Only 30 Percent of Firefox Users Access Hardware Acceleration

[Guest]

How important is it for you to run applications that require hardware acceleration within your browser, or, at the very least, make browsing more enjoyable?

Only 30 Percent of Firefox Users Access Hardware Acceleration : Read more

 

[math1337]

HW acceleration is great for really graphic intensive tasks like animations, but for most static or mostly static web pages has little benefit. As newer hardware rolls out, hardware acceleration will roll out naturally, and it never hurts to have it. I just hope that web designers don't start abusing awful animations.

 

[esrever]

Its just all the people living on old intel graphics dragging everyone else down.

 

[bgrt]

For the love of God everyone, if you're on Intel GMA or older video please go buy a $30 video card.

 

[livebriand]

[citation][nom]bgrt[/nom]For the love of God everyone, if you're on Intel GMA or older video please go buy a $30 video card.[/citation]
For the average person who doesn't do anything graphically intensive, what's the gain?

 

[ethaniel]

You just can't ask for a hardware upgrade in a lot of cases. Imagine the volume of laptops and netbooks (even if those are extinct in the US already) still working today that use Firefox. And there's always the possibility of a new driver breaking everything. I have an old but compatible Radeon card, so I have hardware acceleration, but I know that I am the exception. This is no surprise.

 

[bgrt]

[citation][nom]livebriand[/nom]For the average person who doesn't do anything graphically intensive, what's the gain?[/citation]

An average computer user will end up playing some 3D games at some point, or will attempt to at least, only to find out that they can't even launch the game if they're on Intel graphics.

 

[dameon51]

[citation][nom]math1337[/nom]HW acceleration is great for really graphic intensive tasks like animations, but for most static or mostly static web pages has little benefit. As newer hardware rolls out, hardware acceleration will roll out naturally, and it never hurts to have it. I just hope that web designers don't start abusing awful animations.[/citation]
Not entirely true. DOM heavy sites benefit from HW acceleration too, and those are becoming a lot more common.

 

[atikkur]

i turned off browser hardware acc.. my cpu already too fast.

 

[nacos]

^Hahahaha!

 

[bustapr]

i turned off hardware acceleration when flash videos started tearing and distorting on my page. turning it off fixed most of the issue.

 

[runswindows95]

I run an Intel integrated card, and the most advanced game I have installed is Bejeweled 3. I don't have the time or desire to install any other game. All I do is Word and the internet. I can't tell the difference between this card and an older desktop running a 9500GT (the integrated card, and got a deal on it from a friend).

 

[sixdegree]

So, Firefox with HW Acceleration is the new Crysis?
Can my system run Firefox?

 

[DjEaZy]

[citation][nom]bgrt[/nom]For the love of God everyone, if you're on Intel GMA or older video please go buy a $30 video card.[/citation]
... but, what you gonna do if this is a laptop?

 

[tomfreak]

[citation][nom]atikkur[/nom]i turned off browser hardware acc.. my cpu already too fast.[/citation]quite true if u are using old system like Pentium M 1.7Ghz with Intel extreme graphics. = Geforce 2 MX speed.

 

[ricardok]

However, Mozilla's data is based on 300,000 to 800,000 monitored crashes today, which is rather substantial.

That's a lot of 'crashes'.. Not fun.. I'll stick with chrome..

 

[amigafan]

I have disabled HW acceleration in Firefox because it causes my GPU clock to raise to 500 MHz (in idle it's 250 and can go to 880 in load), fans increase in rotation (causing noise) and my power draw increases slightly. Not worth it IMO.

 

[ravewulf]

I turned it off as it doesn't work over Live Mesh's remote desktop (it seems to only like programs that use GDI/GDI+ rendering). I don't usually come across websites that take advantage of it, so it doesn't matter a lot to me.

 

[alyoshka]

Well, all most everyone had it on by default. But because of bad programming most of us had to turn it off due to the number of time firefox crashed after enabling it on various websites.

 

[Cryio]

I personally don't like Firefox HWA method. It has the 3rd best acceleration in the markes, but even with that, when I enable HWA, even settings the GPU (GTX560 Ti) to run in P0, I feel the browser is running a bit slower than in software mode, on a Intel Quad core from 4 years ago.

Opera 12.50 = the best acceleration, period. The freakin' whole thing is accelerated. (it's not final, though it's still the best)
Internet Explorer 10 = HWA is Microsoft's leading feature since IE9. So yeah, it's pretty good.
Firefox 10-15? = They kept adding more features to HWA, but they still have a long way to go.
Chrome = It accelerates only a few things, some times. You may activate all HWA-related flags and the browser STILL doesn't accelerate everything.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

To those who say they dont browse HWA enabled animation and content, remember that FF15 uses Direct2D, so text rendering is also HWA.

 

[hmp_goose]

Turning off the HWA was the cure for FF - er, Waterfox becoming moribund at .9~1.2GB memory usage.

Don't feel any other difference …

 

[Guest]

I use FF hardware acceleration in Windows 7, but I have to disable it on Windows 8 it to cure the inherent blurry font rendering that MS have delivered with Windows 8.

 

[Soul_keeper]

I'd use it if AMD would step up with linux support.

 

[Pherule]

I have HWA turned on in Aurora 15, and I'm on Intel HD3000 graphics, but Firefox/Aurora hasn't crashed once for me this year as far as I can recall.

How does Mozilla get correct statistics if they're only getting them from people who experience crashes?