Slow Firefox-Performance with NVIDA

[Gregor A.]

Originally Posted by Gusar

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.

But no problems on Windows and no problems on Linux with GF7950 and:
/usr/bin/nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=0 -a GlyphCache=1

[dmiceman]

I'm using 6600gt (so, no GlyphCache) and found what FF3 is much slower that FF2 on this page: http://fastra.ua.ac.be/en/specs.html .

I think this is nvidia problem because:

1. Users with integrated intel video have no problems at all (yes, I'm awaiting Larrabee)
2. CPU being eaten by X server, not firefox
3. Seems what windows users have no such problem too

[Zephiris]

On my machine (Geforce 8600GT, 171.06 drivers), scrolling on that example page (http://shame.tuxfamily.org/repo/?cat=1) makes the X server CPU usage go up a lot and everything becomes fairly unresponsive. Setting to InitialPixmapPlacement=0 with Geforce 8600GT makes it less slow, but Firefox itself is then slow with it instead. The X server doesn't do anything abnormal or stop responding in that case. It seems like Firefox must be exposing a regression in the driver's logic in that case.

[Linuxhippy]

Originally Posted by Gusar

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.

That just means firefox needs to do more *active* painting, instead of just copying the entire page and just rendering the undercovered are.

lg Clemens

[jkx]

After a little chat with firefox dev, they told me the main difference between FF2 and FF3 for the rendering speed is Xrender, which normaly boost the rendering engine, but can have side effects with some cards.

I decided to run a benchmark of NVIDIA drivers with the xrenderbenchmark, the results are here :
=> http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/290.html

As you can figure, the NVIDIA drivers are pretty slow when it has to deal with large pixels area ..

[SpartanJ]

Originally Posted by jkx

I decided to run a benchmark of NVIDIA drivers with the xrenderbenchmark, the results are here :
=> http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/290.html

As you can figure, the NVIDIA drivers are pretty slow when it has to deal with large pixels area ..

Totally depressing... thank's for those benchmarks

[txf]

Originally Posted by jkx

After a little chat with firefox dev, they told me the main difference between FF2 and FF3 for the rendering speed is Xrender, which normaly boost the rendering engine, but can have side effects with some cards.

I decided to run a benchmark of NVIDIA drivers with the xrenderbenchmark, the results are here :
=> http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/290.html

As you can figure, the NVIDIA drivers are pretty slow when it has to deal with large pixels area ..

damn, I've never seen xrenderbenchmark results with ati cards before. I knew that the intel driver was good but The ati gpl driver kills at xrender acceleration on that card too. Now if only I could get an mxm ati card I would dump my 8600 in a flash.

in the second benchmark nvidia is slow because it is not accelerated by the gpu. According to nvidia these are not commonly used xrender operations therefore they don't bother accelerating them (but probably the reason 2d on nvidia sucks). Seeing as an ati card with can perform nearly as well as an intel card then frankly I don't see much of a reason to stay with nvidia in the future.

Now I just need to find someone with an ati 2xxx series to see results like those with my own eyes.

EDIT: Just read the specs on the test system, don't tell me a Q6600 was used on card and an E6600 on another...which would completely invalidate the results

[moenchmeyer]

I just installed FF 3.0 on an Opensuse 10.3 system. I use a Geforce 7800 GTX with Nvidias driver 173.14.05. (KDE version 3.5.9.9).

I do not see any performance problems with FF 3.0 and scrolling large pages. I tried e.g. the page "http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/06/15/1258238.shtml" which was mentioned in the contribution of "Blg P" above.

On the contrary: FF 3.0 seems to be significantly faster than FF 2.0.

[memeyou]

my firefox had ui freezing issues until i updated xulrunner - perhaps this isn't an nvidia issue?

[Dragoran]

Originally Posted by memeyou

my firefox had ui freezing issues until i updated xulrunner - perhaps this isn't an nvidia issue?

no, its the ext3 fsync bug.

[Gregor A.]

Originally Posted by moenchmeyer

I just installed FF 3.0 on an Opensuse 10.3 system. I use a Geforce 7800 GTX with Nvidias driver 173.14.05. (KDE version 3.5.9.9).

I do not see any performance problems with FF 3.0 and scrolling large pages.

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

[jkx]

Originally Posted by txf

EDIT: Just read the specs on the test system, don't tell me a Q6600 was used on card and an E6600 on another...which would completely invalidate the results

The Intel benchmark was run on a E6600, but the ATI and Nvidia one were both run on a Q6600 (same mobo, ram, or distro) ...

(Intel only sell GMA on mobo, so I can't benchmark it on the same system, that's it.)

And remember Q6600 and E6600 are quite the same, only with more core. but multi core aren't used here.

Bye ..