Vulkan is fast, but doesn't work

smartptr

Hi,

When I enable Vulkan, rendering and the UI become noticeably faster (how I'd like it to be), but video doesn't show (just a green rectangle instead), and no 3D on google maps. Why did I try to enable it? Because otherwise online meetings, or youtube videos make everything to lag, almost unusable, until I restart the browser. I'm trying to find a good combination of flags, but haven't found a good one.

Not sure if there is a question, just sharing. I guess that will all work eventually.

(Vivaldi snapshot, Intel integrated graphics, Fedora 38)

DoctorG

@smartptr I saw on many Linuxes (Debians, Mints, Ubuntu) that enabling Vulkan did not work with Vivaldi, i got green rectangles, flickering UI, freezes, distored buttons when hovering, dysfunctional dropdowns etc.
My workaround: disable vulkan.

smartptr

Sure @DoctorG, this is how I do. It's just gave me an idea how fast could Vivaldi be, if Vulkan worked

DoctorG

Huh, in Windows 10 Vulkan lets all flicker, perhaps is my GT 710 on office PC too old.

I try on Ubuntu and Debian now. Perhaps no flickering.
//EDIT:
Yes Vulkan can be faster, and i see its faster on Debian 11; but with Vivaldi i sadly see in Debian 12 & Ubuntu 22/23 severe graphical glitches (independant if X11 or Wayland) like wrong colors of popups, flicker, flashing UI elements. Can not use Vulkan. Nit really a problem for me as all runs good enuff without Vulkan on my older Linux PCs.

npro

@smartptr You could try running Vivaldi in a X11 session instead of a Wayland (XWayland) one, X11 should be (a little) faster but I don't know if you would see any noticeable difference if your GPU is already too old.

pitcat

Hi
on debian 12 stable with kde Wayland
and vith this command line /usr/bin/vivaldi-snapshot --flag-switches-begin --ozone-platform-hint=auto --enable-features=Vulkan --flag-switches-end --ozone-platform=wayland --origin-trial-disabled-features=WebGPU --save-page-as-mhtml

Youtube ok
and no problème vith vulkan

edwardp

Debian 12 KDE Wayland, had to look up Vulkan as I had not heard of it before. With the flag enabled, Vivaldi Snapshot (6.3.3120.3) runs fine, also with and without the ignore-gpu-blocklist flag set. System specs below (12 year old desktop). YT is also fine. I have an online meeting via Jitsi later this afternoon, going to test it.

@smartptr When enabling or disabling the Vulkan flag (and ignore-gpu-blocklist), it should have prompted you to restart the browser.

smartptr

@pitcat , please make sure you see Vulkan enabled in vivaldi://gpu

When I set #ozone-platform-hint to Wayland, Vulkan is not activated, despite the flag being enabled. Also, with Wayland enabled, the picture is blurred, due to 200% Gnome zoom, I believe. That's a pity. But Chrome does the shame.

@edwardp, sure thing.

With my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8, I cannot make Vulkan work with any combination of other flags, so far.

edwardp

@edwardp said in Vulkan is fast, but doesn't work:

Debian 12 KDE Wayland, had to look up Vulkan as I had not heard of it before. With the flag enabled, Vivaldi Snapshot (6.3.3120.3) runs fine, also with and without the ignore-gpu-blocklist flag set. System specs below (12 year old desktop). YT is also fine. I have an online meeting via Jitsi later this afternoon, going to test it.

Although I have the packages installed, I ran the vulkaninfo command and it indicated it was not using the amdgpu kernel driver. This system uses the radeon driver.

I'm not sure if it's really running, although the command displayed numerous screens of information.

ERROR: [../src/amd/vulkan/radv_device.c:741] Code 0 : Device '/dev/dri/renderD128' is not using the AMDGPU kernel driver: Invalid argument (VK_ERROR_INCOMPATIBLE_DRIVER)

smartptr

@edwardp , you may navigate to vivaldi://gpu to see if Vivaldi is using Vulkan.

edwardp

@smartptr It is using Vulkan.

It turns out that it is working on this desktop. Just finished the Jitsi meeting and with my video, there was next to zero lag time, it was literally in real-time. A major improvement!

When I mentioned that I was testing it and really didn't know much about it other than it being a graphics renderer, one of the other participants said Vulkan will be replacing OpenGL.

DoctorG

@edwardp said in Vulkan is fast, but doesn't work:

It turns out that it is working on this desktop

Depends on GPU if Vulkan is runnig fine or not - only my impression.

edwardp

@DoctorG It works great with Jitsi, but I get the complete opposite with Google Maps. Main page loads in fine, but when the map changes to a street address that is submitted, G Maps then becomes very slow to the point it eventually becomes unusable. It is a 12-year-old desktop though. Perhaps it will be faster on a newer system.