Very slow/jerky scrolling with ATI graphics card on XP

[F J Walter]

Hello,

I have a new computer here, but scrolling is very slow and jerky on Firefox. (Firefox 3)

The more elements on a page, the slower scrolling is, and advertisements using iframes or Flash slow it right down to one or two "jumps" per second, which is too slow to be smooth. There is also a delay of about a half second when switching tabs and the interface in general seems laggy. This page for example is so slow it is difficult to use.

HOWEVER, when I go into my display properties and I turn the display acceleration down one notch to "disable cursor and bitmap accellerations", the slow scrolling problem goes away. It's not particularly zippy, but MUCH better, and more like the responsiveness of my previous computer.

I am thinking this is an issue with Firefox and my graphics card driver, though it could just be an issue with the card. I have the latest catalyst driver from ATI, and my graphics "card" is a Radeon 3100 - not a speedy device, but it's new and it shouldn't be causing problems like this. I have an AMD Athlon X2 64 and 2GB RAM - it is a fast system other than this.

Cheers,
FJW

[ryannm14]

This is an issue with the XP drivers, you are not on Vista, correct?
See here:
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=807075
*Please* file the bug in bugzilla if it does not already exist.

[F J Walter]

That's correct, it is XP. I might file a bug if I can find an appropriate category.

It's hard to say whether this affects just Firefox or other apps - I'm guessing it is more noticeable in Firefox due to its heavy dependence on the graphics card. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[dfoulkes]

I'm on XP3 (much slower Dell than you have) and went to the site you posted. My scrolling was just as fast as other sites but it was somewhat jerky on your site...must be something in their display coding. Yet Another Smooth Scrolling addon has helped my system with jerky scrolling but it sounds like you have something else going on....my tabs switch very fast and in general my system is fast for it's power rating.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5846

Have you brought up Task Mgr to see if something is taking cpu cycles?

[F J Walter]

I'm on XP3 (much slower Dell than you have) and went to the site you posted. My scrolling was just as fast as other sites but it was somewhat jerky on your site...must be something in their display coding. Yet Another Smooth Scrolling addon has helped my system with jerky scrolling but it sounds like you have something else going on....my tabs switch very fast and in general my system is fast for it's power rating.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5846

Have you brought up Task Mgr to see if something is taking cpu cycles?

Do you also have a recent ATI Radeon 3x00 graphics card and a recent (since October) ATI catalyst driver? If not, then this issue is not likely to affect you.

[zcacogp]

Interesting - I have a very similar build, and a similar problem. I posted a thread about it here:

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=974495&p=5129405#p5129405

F J Walter, I have a Radeon 3300 graphics card (well, built-in graphics on a motherboard), and a post-October driver. Yet I am suffering from the slow scrolling problem. Is this the issue you are referring to, or another one?


Oli.

[blomquist]

It seems that this problem affects ALL 780G chipset / Catalyst. Go and blame ATI for that Bug. The 2D acceleration is not working correctly.