LordStriker wrote:Why imposible? 3D clocks meant to be mostly for gaming and similar 'heavy' processes... If you do the same things ( normal browsing/scrolling etc ) on IE9 and Fx side by side, while you're checking GPU utilization, you'll understand what I mean. Even Chromium now doesn't go 3D clocks. It stays mostly 2D.
I remember very well, someone mentioned this on Bugzilla and Bas responded "we'll have to see that while building Azure".
Anyway, rant over.
Because Forefox has no control over the clocks, the GPU driver and hardware has (e.g. AMD names it PowerPlay). When Firefox asks the Direct X API to draw a gradient, it's simply that, a request to draw a gradient. The API communicates with the driver, the driver does its magic, decides if it wants to boost clocks (in most cases it will switch to low power 3D) and then the GPU will start working.
There are optimizations in many areas to be had, but I think it's just not possible to do what Firefox does and keep the GPU at the 2D state (100MHzcore-150MHz memory in my case). And In any case, I don't understand why you complain about the GPU switching to 3D clocks. Do you think it be more efficient on a Flop per Wh metric to use the CPU to draw?
And don't compare what Fx does compared to IE. For once, they use completely different layout engines. Gecko implementations usually aim for standards compliance and quality/correctness of output. I can't say what a proprietary layout engine like IE's Trident does, and I can't speculate on whether whatever lower CPU usage/better performance you see on (possibly biased) benchmarks created by its creators mean.
What Falken giveth, the tōge taketh away.