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 »

Do start one on Firefox GPU efficiency on Windows
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Cru_N_cher
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Cru_N_cher »

The problem is also Vsync and FPS related if you give to much headroom for Frame increases you load the GPU to much and it needs to increase it's Power State and it's not easy to control this for a specific situation in the Browser :) as everything is 1 in the end (on the point of Hardware Acceleration in the D2D space) so you have to restrict stuff and one Restriction mechanism is Aero (it's one of the best and you get it for free, just enable it) :)
Microsoft did some big work here to make IE9 provide the power if needed but only give enough Power for certain tasks like many find Firefox overloading the GPU @ scrolling and that's correct it's a efficiency issue (it's not Nvidias nor AMDs or Intels fault).
NT6 new Hardware enhancements on the GPU side are very Powerful and allow so many great things to do but you really know how to master this whole Architecture (Bas tries hard to), that the IE9 guys know exactly how shouldn't surprise anyone and that Firefox will still need some time to mature in this shouldn't surprise anyone either ;)
No Hardware Acceleration Implementation (be it D2D or OpenGL) can face against IE9s in the complete Picture of Browsing Experience (they can partly but not overall) IE9 Hardware acceleration is very balanced (Between GPU/CPU) (and surely efficiency was a main goal to achieve designing it) :)

And im true to it if Microsoft would introduce a usable Addon system i would be moving right away from Firefox but currently i can complete tasks still with those efficiency issues much faster with Firefox then i could with IE9 and so im bound to it ;)
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LordStriker
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by LordStriker »

squall_leonhart wrote:
LordStriker wrote:
LordStriker wrote:I've turned HWA entirely off on all versions and I'm browsing peacefully.


If you have GTX460/560 card, you'll get a mysterious black-screen randomly on Fx, while you've HWA on. Only these 2 cards... Propably it's Driver's fault, since 280.xx it begun appearing.

This is why I want it off -mostly. Despite the fact that Fx awakes my card on full 3d clocks ( purely unneeded ) more often than any other browser with HWA.


its a hardware issue.


What exactly do you mean by saying "hardware issue" ? Care to elaborate further? "I'm all ears". Are the 460s/560s defective partly and somehow has been discovered now ? The 560s perhaps are indeed defective, but because of another reason, related to insufficient power supplied at first revisions.

By the way, as Zlip said, prior to 280.xx drivers I hadn't had any issue. Neither pure TDR nor just black screen.

That being said, Zlip, you're talking probably about two different issues... One is the well known TDR ( which can be reduced with the registry hack you mentioned ) and the other is specifically on our cards ( 460s/560s only ). It has exactly the same behavior as the TDR, but we don't get the message "driver stopped respondig and recovered bla bla". Just the black screen ( the monitor turns off for 2 secs and back on afterwards ). To clarify, I don't get any TDR's ( with the error-message ).
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Zlip792 »

I only get TDR issue. The Black Issue is also due to driver seems to me since they does not happen with 275 series or earlier driver.

TDR and Black Screen are two separate issues. In TDR, you get error from Windows while in Black Screen issue no error dialog just simple plain black monitor outage issue.
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_Alexander
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by _Alexander »

it is easy to find bugs that show Firefox's inefficiencies at D2D,

Code: Select all

       555285    Direct2D surface is recreated a lot (Show Votes) 
       574496    Slow performance on Large IE Logo Direct2D (Show Votes)
       607386    [d2d]Tab switching/Page Scrolling very laggy (Show Votes)
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by squall_leonhart »

Zlip792 wrote:I only get TDR issue. The Black Issue is also due to driver seems to me since they does not happen with 275 series or earlier driver.

TDR and Black Screen are two separate issues. In TDR, you get error from Windows while in Black Screen issue no error dialog just simple plain black monitor outage issue.



black screens are caused by hitting sensors directly instead of via nvapi
TDR is caused by cheap mosfets switching voltages slow.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by LordStriker »

Guys, Nvidia claims that has fixed a "black screen" issue on Media Center with drivers 285.79.

I really don't know what that black screen is, because I don't use Media Center. I'm trying to find out if it's related to our black screen on firefox ( 460/560 cards ).

