YT videos dropping frames and CPU spike, suspect not gpu utilization

[FinderEx]

After update nvidia driver 470.182.03-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 Vivaldi not using gpu for video playback (suspect) and spike CPU utilization.

DistributorID:		Linuxmint
Description:		Linux Mint 20.3
Release:		20.3
Codename:		UNA

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu Focal Fossa"

[GoustiFruit]

I don't have the problem with frames dropping, but the CPU usage is really too high on YT, making my fan go crazy loud.
I tried everything to enable the hardware acceleration, with no result. That's the reason why I'm currently using another browser, you know, the other one based on Chromium, that has HW acceleration, and with it my fan keep its quietness. I'm still using an instance of Vivaldi to manage my email accounts, but I hope that Vivaldi can do something about the acceleration, otherwise I'll have to also find an alternative for my emails :-\

Vivaldi:

The other browser:
file:///home/jbr/Téléchargements/Screenshot_20230410_172319.png

The other browser works without any modification.
Vivaldi doesn't work, even after applying the bunch of "tips" found on the net.

[DoctorG]

@GoustiFruit Had you activated Settings → Webpages → Use of Hardware Acceleration and restarted?
Had you changed settings of vivaldi://flags?
Do you use any commandline switches to start Vivaldi?
Which Desktop? Wayland? Xorg?
Does it work in shell with vivaldi --user-data-dir="/tmp/vivtest" ?

After you answered previous questions:
Can open in Vivaldi vivaldi://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist and set to Enable and restart? Does that help?

[edwardp]

I think the issue is video in general. I participate in twice-monthly online meetings via Jitsi. Although I do not currently use the camera, others do, and the CPU graph is almost always at 100% while the meetings are ongoing. Once I exit a meeting, the CPU graph goes back to normal.

Note that I have Hardware Acceleration turned off in Vivaldi, which remedied a specific issue I had with one of the Xfce desktop panel plugins.

Could it be an upstream issue with Chromium?

[DoctorG]

@edwardp I see such CPU issue only with older Intel HD graphics GPUs (i915 diver) causing CPU fan running much on my Linux desktop PC.

[edwardp]

@DoctorG This is what I have here, the desktop is from 2011, with an integrated GPU. The display resolution used when I was last in a Jitsi meeting, was 1920x1080, but I don't know if the display resolution would affect the CPU usage.

~$  inxi -C
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: AMD Athlon II X2 260 bits: 64 type: MCP cache:
    L2: 2 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1350 min/max: 800/3200 cores: 1: 800 2: 1900

~$ inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD RS780L [Radeon 3000] driver: radeon v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 driver: X: loaded: radeon dri: r600
    gpu: radeon resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 3.3 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: AMD RS780 (DRM 2.50.0 /
    6.1.0-7-amd64 LLVM 15.0.6)

[GoustiFruit]

@DoctorG said in YT videos dropping frames and CPU spike, suspect not gpu utilization:

@GoustiFruit Had you activated Settings → Webpages → Use of Hardware Acceleration and restarted?
Had you changed settings of vivaldi://flags?
Do you use any commandline switches to start Vivaldi?
Which Desktop? Wayland? Xorg?
Does it work in shell with vivaldi --user-data-dir="/tmp/vivtest" ?

After you answered previous questions:
Can open in Vivaldi vivaldi://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist and set to Enable and restart? Does that help?

As I said, I already tried everything that was possible:

• Use Hardware acceleration when possible
• I enabled all the potential flags on vivaldi://flags
• Desktop: Plasma 5.27.4, Xorg
• Doesn't work with vivaldi --user-data-dir="/tmp/vivtest"
• vivaldi://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist been enabled for long.
• I installed all the drivers potentially required (Ryzen 5 3400G / Vega 11): libva.*
• modified my vivaldi-stable.conf file with that content:

--ignore-gpu-blocklist
--enable-gpu-rasterization
--enable-zero-copy
--enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder
--disable-features=UseChromeOSDirectVideoDecoder
--use-gl=desktop
--disable-gpu-sandbox

No effect at all.

