High CPU Usage..in Firefox?

hhh · Post by **hhh** » August 1st, 2005, 4:46 pm

Continuing OT (Sorry!=)
I was amazed when I first saw cleartype on my CRT after it had been tuned with the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/Step1.aspx">ClearType Tuner</a>. Check it.

storm119 · Post by **storm119** » August 1st, 2005, 5:47 pm

Ok folks...let put asides anything that we're not agreed / arguments (monitor/clear type etc) away and continue to the original topic, please.

denro wrote:I think the important info is the cpu, amt of memory, chipset, video card, exact version of Firefox, and reporting results in safe-mode (no extensions or non-default themes enabled.)

Yes, indeed or just run it in normal-mode.

To thus they don't see this problems, you're encourage to post you results too.

TIA

campcove · Post by **campcove** » August 1st, 2005, 5:59 pm

On CRT, cleartype does smoothing that some people feel makes text look blurry, but some people like it. It is a personal preference, people should decide for themselves.

Some of the CPU usage problems, I hope will be fixed either by a better Nvidia driver, or by the change to the Cairo graphics engine.
If you can find lots of other applications that have problems with Nvidia and animated or transparent gifs or PNGs, maybe Nvidia will listen. If not, then maybe the workarounds would have to come from FF. Once Cairo engine lands, maybe many of these issues will go away instantly. I think performance testing would be better done after that point, but decide for yourselves.

Stebs · Post by **Stebs** » August 1st, 2005, 11:19 pm

Yep, I'm quite confident that such Problems will go away after the change to Cairo.
I dont think that we will have this fixed for 1.5 because we are far from knowing the exact origin of the Problem, which is necessary for a fix. And the deadline for such big changes is very near... (but I might be completely wrong here, you nerver know...)
Right after the Branching for 1.5 Beta, big things are going to happen to Gecko like the change to Cairo (and OpenGL accel. etc.), then it will be important to spot such Problems and squeeze them in an early stage...
Here a link to some details about what to expect in Gecko 1.9
EDIT: It is also interesting to know that Cairo is going to be used in other Projects too, like in soon to come GNOME 2.12. So when using Cairo, a rendering Bug caused by a buggy Graphics Driver will be more likely get fixed by Nvidia/Ati etc.

OT about Cleartype: Ok, on your image the left example is crapier then the right, but here it definitely doesn't look that crappy without Cleartype, instead Letters look very crisp. With Cleartype enabled they just get more bold, big (and somewhat blurrier) (also played around with tuner -the download version, not in IE

). I guess that depends on CRT, resolution AND taste. I guess therefore they say "Readability on CRT screens can also be somewhat improved." and not will.
I think it is quite hard to say I am spreading false information, just because I say here it looks better without Cleartype in my opinion!
But lets stop this OT, everybody should use the setting he prefers

Schrade · Post by **Schrade** » August 1st, 2005, 11:32 pm

For the people who haven't seen this lagging problem that most of us are seeing, one real easy way to test it is to find a page that is particularly long with a really busy animated GIF in the middle of it. Then use AUTOSCROLL to set the page scrolling down automatically. You should not be moving the mouse or keyboard during this. Just middle click, move your mouse down a bit so the page starts scrolling slowly and then let it keep doing that til it hits the animated GIF. Suddenly, the page starts to get jerky until you scroll past that GIF and are back to normal stuff.

Firefox did the exact same thing on my ATI All-In-Wonder RADEON 9800 Pro before I took it out due to instability problems in my Shuttle. Now I'm using my onboard nFORCE2 Video (GeForce4 MX Integrated Video) and it has the lag problem as well.

myzar74 · Post by **myzar74** » August 2nd, 2005, 1:52 pm

I doubt is a problem with the nvidia driver, ff is the only app causing this problem , prolly ff is telling windows which is telling the driver to do something stupid

68Firebird · Post by **68Firebird** » August 3rd, 2005, 10:51 am

cpu usage 0% on the first one and 2% on the second - idle.

cpu usage 9% on the first one and 22% on the second - scrolling.

My video card is a ati 9600 non pro, the pc is in my sig.
Monitor is a 17" crt flat screen.

