GPU acceleration + old drivers = :(
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Over the last few months, we’ve made a lot of progress using graphics hardware (commonly referred to as the GPU) to make Chrome faster and more power-efficient. However, as we’ve rolled out features like WebGL and GPU-accelerated HTML5 video, we noticed a troubling trend: users with old graphics drivers experienced a significant increase in crashes when using these features. Because stability is one of Google Chrome’s core principles, we’ve recently become stricter about requiring up-to-date drivers and graphics hardware by adding ranges of old drivers to Google Chrome’s software rendering list.
Developers should continue to ensure that the software-rendered version of their sites work properly for users without GPU-accelerated browsers, so we expect most content to continue to function normally for Google Chrome users with out-of-date drivers -- albeit, without the same performance you might expect from Chrome. WebGL content on out-of-date systems will currently not display, but we are working to provide a software path so that these systems can run basic 3D applications.
As our ability to determine whether a machine can reliably use GPU features improves, we hope to extend hardware acceleration support to more and more users. Here are some steps you can take to maximize the chances that Chrome will run fully hardware-accelerated on your computer:
- Use the latest major version of your operating system (such as Windows 7 or Mac OS 10.6)
- Install all system updates and driver updates that are available for your system.
22 comments:
Pat Wilson said...
Welcome to hell, gentlemen.
March 1, 2011 11:10 AM
KORraN said...
"all system updates and driver updates" + wrong link = :(
March 1, 2011 11:11 AM
Henry Bridge said...
@Pat, well thank you! :)
@KORraN, the title of the article is different, but the content on the page provides help with updating your drivers on Windows and Mac. In what way was it wrong for you?
March 1, 2011 11:25 AM
Rob said...
Please publish a public list of incompatible chipsets / drivers.
Or, in someway inform the user of the status of GPU acceleration.
Example:
Chrome > Settings > GPU
"Your GPU is Verified"
"Your GPU has an outdated driver :(, get the new one! :)"
"Your GPU is incompatible, with GPU acceleration :(, but we're working hard for software support."
"Your GPU is untested. Click here to run our automated tests."
March 1, 2011 11:50 AM
Gord Wait said...
Yup, they stepped into the tar pit of graphics drivers all right.
Unfortunately, their advice isn't enough. I need a "disable hardware GPU option in Chrome".
Here is what happened to me on my work XP machine:
* Chromium updated a few weeks ago
* Youtube videos in Chromium now bluescreen my PC
* I updated the video drivers to the new release
* Youtube works again but...
* My PC locks up randomly in other software, to the point of being unusable
* I rolled back the video drivers so I can use the machine for work
* No watching youtube in my Chromium browser anymore.
IE the NEW driver for the video card is an unstable piece of trash.
March 1, 2011 11:53 AM
triune said...
I second the request to see the list of unsupported hardware. I run a Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT at home and often at times the entire Chrome window turns into a bowl of spaghetti graphically ~ goo.gl/sfHXa
March 1, 2011 12:26 PM
George said...
Hardware acceleration is disabled by default I think, to enable it go to about:flags
Google Chrome is fast, but it looks like IE9 is getting much faster in hardware acceleration
March 1, 2011 12:35 PM
zamanian said...
Henry Bridge, your wife wouldn't happen to be Sandy Bridge, would she?
March 1, 2011 12:42 PM
Henry Bridge said...
@Rob, thanks for your suggestion! We are working on adding an easier to read status of GPU-acceleration (what's on/off, why) to the about:gpu page.
@Gord Wait, you can start chrome with --disable-accelerated-layers --disable-webgl --disable-accelerated-video etc if you're seeing issues with the latest versions of Chrome. We'll also add an entry to about:flags to make this easier soon. Please also file a bug report at crbug.com!
@triune took a look at the bug and commented, let's try to figure out what's going on.
@George, "hardware acceleration" is a broad term that encompasses many features in Chrome, some of which are on by default and some of which are still in development behind flags. Currently on by default: Chrome 9 has accelerated WebGL, 10 has accelerated HTML 5 video and 11 has accelerated CSS. The good news is that each of these releases is just 6 weeks away from the other. :)
March 1, 2011 12:55 PM
Henry Bridge said...
@zamanian harr harr :)
March 1, 2011 12:59 PM
jwatte_food said...
How could this possibly be news to anyone who knows PC 3D? Intel and laptop vendors ship hardware, collect money, and then leave the user SOL with crappy drivers that can't be updated.
I really had high hopes for the Google folks being able to solve this problem, possessing a combination of political and technology clout. If this is the "answer" then reliable 3D on the web is a long, long ways off.
March 1, 2011 1:41 PM
Adrian/Adrain said...
Meanwhile, here in the real world people have laptops with chipsets stuck at whatever half-working driver was installed when it was shipped. Where the chipset vendor won't give you drivers and tells you to go to the laptop vendor, and the laptop vendor is only concerned with shipping new units at the greatest profit margin and never updates the available drivers.
March 1, 2011 2:29 PM
Henry Bridge said...
@jwatte_food, Adrian,
We'll be working around as many bugs in popular configurations as we can over time, but we'd rather not render something than cause crashes, so we have to start by disabling unstable configurations. As mentioned in the post, we are also adding a software rendering path so everyone will at least see something.
March 1, 2011 3:40 PM
Omega X said...
And many thought that Mozilla was lazy for blacklisting bad chipsets/drivers. ITs a real problem that need to be fixed by GPU providers.
March 1, 2011 5:27 PM
todd said...
Why not use the fact that Chrome runs the renderer in a separate process to allow it crash. After a crash use the "wisdom" of all the users to inform which drivers to avoid. If the site crashes using a specific driver switch the browser to use the CPU as a fallback - reloading the page... It obviously would be trickier... but thinking about how we build websites with fallback in mind... perhaps the browser needs to do the same...
March 1, 2011 6:12 PM
Madis said...
What about r300g?
If I ignored your blacklist(software-rendering list)chromium didn't crash anymore (like it used to), but the all the 3d apps were slow (e.g bodybrowser).
March 1, 2011 7:16 PM
mcbro said...
This probably explains why chrome crashes all the games I play if left running in the background. Notable offenders are Starcraft 2 and Dragon Age Origins.
March 1, 2011 10:36 PM
Sarath said...
Do you mean that the software itself will determine and use the hardware performance if available? Do we still have to use the composite switch? I'm running the latest dev version. the h/w accelaration websites are so smooth in chrome now.
March 2, 2011 4:32 AM
Alvaro said...
A couple days ago WebGL stopped working in Chrome 11 dev. The I saw this post and a changelog entry saying "GPU acceleration and WebGL disabled for Windows XP".
What is going on here?!! I have GeForce 96xx, and WebGL was working perfectly in Chrome (and still does in Firefox). Please, turn it back on!
March 3, 2011 1:27 AM
rhodesmarket said...
very good guys!! very good!
March 3, 2011 3:39 AM
Henry Bridge said...
@sarath for any GPU accelerated compositing is currently on by default in Chrome 11, so you don't need to use a flag. However, if your drivers are old, Chrome may turn off accelerated compositing to protect system stability.
@Alvaro, we're restoring acceleration to XP systems with recent drivers, but we strongly recommend upgrading your OS -- the older driver model for XP means that driver bugs can cause much more severe crashes.
March 4, 2011 1:57 PM
törzsmókus said...
@KORraN, add "&hl=en" (without the quotes :P) to the URL and voilá, there it is.
btw, this has been a major annoyance for us non-USEnglish...
March 5, 2011 5:02 AM
Post a Comment