what is the point of hardware acceleration on firefox?

skanky · 25 Jun 2011 at 11:16

apart from making my gtx560 run at higher speeds, whats the point? its not like i'm playing 3d intensive games on it or anything.

can i switch it off somehow?

cokecan · 25 Jun 2011 at 11:30

I believe it uses your GPU to render the webpage, taking the strain off your CPU and generally making the whole page feel snappier/load quicker (obviously it is still kinda dependent on your net connection speed)

paradigm · 25 Jun 2011 at 11:34

On Firefox 5, in about:config, webgl.disabled, change it to true.

3dcandy · 25 Jun 2011 at 17:22

and turn off hardware rendering in options>advanced>browsing. It does slow down the browsing though

Mr.Fantastic · 25 Jun 2011 at 17:29

Load this page with HA turned on, scrolling should be very smooth, now turn HA off then reload the page and try to scroll with getting bad stuttering, I'd rather have smoother web page scrolling over a little rise in temps

skanky · 26 Jun 2011 at 09:00

Mr.Fantastic said:
Load this page with HA turned on, scrolling should be very smooth, now turn HA off then reload the page and try to scroll with getting bad stuttering, I'd rather have smoother web page scrolling over a little rise in temps

tried that, could not see the difference with it off/on, let it all load the images, no sign of skipping or stuttering when pressing page down really quickly to scroll down.

i5 2500k @ 4.5ghz and gtx 560ti, 1920x1200 res, using firefox 5 currently with 28 tabs open --if it was stuttering on that, i'd be severely disappointed..

its definitely staying off for me (some nice ingame pics in that post though)

darael · 26 Jun 2011 at 10:19

Mr.Fantastic said:
Load this page with HA turned on, scrolling should be very smooth, now turn HA off then reload the page and try to scroll with getting bad stuttering, I'd rather have smoother web page scrolling over a little rise in temps

One of the first things I did when FF4 came out, was disable HA. But for the sake of curisosity I tried that page with it off - not a single stutter.

Less heat = win.

Mattus · 26 Jun 2011 at 18:49

You're turning it off for the sake of (slightly) lower temps? That is ridiculous. How is it a bad thing if your GPU does what it's supposed to do by taking the load off your CPU when rendering things on your display? Your GPU is good to 100c or more, and you're stressing about a modest temp rise :confused:

darael · 26 Jun 2011 at 19:14

Mattus said:
You're turning it off for the sake of (slightly) lower temps? That is ridiculous. How is it a bad thing if your GPU does what it's supposed to do by taking the load off your CPU when rendering things on your display? Your GPU is good to 100c or more, and you're stressing about a modest temp rise

Because the browser performed perfectly before HA was enabled in FF4. Heat is generated by power - this is needlessly wasting power while generating heat.

Mattus · 26 Jun 2011 at 19:17

darael said:
Because the browser performed perfectly before HA was enabled in FF4. Heat is generated by power - this is needlessly wasting power while generating heat.

But it's simply doing work on your GPU which would otherwise be done on your CPU :confused:

The calculations necessary to render the page have to be performed somewhere!

darael · 26 Jun 2011 at 19:58

Mattus said:
But it's simply doing work on your GPU which would otherwise be done on your CPU The calculations necessary to render the page have to be performed somewhere!

You pretty much answered your own post. They are done on my CPU - no noisy fans spinning up and down to cool the GPU - I notice no performance drop.

So, what's the problem?