CPU overload when watching videos with Firefox (Youtube)

Support
1

Hello,

Just new to Linux and Manjaro. I have been testing Linux for the past week, distro hoping a lot and stopped at Manjaro.
I am using KDE. Love Manjaro for its simplicity and ease of use. Also the availability of software through AUR is a killer.

I have noticed screen tearing with a fresh install of Manjaro KDE. As you can see below I am using a Haswell-ULT integrated graphic card using the i915 driver. Not a brand new laptop I may add :smile:

lspci -nnk | grep -i vga -A3
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0a16] (rev 0b)
        DeviceName:  Onboard IGD
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:05cb]
        Kernel driver in use: i915

The only resolve to my screen tearing was to add a couple of lines of code in ~./drirc.

<device screen="0" driver="dri2">
	<application name="Default">
		<option name="vblank_mode" value="0"/>
	</application>
</device>

Unfortunately, a side effect (I am calling it a side effect but may be it isnā€™t) is cpu overload when watching videos using Firefox. I did not find a solution to this problem and was wondering if any of you guys would know anything about this CPU overload when watching videos using Firefox on Youtube. My laptop is not a powerful one and I need to be very careful as far as resources.

2

The same thing happened to me.
Use cpupower-gui to control the cpu frequency
https:// wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling
I currently use arch linux because I couldnā€™t solve that problem in manjaro.

3

Ouch ā€¦ so dri2 only ?
I was going to suggest making sure hw-accel is working ā€¦ but if its that legacy I dont know if you can leverage vaapi in firefox.

4

Maybe more system info will be useful:
inxi --full --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host
ā€¦ looks like I have the same graphics controller (same revision and driver) & donā€™t experience this (although memory usage is another matter).

The only things I can suggest at this point is to download the videos and view in an external player, or limit the video resolution (although youā€™ve probably tried that already) or maybe something like uBlock Origin might help by blocking unwanted page content.

5

Thanks guys for your reply. Sorry as I am new to Linux and learning as I go alongā€¦

As far as the hw-accel I seem to have it covered

grep -iE 'vdpau | dri driver' /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[    12.876] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: i965
[    12.876] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: va_gl

I still get this cpu overload when watching those videos using Youtube. I checked using Smplayer and I am still getting a high cpu hit.

@MariachiLoco
I am managing the freq but the issue is still happening even the freq is lowered.

6

made somewhat of a difference disabling
media.ffvpx.enabled to false
I guess when you are old, you are oldā€¦

7

Check if you have hardware acceleration enabled,here is a mini tutorial on Firefox - ArchWiki

1 Like
8

I do - See post above.
I donā€™t think I should be looking too hard into this.
My laptop is simply oldā€¦

9

Just added some options and posting for visibility. Web renderer has to be activated for compositing.
gfx.webrender.all=true (use OpenGL rendering)
Also added env variable MOZ_X11_EGL=1 to Xorg.
Down to 8% cpu utilization when watching Videos with Youtube at 1080P. I can live with that :joy:

1 Like
10

From ~100 ? Great.
I am glad it was that simple - dont forget to check if you still need to use dri2 :wink:

11

From 60%
Forgot about dri2ā€¦ The thing is dri2 solved my tearing issue. Will disable it and check of the tearing is still present.

PS: Definitely overwhelming the Linux space :crazy_face:

12

Disable dri2 and now using va_gl. This is even working better than I would have expected due to the age of my machine. I cannot ask much more than that :relaxed:

grep -iE 'vdpau | dri driver' /var/log/Xorg.0.log        
[    12.178] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: i965
[    12.178] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: va_gl
13

The hardware is old enough that maybe it works better.
But if you can use/configure dri3 to work properly it would be be preferred.

PS ā€¦ thats not really how I would manage it either.
Besides the dri2 and disabling vblank (disabling vertical sync), which I would avoid if possibleā€¦
You probably want to use Xorg config.
Please see this link for more: Intel graphics - ArchWiki

But here are 2 examples ā€¦

  1. This is just a mirror of what you already posted, but in xorg config file:
    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf 
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
  Option "DRI" "2"
  Option "VSync" "false"
  ## you may even want the older accel method
  #Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection
  1. Something closer to what I would suggest generally would be something like this:
    /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf 
Section "Device"
  Identifier "Intel Graphics"
  Driver "intel"
  Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

But for more info see the rest of the archwiki page from the link.


(EDIT)

Oh great. Well ā€¦ I hope some of the above is instructive anyways. Cheers.

14

Thank you for your help.
I read the entire wiki regarding the tearing issue and high cpu overload. I had configure X11 the same way you have described it (Ref ArchWiki) the second time around. The first time around I had used dri2 and disabled the vblank. Both got rid of the tearingā€¦ I have now got rid of dri2.

On a side note, I am wondering if the tweaks that came after to palliate the cpu overload when watching videos are not as effective to correct the tearing ? Essentially using hw-accel through vaapi with Firefoxā€¦

15

I am sorry I am not sure I follow.
They are different things but can/should be used in conjunction.
Without hardware accel, but with powerful enough hardware you might still get obnoxious cpu usage - but not enough to bother your workflow, and not necessarily tearing.
On the other hand, intels ā€˜tear-freeā€™ option and its gpu could be working as well as they can, but arent being properly leveraged in the browser.
In any case at the end ā€¦ with older/weaker hardware you are often in a position of needing to squeeze out a few more horses, or to make sure to set that one funny config for that one funny model, etc.

Oddly enough here it seems to actually be a case of it generically working pretty well, even with the defaults (ā€œTearFreeā€ should be default if all other things are working) - just needed firefox to use hardware instead of translating slowly through the software.

16

Thanks for your explanation. The learning curve is steep on my side :pleading_face:
My first issue was the tearing. For ex, when I was scrolling a page using Firefox, I was seeing tearing of the page. I decided to investigate and digging some more, I found the Arch wiki. Changed X11 config according the the said wiki. A side effect after that change was a massive load on my CPU while watching videos using Youtube with Firefox and SMPlayer. I decided then to go the route of using vaapi. To make it short, installed driver and changed Firefox config. Out of curiosity (I am very curiousā€¦), I was wondering if the vaapi protocol could not resolve the tearing I had in the first placeā€¦From your answer, I gather the tearing and the hw-accel are two different thingsā€¦
In any case and not to overwhelm me much more, everything is now working as expected and seriously a 1000 times better than when I had windows running on this old laptopā€¦ I am quite happyā€¦ :smiley:

17

I did this but I was confused at first how to do it.

Its:
about:config in the address bar of Firefox and search the the term.

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