 7/ATI GPUs test as well?

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please post the graphic section from about:support.
Please also try http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

wfm with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:6.0a1) Gecko/20110419 Firefox/6.0a1 SeaMonkey/2.2a1pre and Nvidia 310M

Comment 4

[C. Martin]

Running in safe mode does not change the problem but turning off hardware acceleration DOES fix it, contrary to what I wrote first. But it only changed after a complete system restart, just restarting the browser (no instance running) didn't seem to completely turn it off. Strange.

gfx.color_management.display_profile;
gfx.color_management.mode;2
gfx.color_management.rendering_intent;0
gfx.direct2d.disabled;false
gfx.direct2d.force-enabled;false
gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled;true
gfx.downloadable_fonts.fallback_delay;3000
gfx.downloadable_fonts.sanitize;true
gfx.downloadable_fonts.sanitize.preserve_otl_tables;true
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.always_use_for_content;false
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype.use_for_downloadable_fonts;true
gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled;false
gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.use_gdi_table_loading;true
gfx.font_rendering.harfbuzz.level;2
gfx.use_text_smoothing_setting;false

Comment 5

[C. Martin]

Sorry, just realized I posed the wrong info:
Graphics
Adapter Description: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
Vendor ID: 1002
Device ID: 6898
Adapter RAM: 1024
Adapter Drivers: aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx32 aticfx32 aticfx32 atiumd64 atidxx64 atidxx64 atiumdag atidxx32 atidxx32 atiumdva atiumd6a atitmm64
Driver Version: 8.840.3.0
Driver Date: 2-26-2011
Direct2D Enabled: true
DirectWrite Enabled: true (6.1.7601.17563, font cache n/a)
WebGL Renderer: Google Inc. -- ANGLE -- OpenGL ES 2.0 (ANGLE 0.0.0.611)
GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 Direct3D 10

Comment 6

[C. Martin]

I'm sorry I have to keep correction myself, but turning off hardware acceleration does not (always?) fix the problem. I don't understand why I worked once and now doesn't.
I also tried uninstalling the current ATI drivers and using the once that shipped with Windows, but that doesn't make a difference.

Comment 7

[C. Martin]

It seems to have been a driver bug after all. With the new Catalyst 11.4 drivers the problem is gone.

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Great that it works now !

Comment 9

[C. Martin]

I'm sorry to open this up again, but after a reboot this morning the problem was back, so Catalyst 11.4 did not fix it. It rather seems that you install you ATI/AMD drivers (which don't need a reboot) the problem is gone after the installation until the next reboot. I tried this several times and this actually happens. So something is "disconnected" from Firefox after the driver reinstall which doesn't kick back in until a reboot.
I'd really like to hear from someone with Win7x64 and ATI/AMD GPU (preferably HD series) if he can reproduce the problem or not.
If I got time to waste I'll exchange my ATI card for an old Nvidia I got to see if it is really ATI related.

Comment 10

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

I cannot reproduce this in 32-bits with Hardware Acceleration on on both my NVidia and my ATI machine(coincidentally also HD 5800 series).

Comment 11

[C. Martin]

Hi Bas, good to hear from you (I know your blog) and thanks for checking. Any theory why this is happening in FF4 32bit only but in no other browser and also not in FF4 64bit? Is there any way I can provide more information?

Comment 12

[Andre Klapper]

I cannot reproduce the problem in Firefox 12.0 on a Fedora 16 system.

Can you please update to a recent and supported version (see http://www.firefox.com/ ), create a new profile (see http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Basic%20Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile and http://support.mozilla.org/kb/Managing%20profiles for more information), and test this again? 

If you still see this problem in the new profile, please add a comment to this report and tell us your exact version (by updating the "Version" field of this bug report) and your operating system (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc.). 

If the problem still happens but does not happen in the new profile, please enter the address "about:support" in the address bar and attach (using the "Add an attachment" link above) the output for your original profile (not the new profile), as the "Modified Preferences" section could be interesting. 

If the problem does not happen anymore at all, please set the status of this report to RESOLVED > WORKSFORME. Thanks for your help!