I've enabled HWA and so far I haven't managed to get one... I hope it's the same issue and has been fixed. If anyone's trying 285.79 with HWA on, please report if you get the black-screen again...
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by squall_leonhart »

the media center black screen was a DXVA issue.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Cru_N_cher »

squall_leonhart wrote:
Zlip792 wrote:I only get TDR issue. The Black Issue is also due to driver seems to me since they does not happen with 275 series or earlier driver.

TDR and Black Screen are two separate issues. In TDR, you get error from Windows while in Black Screen issue no error dialog just simple plain black monitor outage issue.



black screens are caused by hitting sensors directly instead of via nvapi
TDR is caused by cheap mosfets switching voltages slow.


Jep and i hated the discussion about this on Guru3d or Nvidia forums where people made the Driver changes responsible though Nvidia did something nice and decreased the latency and then cheap Cards failed with TDRs especially in overclocked environments and now the driver has been reset to allow such cheap cards to run better (pushing less stress) but the others lost the extreme nice switch speed now again (cards that run stable under the pressure) but it's clear Nvidia has to support the lowest denominator and those cheap cards are more sold in the end then the higher quality ones.
Also i tried to explain that Nvidia cant do anything against Firefox D2D inefficiency (which causes a lot of p-states switch issues, alone the GIF issue causes a lot of them in certain situations as the problems currently change from CPU to GPU with D2D enabled) but those Gamers over their hardly listen.
And that's one of the major problems with Firefoxs D2D implementation currently it's not Balanced enough between CPU/GPU it either shifts to 1 of them and sometimes even overloads it, though Chrome has the same problem only Microsoft themselves got this perfect in IE9/10 efficiency wise for normal browsing.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by LordStriker »

Happy for nothing :S Indeed, it's not related. I got the black-screen again. Back to "HWA-OFF"
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Cru_N_cher
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Cru_N_cher »

Btw finally the Gif fix made it into central (nightlies) after all the hick hack about regressions :) and it looks really good compared to IE9 CPU Performance (pretty comparable with just a slight win for IE9 utilization) :)
Didn't checked how that impacts D2D Performance but it should also impact it as it mostly just translates over to D2D (GPU) though having a weaker D2D currently the overhead on the GPU most probably is higher then IE9 (D2D) overhead :(

PS: I looked into latest Chromium and Google fixed the scrolling they now have a very ultra smooth GPU scroll with the keyboard keys on AERO :( Firefoxs is still choppy and enabling smooth scrolling makes it worse with D2D on Aero :(


Ok here is another issue https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=702485 i would say that weights also heavily currently i made 3 videos to visualize the problem it should explain itself :)

D2D enabled:

http://www.mediafire.com/?3adlcmt0ymncjdv

D2D disabled:

http://www.mediafire.com/?c4f79tb0yinxnvd

Chromeium 17 GPU Composition enabled:

http://www.mediafire.com/?vn0pv8np0i0uejd
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TDR with nVIDIA graphic cards

Post by MrX1980 »

About TDR with nVIDIA graphic cards:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?show ... &p=1338004

We still need more minidump submissions from users. The dump files we need the most are the ones that are located in c:\windows\LiveKernelReports\WatchDog. They are all in the form WD-YYYYMMDD-HHMM-XX.dmp. The other types which includes general crashes are located at c:\windows\minidump and will be in the form of mmddyy-xxxxx-zz.dmp. If you would like to email it, I have created a temporary Yahoo email address (since our nvidia.com address often blocks emails from external parties with file attachments) to send these files to but please do not use it to send me technical support questions as I will only be checking it for the purpose of this TDR bug. The email address is nvidiaforums@yahoo.com. Please also include your NVIDIA Forums username as well in the email. Thank you.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by StyleThing »

Cru_N_cher wrote:PS: I looked into latest Chromium and Google fixed the scrolling they now have a very ultra smooth GPU scroll with the keyboard keys on AERO :(

why sad smile, isn't that good after all? 8-[
my thoughts are: azure was the answer to great IE9 canvas performance, so this should be also beaten by Mozilla [-o<
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Gandharva
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Gandharva »

HWA causes massive CPU load when hitting "Bookmarks" button in "Menu Bar" repeatedly. There is also noticable lag in bookmark menus. As soon as I disable HWA, CPU load is gone when hitting "Bookmarks" button and also no more lag.
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Re: Direct2D/DirectWrite Accelerated Rendering For Firefox

Post by Omega X »

File a bug.
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