Running with disable-gpu.. how can I change/fix that to use the GPU?

[Ben Hart]

I'm running Fedora27 on an I7-6700K with an AMD R9 390 and Chromium 64.0.3282.140.  So I have plenty of resources and it confuses me as to why Chromium can't use my GPU.  How can I troubleshoot this and determine why?

Thanks!

[PhistucK]

What happens whenever you are not adding --disable-gpu?

☆PhistucK

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 6:14 PM, Ben Hart <invali...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm running Fedora27 on an I7-6700K with an AMD R9 390 and Chromium 64.0.3282.140.  So I have plenty of resources and it confuses me as to why Chromium can't use my GPU.  How can I troubleshoot this and determine why?

Thanks!

--
--
Chromium Discussion mailing list: chromium...@chromium.org
View archives, change email options, or unsubscribe:
http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-discuss

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-discuss" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chromium-discuss+unsubscribe@chromium.org.

[InvalidPath]

that's just it.. I'm not adding that,  I don't start it from the command line.

[PhistucK]

So you meant in your original post that you are running Chrome and it behaves as if you were adding --disable-gpu?

Are you sure everything is disabled?

Did you check about:gpu? It should generally tell you why something is disabled or blacklisted with a bug link.

☆PhistucK

[InvalidPath]

Exactly.. Sorry I coulda been a bit more verbose.  I did find the about:gpu and what it says kinda confuses me unless Chrome is just disabling ALL hardware acceleration just because my video card is an AMD.

https://pastebin.com/vVQkxvCB

I'd love to find out is that is actually the case, and more importantly how to correct it.  Back when I ran Win10 I never noticed the poor performance or the odd and not-too-frequent stutter when browsing or manipulating certain websites.

[PhistucK]

It says so right there -

ATI/AMD cards with older drivers in Linux are crash-prone: 71381, 76428, 73910, 101225, 136240, 357314

Disabled Features: flash_stage3d, gpu_compositing, gpu_rasterization, flash3d, accelerated_webgl2, accelerated_2d_canvas, accelerated_video_decode, accelerated_webgl, flash_stage3d_baseline

Are you using the latest drivers?

☆PhistucK

[InvalidPath]

I guess I should try filing a bug.  None of the ticket numbers linked above: 71381, 76428, etc mention current cards.  They're all on the older Radeon HD series, and I found no mention of any AMD/Radeon/Mesa driver versions that do work.  I guess my problem is; Why would Chrome need to blacklist ALL drivers for these cards?  Something *must* work...

[PhistucK]

This is from the current list, looks like Mesa drivers version 10.0.4 and later, or AMD drivers version 8.98 and later (and ANGLE something... Not sure what it means in this specific context, does the ANGLE project release drivers now?) should be fine -

    {

      "id": 5,

      "description": "ATI/AMD cards with older drivers in Linux are crash-prone",

      "cr_bugs": [71381, 76428, 73910, 101225, 136240, 357314],

      "os": {

        "type": "linux"

      },

      "vendor_id": "0x1002",

      "exceptions": [

        {

          "driver_vendor": ".*AMD.*",

          "driver_version": {

            "op": ">=",

            "style": "lexical",

            "value": "8.98"

          }

        },

        {

          "driver_vendor": "Mesa",

          "driver_version": {

            "op": ">=",

            "value": "10.0.4"

          }

        },

        {

          "driver_vendor": ".*ANGLE.*"

        }

      ],

☆PhistucK

[InvalidPath]

If thats true.. then running version 17.x should be just fine, but it's not.

[InvalidPath]

The command to start Chrome that's currently in use is:

/usr/bin/Google-Chrome-Stable U%

Now I do not know what the U% does, but looking at the process itself:

/opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=renderer --field-trial-handle=17164985206
090194325,4827078166430897455,131072 --disable-gpu-compositing --service-pipe-token=54073C0C193F0CB68A0AEA76345AE74B --lang=en-US --enable-
crash-reporter=be654415-6046-4d32-96c6-d6c89bbb2dd5, --extension-process --enable-offline-auto-reload --enable-offline-auto-reload-visible-
only --enable-pinch --num-raster-threads=4 --enable-main-frame-before-activation --enable-compositor-image-animations --enable-gpu-async-wo
rker-context

Checking advanced settings, Use hardware acceleration when available is enabled. So according to what you found PhistucK, running a post 11 version of Mesa should be fine. Re-checking my rig looks like the radeon driver is loading.  I wonder what the version requirements of that are?  

Also just as a test I switched from Wayland to X11.. about:gpu displays the same info as before.

[PhistucK]

I guess "Radeon" is the AMD driver, is it version later than 8.98?

☆PhistucK

[InvalidPath]

So further google-fu lead me to about:flags.  Top most option is overriding the software rendering and hard enabling GPU's on "unsupported" systems. Enabled that, re-laucnhed and re-checked about:gpu shows MUCH different things.

https://pastebin.com/9eEn9zhe

I'll have to monitor for issues..

[PhistucK]

Oh, I assumed you knew about it but wanted to understand why your specific one is blacklisted, that --disable-gpu flag that you mentioned in the title tricked me, I guess.

☆PhistucK