Question Chrome uses GPU and slows down gaming

[degm191297]

Hi.

I always play while watching youtube. I got my graphics card (GTX 970) connected to my main monitor via HDMI. My second monitor is connected to my integrated graphics card (intel hd4600). I've never ran into this problem. When I play a youtube video in my second monitor (connected to the integrated gpu) and then start playing on my main monitor(connected to gtx970) the game decreases its performance.

Yesterday, while playing some games i noticed they where sluggish and that the fps were below 60 (even though it shouldn't). In the case of The Witcher 3, in the exact same point and without the video playing, i got 74-75 fps. With the video playing, 48-49. This also happens with other games.

Thanks to task manager I was able to see that chrome was using my MAIN GPU (gtx 970, 10% percentage), and if i paused or closed the video, the game would performance nicely again.

I know that I have hardware acceleration enabled on chrome and that's why it is using my GPU. But that option has always been enabled and I never experienced an issue like this. Obviously, if I disable this option everything goes flawlessly.

• I've reset to default Nvidia control panel options.
• I've set chrome to use integrated gpu in windows 10 settings, even tho it keeps using gtx970 and consuming a higher performance.
• I reinstalled chrome.

A friend of mine checked if he had this very problem. With the same settings in nvidia control panel, and the same video playing in his secondary monitor, he didn't experience any performance decreasing while gaming.

I know the fastest solution is to disable hardware acceleration in chrome, but I don't really know why this is happening now and not before, I don't want to disable hardware acceleration in chrome is the problem is somewhere else.

EDIT: I've seen this shouldn't be happening, not only because of my previous experience but also thanks to this: View: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/6le4kr/do_extra_monitors_really_lower_fps_i_ran_a_series/

Check that the tests that involves playing youtube on a second monitor don't really show a decreasing on fps. At least not as big one as i have (from 74 to 48).

I hope you can help me, thanks.

 

[rgd1101]

Test disable hardware acceleration?

 

[anotherdrew]

but I don't really know why this is happening now and not before, I don't want to disable hardware acceleration in chrome is the problem is somewhere else.

Chrome is updated all the time. I bet an update changed the behavior to what you are seeing. Is this a problem or working like designed? Why don't you want to disable hardware acceleration? I have it disabled on all my computes (had mouse lag issues when it was enabled) and have no issues. Yes, it will work the CPU harder, but since most games are GPU dependent rather than CPU dependent, I would go with the CPU working harder over the GPU working harder.

 

[degm191297]

Test disable hardware acceleration?

Yes, I already did. My concerns are in the fact that this didn't happen before, and if it's happening it's because something is not performing as it should... I am more worried about why is this happening rather than the solution (and I would like to solve this too).

Thank you

Chrome is updated all the time. I bet an update changed the behavior to what you are seeing. Is this a problem or working like designed? Why don't you want to disable hardware acceleration? I have it disabled on all my computes (had mouse lag issues when it was enabled) and have no issues. Yes, it will work the CPU harder, but since most games are GPU dependent rather than CPU dependent, I would go with the CPU working harder over the GPU working harder.

But if it's a chrome update issue, why is my friend not experiencing this? However, what you are saying makes sense... if nobody brings light to this I'll end up disabling it, and i am pretty sure i wont notice anything. I just wanted to know why this is happening. Thank you very much for your help.

 

[rgd1101]

did the nvidia driver got updated? you could try a older driver?

 

[degm191297]

did the nvidia driver got updated? you could try a older driver?

Yes, a week ago or so. I rolled back the drivers yesterday, but there was no change. Also i tried to update them again and no change.

Thank you

 

[anotherdrew]

Rolling back the driver was a good thing to try. You can also try an older chrome version (I have never used slimjet and know almost nothing about it). It is also possible there was a change in the YouTube code and the Windows May update (version 1903) has been propagating out to systems and there is the intel video driver also. It's hard to pinpoint where something changed when you have so many moving parts. Why you are having this issue and not your friend .. IDK ... You expect 2 identical systems to behave the same and 98% of the time they do.

Crazy idea ... I'm sure your GTX 970 has multiple outputs ... what happens if you disable the iGPU and plug both monitors into the video card. Just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.

Bottom line ... I don't think anything is broken. I think it's working as someone planned, but their plan is not working that well for you.

 

[degm191297]

Rolling back the driver was a good thing to try. You can also try an older chrome version (I have never used slimjet and know almost nothing about it). It is also possible there was a change in the YouTube code and the Windows May update (version 1903) has been propagating out to systems and there is the intel video driver also. It's hard to pinpoint where something changed when you have so many moving parts. Why you are having this issue and not your friend .. IDK ... You expect 2 identical systems to behave the same and 98% of the time they do.

Crazy idea ... I'm sure your GTX 970 has multiple outputs ... what happens if you disable the iGPU and plug both monitors into the video card. Just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.

Bottom line ... I don't think anything is broken. I think it's working as someone planned, but their plan is not working that well for you.

Hi, thanks for the help.

EDIT: Before anything else, I tried to play a youtube video on EDGE instead of chrome. I noticed that when I play a video on chrome it says on task manager "GPU - 3D". But on edge, the same video on task manager says "GPU - Video decode". Thats why there's no problem when playing the video on EDGE. With chrome, it is somehow using 3D instead of video decoding, and that's the problem. So we can say the problem relies on chrome. There mus be a way to make it use gpu as video decoding instead of 3D.

