Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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_Alexander
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by _Alexander »

There is still no indication that these problems are not rooted in Firefox's rendering inefficiencies, are there?

Per application profiles which seem to be needed are driver bloat and also have to be configured specific to the GPU, considering that some GPUs may work just fine with 2D clock speeds in Firefox and weaker ones might stutter without raising their clock speeds.

If I learned anything from video games is that V-Sync is not an FPS cap.
V-Sync is preventing tearing, but doesn't stop the FPS rate from going out of control.
IE9 has an actual FPS cap which limits FPS probably at 60.
Limiting at monitor refresh rates is a bad idea considering modern monitor refresh rates.
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Stifu
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Stifu »

Mark342 wrote:The reason why Firefox raises the clocks of the graphics card is due to the driver.
Obviously, Microsoft wants IE9 to work well so it had some "pull" to get the driver manufacturer to add a special configuration for IE9 quickly. (basically, lower clock speeds)

Got sources for this, or is it just FUD?
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Terepin »

Hera wrote:If I learned anything from video games is that V-Sync is not an FPS cap.

Lolwut? Have you any idea why there is tearing and how is V-Sync eliminating it? I seriously doubt that.
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LordStriker
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by LordStriker »

Mark342 wrote:Some driver provider programs allow you to manually configure the driver for an individual application.
This manual configuration is required because the driver cant tell the difference between Direct2D and Direct3D (they are the same underlying function calls)


Care to elaborate? Is there something I can do/change on Nvidia's 'custom profiles' section about Firefox specifically?

---------------------------------------

I still get the freakin' black screen, usually when I press in a box, like Google's translate boxes. I don't get any error indication, like the known TDR -just black screen ( similar behavior with TDR but without the warning ).

Some other times, I get the "D2D_Compute_Bitmap" ( I don't remember it exactly ) in Fx's crash logs.

2 different things. None of these on IE 9. HWA turns out to be a headache. Average users don't know who to blame for... MS, Nvidia, Mozilla ( especially if there's TDR ).
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_Alexander
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by _Alexander »

Terepin wrote:
Hera wrote:If I learned anything from video games is that V-Sync is not an FPS cap.

Lolwut? Have you any idea why there is tearing and how is V-Sync eliminating it? I seriously doubt that.

It doesn't stop the application from rendering a zillion frames. You only see how many your monitor manages to squeeze out tho
I have to point out Quake IV - the whole engine is limited to 60FPS. Firefox needs something like that.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Terepin »

You are correct. My bad.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by RyanVM »

Isn't that what the Gecko refresh driver in fact does?
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by squall_leonhart »

"The reason why Firefox raises the clocks of the graphics card is due to the driver."

no it isn't.
Firefox could force enable vync too.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by squall_leonhart »

Hera wrote:
Terepin wrote:
Hera wrote:If I learned anything from video games is that V-Sync is not an FPS cap.

Lolwut? Have you any idea why there is tearing and how is V-Sync eliminating it? I seriously doubt that.

It doesn't stop the application from rendering a zillion frames. You only see how many your monitor manages to squeeze out tho
I have to point out Quake IV - the whole engine is limited to 60FPS. Firefox needs something like that.


and a Frame cap is not "vsync" either, so tearing still occurs

you should use a frame cap and vsync though because capping an >vrefresh framerate will induce 18-20ms lag on a 60hz display (you want 16.6 or you start feeling the input lag)
spirits247
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by spirits247 »

Technical discussion aside, can we definitely say if this is a Firefox or ATI driver issue?

I'm still unsure.

Part of the evidence says Firefox and how it works with DirectX, yet the remainder has a nVidia developer listing a fix for a bug that causes high clocks and temps when scrolling, which users have said fixes the problem in Firefox.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by squall_leonhart »

spirits247 wrote:Technical discussion aside, can we definitely say if this is a Firefox or ATI driver issue?

I'm still unsure.

Part of the evidence says Firefox and how it works with DirectX, yet the remainder has a nVidia developer listing a fix for a bug that causes high clocks and temps when scrolling, which users have said fixes the problem in Firefox.


ITS ati's fault for not capping firefox at low power 3D
and Mozilla's for not capping the frame rate otherwise.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Cru_N_cher »

Huh turning on Aero and there should be no issue it caps the whole Window output via DWM @ the monitor refresh :) works even wonderful on my Sandy Bridge (GT1) and Firefox runs very efficient here (@ low power) and still can call performance when it needs to render more heavy tasks like Panorama or http://demos.hacks.mozilla.org/openweb/HWACCEL/ everything works perfectly fine if Aero limits it especially smooth scrolling benefits from it making the scroll ultra smooth in different speeds (D2D) (though there are still speeds witch will glitch if they to slow or odd framerates (though every hardware accelerated browser under Aero suffers from this even IE9 guess we will see improvement with IE 10 and Windows 8 on this matter and the newer Driver model and improved latency) :)
and Obviously Multimedia content playing back via Flash Player :) if you render everything over DWM and Aero you'll never need any Vsync option anymore Microsoft concepted this very efficient and Performance of D2D is going to improve further in Windows 8 also :)

These are Core improvements that will bring us better browsing results especially very smooth scrolling experiences @ different speeds they had to massively improve latency on the rendering pipeline for mobile devices with touch which the desktop also gonna benefit from :)

Image

Image

PS: before James comes around ;)
Last edited by Cru_N_cher on October 30th, 2011, 12:47 am, edited 4 times in total.
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_Alexander
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by _Alexander »

The only time I notice tearing while scrolling is... Chrome.

Is there a video of that presentation? I mean I know that Windows 8 will have better Windows Explorer, Task Manager, and reduced memory footprint for itself and applications running on it - but haven't heard anything about the above.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Cru_N_cher »

alot of media and most reviewers in General (you really believe a Game Reviewer has any idea of a OS :D ) have no idea of OSes so sure you will only hear about the hype stuff (or things that told to them by PR guys) (though one of those was more Performance and this D2D improvements are one part of this,and mostly we can thank ARM for all these improvements and their Pressure on Microsoft becoming more energy efficient) the real interesting stuff you have to crawl deeper for http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011 ;)

Hera wrote:The only time I notice tearing while scrolling is... Chrome.

then use auto scrolling middle mouse button and variate scroll speed from super slow, to veryslow, to slower and so on and see all the rendering glitches happen, with a touch system and Metro which is ultra responsive to touch input this would be a deadly experience for the user so Microsoft updated the whole rendering to the Desktop to reduce latency (GPU Preemption) heavily (3rd version of DWM) and have that super smooth scrolling experience their slogan for Windows 8 is not for nothing "Fast and Fluid" ;)

Actually everyone should have seen those 3 talks in that order whose interested in Browser Performance and Fluidness ;)
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/HW-218T
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/B ... /PLAT-769T
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/B ... /PLAT-386T
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Cru_N_cher »

Overall D2D Performance @ least tested for the x64 version is also not very good for Sandy Bridge (lot of sites overload the GPU in certain scenarios, mostly involved are smooth scrolling operations on CSS3 using pages) a lot of stuff renders very slow with D2D enabled Aero compared to IE9 and nope real websites not some nice coded techdemos :(
Not sure if this is the same case for other GPUs but their still needs to be done a lot of work on the GPU part @ least under Windows it's not really upto Microsofts Efficiency yet.

PS: Gonna try the 32bit part now (might be that some compiler issues play into here as well on the GPU performance part)
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