Slow Firefox-Performance with NVIDA

[my_new_nick]

Hi,

I'm using a 8800GT with Ubuntu 8.04 and the latest proprietary NVIDIA driver (170...something). When browsing certain webpages on Firefox the scrolling gets REALLY slow. I googled a lot and this doesn't seem to be a Firefox/x.org problem, it seems to be a problem of the NVIDIA driver. Can anyone confirm that?

[Plagman]

Please see:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678

Also, are you using Firefox 3? Is there any particular website that reproduces the problem?
A performance problem when displaying certain images in Firefox 3 with InitialPixmapPlacement 2 that caused symptoms similar to what you described has been fixed earlier (the rendering would hitch when scrolling to the bottom of digg.com, amongst other things). The fix will be available in a future driver release.

[apaige]

I wouldn't mind installing an updated driver just for that fix. Any chance NVIDIA could release beta drivers more often?

[Big P]

Originally Posted by Plagman

Please see:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678

Also, are you using Firefox 3? Is there any particular website that reproduces the problem

One such example I hit daily is the Slashdot comments. Take this page for example. If you scroll down the page it becomes really slow, but it only happens when the floating div with the number of comments etc is following you. If you click the little button in the top right twice to embed it in the top of the page, scrolling is back to full speed. So it seems to be that performance is affected by certain divs or perhaps the way firefox 3 is drawing that pixmap changed.

One other example of slowdown that's easily reproducible (it was posted on these forums before, but it may of been lost) is XFCE's default terminal, "terminal". If you try to maximize it it can take up to 2 seconds (minimizing is a lot faster, but still has a small delay). Perhaps this will help determine the problem as the XFCE terminal application is a lot more basic than FF3.

Other than those two examples (and a few other web pages), my general 2D performance on my 8800GTS G92 is fine (using XFCE as my DE).

[Spoom]

I'm experiencing this same problem, in both Firefox 3 and Firefox 2. Any time I'm scrolling, the screen flashes black momentarily, and will occasionally completely lock X other than the mouse, forcing a reboot of X if Ctrl-Alt-Backspace works, and a hard reboot otherwise (it's random).

In addition, in 3D games, it seems as if there is "jitter", by which I mean that it seems to render for a few frames, then show a frame from a second ago, then continue rendering. This loops.

I get the same slow terminal resize performance.

GeForce 7700, Gentoo Linux (Portage drivers), Core 2 Duo T7200, 2 GB RAM. I'm using Compiz-Fusion but I believe this persists even in Metacity.

Here's my bug report log.

[Linuxhippy]

I experience the problem on pages like derstandard.at when using FireFox3.
However my card is a 6600, not supported by the last GlyphCache enhancements.

[jcornwall]

Originally Posted by Plagman

A performance problem when displaying certain images in Firefox 3 with InitialPixmapPlacement 2 that caused symptoms similar to what you described has been fixed earlier (the rendering would hitch when scrolling to the bottom of digg.com, amongst other things). The fix will be available in a future driver release.

Has this fix made it into the just-announced 173.14.09?

[txf]

I also would like to add that trying to open large pictures (> than ~150Kb) in a new forces x to consume a lot of cpu (60% c2d 2.4Ghz) AND is particularly slow at rendering said image or switching to a new tab.

this is with ipp set at 2, it does not occur otherwise. My card is an 8600m gt

[apaige]

Exactly the same here with my 8600GT. I'm curious to know if the fix in question is available in the new release.

[jcornwall]

OK, I tested the new release and the fix isn't in there.

[Gregor A.]

Simply scroll on this page:
http://shame.tuxfamily.org/repo/?cat=1

Firefox 3 is released... And yes it is slower.
Which driver will fix the problem?

It is unbearably slow with:
/usr/bin/nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

It is little faster on some nvidia cards (but not on GF8xxx) with:
/usr/bin/nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=0 -a GlyphCache=1

[Gusar]

Originally Posted by Gregor A.

Simply scroll on this page:
http://shame.tuxfamily.org/repo/?cat=1

Firefox 3 is released... And yes it is slower.

That page uses a fixed background. This makes it a Firefox issue, nothing to do with the nvidia driver. Search forums.mozillazine.org, the Firefox Builds section, you'll find plenty of discussion about it.