EDIT#2: I've tried to reset chrome settings to default. No changes. It still says GPU - 3D, and decreases FPS in games.

I've tried an older version of Chrome from the last year, no changes. I still do not have May Update installed. It might be a youtube issue, yes.

Unfortunately I can't try to connect both displays to my gtx because I don't have displayport cable or dvi. GTX 970 only have on hdmi output, three displayports and a dvi-d.

I've been trying to use chrome without hardware acceleration, an I've been suffering from screen tearing (only on chrome). This is solved when hardware acceleration is enabled.
Just to clarify, i've been using a HDMI Switch (3 in, 1 out) to connect different devices to my main monitor. I tried to uninstall it and connect my gtx directly to the monitor. Nothing changed.

I might make a clean install of windows 10 soon, and if the problem persists, I'll be sure it is a component related problem or a change in the way youtube/chrome/whatever works.

Really appreciate your help.

And sorry if I made any mistake as I'm not a native english speaker.

 

[anotherdrew]

So ... I did a bit of reading and found this:

Forcing specific GPU
In multi-GPU systems, Chromium automatically detects which GPU should be used for rendering (discrete or integrated). This works 99% of the time, except when it doesn't - if a unavailable GPU is picked (for example, discrete graphics on VFIO GPU passthrough-enabled systems), chrome://gpu will complain about not being able to initialize the GPU process. On the same page below Driver Information there'll be multiple GPUs shown (GPU0, GPU1, ...). There's no way to switch between them in a user-friendly way, but you can read the device/vendor IDs present there and configure Chromium to use a specific GPU with flags:

$ chromium --gpu-testing-vendor-id=0x8086 --gpu-testing-device-id=0x1912

...where 0x8086 and 0x1912 is replaced by the IDs of the GPU you want to use (as shown on the chrome://gpu page).

If this works properly, then iGPU should be used for rendering the video in chrome and your GTX 970 should be used for the game. I believe this would give the result you are interested in.

vendor id 8086 is intel and the device id that follows on "chrome://gpu" would be for your iGPU
vendor id 10DE is nVidia

I also saw people using the flags --gpu-active-vendor-id & --gpu-active-device-id

Quick link to information about using flags to start chrome

 

[degm191297]

So ... I did a bit of reading and found this:

If this works properly, then iGPU should be used for rendering the video in chrome and your GTX 970 should be used for the game. I believe this would give the result you are interested in.

vendor id 8086 is intel and the device id that follows on "chrome://gpu" would be for your iGPU
vendor id 10DE is nVidia

I also saw people using the flags --gpu-active-vendor-id & --gpu-active-device-id

Quick link to information about using flags to start chrome

Hi, I tried this, but still no positive result. Chrome keeps using my GTX970. Maybe we should focus on why chrome is using my GPU as a 3d renderer instead of a video decoding device.

EDIT: Here is what i was talking about before. If I play a game while watching a youtube video on edge there ain't any problem, as it uses gpu for "video decoding". Chrome, instead, is always using gpu for 3d.

Here is the same video playing on both web browsers.

Thank you very much

 

[anotherdrew]

Sorry ... been on vacation, but I did some reading while traveling. I found very little, but it does seem normal that hardware acceleration in Chrome shows up as 3D on the task manager. I think this is due to how Chrome utilizes the windows API for hardware acceleration. For a long time Chrome had issues with hardware acceleration. It was generally recommended to just keep it turned off. Since 2015 I have heard far fewer complaints. I guess they found a work around that utilizes the 3D APIs. I didn’t find anything to confirm that, so it is an assumption.

 

[degm191297]

Sorry ... been on vacation, but I did some reading while traveling. I found very little, but it does seem normal that hardware acceleration in Chrome shows up as 3D on the task manager. I think this is due to how Chrome utilizes the windows API for hardware acceleration. For a long time Chrome had issues with hardware acceleration. It was generally recommended to just keep it turned off. Since 2015 I have heard far fewer complaints. I guess they found a work around that utilizes the 3D APIs. I didn’t find anything to confirm that, so it is an assumption.

Hi, i've been busy these days.

After many days all I could get from this is that I need to get used to it. It seems that is working as it should even though I don't really like it.
I'll end up using another browser when I use youtube while gaming, I guess. On the next week I'll do a clean windows 10 install. Also i'll physically clean my pc.
Once it is done i'll come back to update, as this might be useful for someone in the same circumstances, and I'll mark this thread as solved.

Thank you all for your help!

 

[yohmm]

Today I had the same problem.
The solution is pretty simple, see last line!

I've tried an older version of Chrome from the last year, no changes. I still do not have May Update installed. It might be a youtube issue, yes.

You are right, it is YouTube. They use VP9 (and H.265?) codec especially for videos with higher frame rates.
As you can see on this page https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix#Decoder (click on the button to open the last table)
your GTX 970 doesn't support VP9 nor H.265.

Solution: Install chrome extension h264ify. It "makes YouTube stream H.264 videos instead of VP8/VP9 videos".