PS: in case you need it...

$ inxi -C
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G with Radeon Vega Graphics bits: 64
    type: MT MCP cache: L2: 2 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1680 min/max: 1400/3700 cores: 1: 1400 2: 1367 3: 1400
    4: 1400 5: 3700 6: 1375 7: 1400 8: 1400

$ inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Picasso/Raven 2 [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Mobile Series]
    driver: amdgpu v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.8 with: Xwayland v: 23.1.1 driver: X:
    loaded: amdgpu unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.0.2 renderer: AMD Radeon Vega 11 Graphics
    (raven LLVM 15.0.7 DRM 3.49 6.2.10-zen1-1-zen)

[ugly]

@edwardp

Over the last couple of versions, I had some issues with hardware acceleration. Note that I use vivaldi-snapshot, so I might be using a different version from you.

Up until a few weeks ago, Vivaldi was using Chromium version 110. In order to fix a multi-monitor refresh rate issue, I had to run Vivaldi with --use-gl=egl

Since the vivaldi-snapshot channel switched to Chromium version 112, hardware acceleration would not work. I had to remove --use-gl=egl and now hardware acceleration works fine.

I don't think I've ever needed to set --use-gl=desktop for hardware acceleration to work.

[edwardp]

@ugly I just turned Hardware Acceleration (HA) back on in the latest Snapshot. The issue with the Xfce plugin occurred with both it and Stable.

With HA turned back on and YouTube playing in the other tab, the issue with the Xfce plugin returns, although the Xfce CPU graph is showing usage no higher than 40%.

[GoustiFruit]

Hum... strange situation, I stumbled upon another discussion about HW acceleration in Vivaldi forums:

@npro said in HW acceleration w/ Wayland:

As far as I remember since you mentioned VLC & GPU usage for "VIdeo", Hardware video acceleration is not working for Chromium with Wayland (so I assume the same for Vivaldi as well), you would need to try making it work with XWayland but you would have to use the --use-gl=egl flag instead.

I'm not running Wayland:

$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
x11

But launching:

$ vivaldi-stable --use-gl=egl

enables HW acceleration
I commented all the flags out in my vivaldi-stable.conf file, and only added --use-gl=egl, resulting in:

[FinderEx]

@DoctorG said in YT videos dropping frames and CPU spike, suspect not gpu utilization:

@GoustiFruit Had you activated Settings → Webpages → Use of Hardware Acceleration and restarted?
Had you changed settings of vivaldi://flags?
Do you use any commandline switches to start Vivaldi?
Which Desktop? Wayland? Xorg?
Does it work in shell with vivaldi --user-data-dir="/tmp/vivtest" ?

After you answered previous questions:
Can open in Vivaldi vivaldi://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist and set to Enable and restart? Does that help?

omg thanks you. Using vivaldi://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist and enabled resolve my problem.
I got some serious problem with Cinnamon crashing constantly using Vivaldi, after enable this option is back to normal again.

If helps, this is my pc info:

$ inxi -SCG
System:
  Host: Mint-PC Kernel: 5.15.0-69-generic x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: Cinnamon 5.6.8 Distro: Linux Mint 21.1 Vera
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Core i5 650 bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache:
    L2: 512 KiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1462 min/max: 1200/3201 cores: 1: 1441 2: 1472 3: 1468
    4: 1467
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GK110 [GeForce GTX 780] driver: nvidia v: 470.182.03
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.3 driver: X: loaded: nvidia
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa gpu: nvidia resolution: 2560x1080
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780/PCIe/SSE2
    v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.182.03

[GoustiFruit]

BTW: I just noticed on vivaldi://about/ that the switches I “disabled” in the .conf file were still part of the command line. So, I HAD to delete those lines, as Vivaldi seems to ignore the # lines.