Stebs · Post by **Stebs** » August 16th, 2005, 2:26 pm

This Bug is fixed once Thebes (Cairo) is used for rendering. Just tested an (very experimental) Build with enabled cairo Rendering under Windows: Future Graphics of Mozilla
While there are still a lot of noticable rendering Bugs (naturally since this is a build with VERY early new Graphics Plattform) like Font size, non-scrolling Bookmarks Menu, overall Graphics-flickering, overall Performance and so on, it is already quite usable, thats to say you are able to read Websites, definitely would not recommend it for every-day usage

The animated Test-gif no longer use 100% CPU!
Now this is going to be very sweet when polished further, let alone with enabled glitz acceleration...

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » September 9th, 2005, 12:58 pm

Stebs wrote:
This Bug is fixed once Thebes (Cairo) is used for rendering.

If Fx v1.5 Beta uses this new engine, I have to ascertain that there are still the same problems with ClearType and CPU consumption as in earlier versions of Fx.

Please anyone using ClearType try to scroll on this page: http://www.regular-expressions.info/anchors.html
No matter if you're using the mouse wheel, the scroll bars or your cursor keys... it is dog slow.

This example is pretty drastic but I experience similar CPU hogging on other pages with loads of text and links.

My system is:

WinXP SP2
AMD64 3500+
1 GB of RAM

Recall · Post by **Recall** » September 9th, 2005, 1:11 pm

kybernaut wrote:
Stebs wrote:
This Bug is fixed once Thebes (Cairo) is used for rendering.

If Fx v1.5 Beta uses this new engine, I have to ascertain that there are still the same problems with ClearType and CPU consumption as in earlier versions of Fx.

Please anyone using ClearType try to scroll on this page: http://www.regular-expressions.info/anchors.html
No matter if you're using the mouse wheel, the scroll bars or your cursor keys... it is dog slow.

This example is pretty drastic but I experience similar CPU hogging on other pages with loads of text and links.

My system is:

WinXP SP2
AMD64 3500+
1 GB of RAM

Fixed background rendering has been improved and I dont get slow scrollling on that page.

I do however still suffer the dreaded gif bug with my nVidia 6800GT.

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » September 9th, 2005, 1:26 pm

@Recall: Just out of interest, are you using a HT enabled P4 system? Did you check your CPU consumtion in task manager?

BTW, my graphics hardware is a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, using the latest catalyst drivers.

IceDogg · Post by **IceDogg** » September 9th, 2005, 1:40 pm

To Recall, I could scroll that page just fine, but when I watch the CPU usage as I scrolled I see what you mean. It jumps up into the 90's fast. I do hope this gets fixed soon. ouch! I check my CPU consumtion via Task manager. I have a P4 2.4 Gig PC 512 MB RAM.

n7Epsilon · Post by **n7Epsilon** » September 9th, 2005, 2:52 pm

I can confirm this: I'm testing FireFox 1.5 Beta 1 with no extensions or themes..

It renders nicely but during the scrolling (especially slow scrolling like keyboard down or with mouse wheel), the CPU usage jumps to more than 50% (and I am using a GeForce FX5200 GPU with a 2.6 GHz HT Enabled P4 CPU with the 77.77 Catalyst Drivers...)

paulfox · Post by **paulfox** » September 9th, 2005, 3:02 pm

n7Epsilon said: "It renders nicely but during the scrolling (especially slow scrolling like keyboard down or with mouse wheel), the CPU usage jumps to more than 50%"

Right! Yep - I've reverted back to 1.06 though, and get 48-54% doing same thing as you stated above. We must realize that running AVAST or Spybot pushes it to 90% as well - defragging RAM puts it at 100, burning a CD with Nero gets it to 85-90 - all depending on hardware. My sig shows what I have - and I'm getting EXACTLY the same as you state above regarding 1.5b. This is not necessarily (IMHO) a "1.5b thing."

campcove · Post by **campcove** » September 9th, 2005, 3:12 pm

Thebes / Cairo is not yet in the 1.5b or the trunk or branch. It is only in a limited experimental build, but it does look like it may fix these issues. So, since the new engine is not yet in the beta or the builds most people are testing it is not surprising that high CPU is still here.