getting Firefox to exploit GPU
By default, on Linux, Firefox does not use the GPU for rendering web pages. You can enable this by a setting in about:config gfx.webrender.all Change that from false to true I don't actually know that much about the performance impact. Apparently Mozilla leaves this off just to minimize support problems. It isn't that the Firefox code is buggy. There have been times where there were problems with some components the Linux graphics stack. I'm trying this with my notebook now. Why? I learned about this by asking a Mozilla guy before a meeting and it was easier and quicker to change my browser setting than it was to write a note. I'd love to hear any experience with this setting.
Hey Hugh, I want to try this out on my GPU. Is there an easy way to benchmark performance in firefox? Alex. On 2019-10-04 12:26 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
By default, on Linux, Firefox does not use the GPU for rendering web pages. You can enable this by a setting in about:config gfx.webrender.all Change that from false to true
I don't actually know that much about the performance impact.
Apparently Mozilla leaves this off just to minimize support problems. It isn't that the Firefox code is buggy. There have been times where there were problems with some components the Linux graphics stack.
I'm trying this with my notebook now. Why? I learned about this by asking a Mozilla guy before a meeting and it was easier and quicker to change my browser setting than it was to write a note.
I'd love to hear any experience with this setting. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
| From: Alex Volkov via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | I want to try this out on my GPU. Is there an easy way to benchmark | performance in firefox? An excellent question. I don't know anything about that. I'm sure that there are lots of benchmarks "out there". - many will stress JavaScript performance -- unaffected, I would expect - my *guess* that this won't affect playing videos because I suspect that these are not rendered by WebRender (I don't actually know) Maybe this is a topic for questions at our next meeting "The state of Mozilla with Mike Hoye". But having raw data ahead of time would be great. ================ I did a bit of googling. I found this: <https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/> This explains that WebRender is new Rust code that replaces a whole bunch of old code in the for rendering web pages. <https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-ships-webrender-mvp/> This seems to be a wiki page for the project <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render> Some performance results (surely on Windows): <https://metrics.mozilla.com/webrender/dashboard_amd.html>
What a trove of information on firefox capabilities. This one is particularly interesting.
Some performance results (surely on Windows): <https://metrics.mozilla.com/webrender/dashboard_amd.html>
Web render seems to be already enabled in Windows for Nvidia and AMD cards. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
Maybe this is a topic for questions at our next meeting "The state of Mozilla with Mike Hoye". But having raw data ahead of time would be great.
Yes, this is definitely an good question to ask Mike. Alex. On 2019-10-04 1:31 p.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: Alex Volkov via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| I want to try this out on my GPU. Is there an easy way to benchmark | performance in firefox?
An excellent question. I don't know anything about that. I'm sure that there are lots of benchmarks "out there".
- many will stress JavaScript performance -- unaffected, I would expect
- my *guess* that this won't affect playing videos because I suspect that these are not rendered by WebRender (I don't actually know)
================
I did a bit of googling. I found this: <https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/>
This explains that WebRender is new Rust code that replaces a whole bunch of old code in the for rendering web pages. <https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-ships-webrender-mvp/>
This seems to be a wiki page for the project <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render>
Some performance results (surely on Windows): <https://metrics.mozilla.com/webrender/dashboard_amd.html> --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
| From: Alex Volkov via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | Web render seems to be already enabled in Windows for Nvidia and AMD cards. | | https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where I think that the title over the tables is wrong. "Where have we shipped WebRender?" should be "Where have we shipped WebRender and enabled it by default?" "blocklist" isn't well explained, but my main desktop is on it. I use the proprietary Nvidia driver. Every year or so I try Nouveau, but it crashes for me. Probably due to the unreasonable number of Firefox tabs I leave open. It is interesting that each column of the Linux table has identical data, except that Intel cannot handle large screens.
participants (2)
-
Alex Volkov -
D. Hugh Redelmeier