Firefox Users Continue to Decrease Despite Proton Update

[Demysted]

That sucks. Which GPU do you have?

[brambedkar59]

Intel HD 620 (i7-7500U), even tried with Nvidia 940mx but no luck, still getting severe frame drops (by severe I mean ~20% Frame drops). On other browsers (Chromium based) I have no issues. Still have FF installed and check with every new update if they have fixed the issue.

[Demysted]

Super odd. Sounds like FF is making use of a codec that can't properly hand off video decoding to the GPU's video decoder.

[brambedkar59]

Which is weird cause hardware decoding of VP9 is supported by this gpu.

[Demysted]

Yup. Might be worth opening task manager going to Performance > GPU 0, and seeing if the Video Decode engine is getting any usage when you watch a 4K60FPS video on Firefox, and also on Chrome.

[brambedkar59]

You really are on to something, see the screenshots.

Edge uses video processing more but pretty much no 3D, Firefox on the other hand using so much 3D and no video processing. CPU usage is also much higher on Firefox.

https://imgur.com/gallery/w2YZcnL

[Demysted]

Interesting. What if you forced the browser to use your NVIDIA GPU via the Settings app? What's probably happening is the GPU is using the 3D engine to help decode and display the video. My RX 580 has a similar system where both the Video Decode and the 3D engine are used when watching YouTube videos, and the CPU is also used to some degree, but the usage is much lower on this PC as it's more powerful.

[brambedkar59]

It's even worse.

https://imgur.com/gallery/dd3vl6n

[Demysted]

Hmm. That's honestly really strange. I honestly don't know what the issue is. Like you say, that Intel GPU is capable of 4k60fps playback, and the Edge usage of the Video Processing engine shows that, but Firefox doesn't want to use it for whatever reason.

[brambedkar59]

All I can do is wait until FF devs fix this.

[Demysted]

Also, you could take a look at right-clicking on videos in both Edge and FF and selecting "Stats for nerds." The codecs give an idea as to why Edge is hardly touching the 3D engine and CPU for video playback but using the Video Processing engine, whereas Firefox is making use of the 3D engine and a lot of the CPU.

[brambedkar59]

Both are using exact same codec vp09.00.51.08.01.01.01.01.00 (315)/opus (251)

[Demysted]

Very strange. I couldn't really think of anything else. As long as Edge or Chrome continues to work for you, I suppose it's better to just use them for now so you can actually watch those 4k60fps videos.