[SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

snufkin · 2012-09-02 21:14:08

I've been searching the interwebs somewhat but can't find a definitive answer to my question: Is it possible to enable Firefox's hardware acceleration feature in a Linux environment?

$ pacman -Qi firefox
Name : firefox
Version : 15.0-1
$ pacman -Qi xf86-video-ati
Name : xf86-video-ati
Version : 1:6.14.6-1

about:support shows me the following, so I know at least that Firefox is able to detect my hardware.

Graphics
Adapter Description
X.Org -- Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV770
Vendor ID
X.Org
Device ID
Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV770
Driver Version
2.1 Mesa 8.0.4
WebGL Renderer
X.Org -- Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV770 -- 2.1 Mesa 8.0.4
GPU Accelerated Windows
0
AzureBackend
skia

I've of course enabled hardware acceleration in the preferences, and I even set layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true in about:config. When forced, "GPU Accelerated Windows" shows the correct number.

Edit:
And oh, I probably should mention this too. Forcing acceleration renders Firefox quite useless. Strange graphical phenomena everywhere.

Last edited by snufkin (2012-10-19 12:52:38)

luvfree · 2012-09-03 01:58:16

reading this post was educational for me. I had no idea these settings were possible.
I tried your settings on code.google.com and found my nvidia GeForce 6150 actually performed better without these set.
something I'll definitely be experimenting with.
I do know there is a setting for adobe flash to use acceleration.
open /etc/adobe/mms.config and uncomment or add this line.
EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1

ConnorBehan · 2012-09-03 03:45:10

What is the point of this, if you don't mind me asking? When you visit a page, firefox renders most of it with cairo and cairo itself supports hardware acceleration.

luvfree · 2012-09-03 12:45:54

ConnorBehan wrote:

What is the point of this, if you don't mind me asking? When you visit a page, firefox renders most of it with cairo and cairo itself supports hardware acceleration.

this might be the answer to his question.
is cairo installed on all systems?

kokoko3k · 2012-09-03 13:01:00

snufkin wrote:

Edit:
And oh, I probably should mention this too. Forcing acceleration renders Firefox quite useless. Strange graphical phenomena everywhere.

That's why accelerated compositing is not enabled by default and it answers your question too!

ConnorBehan wrote:

What is the point of this, if you don't mind me asking? When you visit a page, firefox renders most of it with cairo and cairo itself supports hardware acceleration.

Since some versions Firefox uses skia, not cairo:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=702158

Maybe something like text is using cairo or cairo is a backend for skia?

Last edited by kokoko3k (2012-09-03 13:05:07)

x33a · 2012-09-03 14:42:50

Take a look here to see if your card is blacklisted or not:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/B … cs_Drivers

bwat47 · 2012-09-03 21:29:20

by default firefox does have some "content" acceleration using xrender, but opengl accelerated layers and opengl acceleration is not enabled by default yet, because its very buggy under linux. You can try running a nightly build and forcing opengl layers and see if its improved at all on those newer builds. opengl layers is finally starting to become usable on my intel card in nightly, they recently fixed a bug that caused flickering and artifacts

Also I've noticed chrome/chromium's opengl acceleration is in a pretty usable state (at least on my intel card, haven't tried ati) if you are open to trying those browsers.

Last edited by bwat47 (2012-09-03 21:30:51)

kokoko3k · 2012-09-04 06:39:30

Even so, GPU acceleration may lead to lower performance, depending on the cpu and gpu power.
In chromium and firefox i've faster scrolling when i use pure cpu power on a 9500GT vs E7500@2.93GHz.
The same happens with an integrated i945GM vs atom n270@1.6ghz.

snufkin · 2012-10-19 10:18:09

Oh my. I had totally forgotten about this thread, sorry about that. Anyway, here's some replies:

ConnorBehan wrote:

What is the point of this, if you don't mind me asking? When you visit a page, firefox renders most of it with cairo and cairo itself supports hardware acceleration.

True, though when rendering more intense scenes (1080p YouTube videos for example), it gets very laggy. Even worse than when using Flash player actually (CPU is Intel Q9550).

luvfree wrote:

ConnorBehan wrote:
What is the point of this, if you don't mind me asking? When you visit a page, firefox renders most of it with cairo and cairo itself supports hardware acceleration.
this might be the answer to his question.
is cairo installed on all systems?

Yes, Cairo is installed.

x33a wrote:

Take a look here to see if your card is blacklisted or not:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/B … cs_Drivers

Card is not blocked, although I noticed that GL acceleration is disabled by default.

bwat47 wrote:

by default firefox does have some "content" acceleration using xrender, but opengl accelerated layers and opengl acceleration is not enabled by default yet, because its very buggy under linux. You can try running a nightly build and forcing opengl layers and see if its improved at all on those newer builds. opengl layers is finally starting to become usable on my intel card in nightly, they recently fixed a bug that caused flickering and artifacts
Also I've noticed chrome/chromium's opengl acceleration is in a pretty usable state (at least on my intel card, haven't tried ati) if you are open to trying those browsers.

I'll try a nightly and some other browsers and then return with some results. Thanks for the advice.

Update:
If I enable layers.acceleration.force-enabled on Firefox 16, and watch a HD HTML5 video on YouTube, it does NOT lag. However, enabling this also brings some strange graphical glitches (not as bad as the ones in version 15 though). When I use the nightly build, there are no more glitches (yay)! And the HD videos still doesn't lag. The fishbowl demo is still really laggy with a high fish count though, but then again I guess it doesn't matter to me.

So yeah, the solution is to use the nightly or wait for the next Firefox release.

Last edited by snufkin (2012-10-19 12:52:25)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-02 21:14:08

[SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#2 2012-09-03 01:58:16

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#3 2012-09-03 03:45:10

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#4 2012-09-03 12:45:54

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#5 2012-09-03 13:01:00

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#6 2012-09-03 14:42:50

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#7 2012-09-03 21:29:20

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#8 2012-09-04 06:39:30

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

#9 2012-10-19 10:18:09

Re: [SOLVED] Hardware acceleration on Firefox - is it possible?

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