AdView causes high GPU overdraw

[Liran Barsisa]

Starting with Kitkat, you can choose to show a counter of the GPU overdraw.

I've tested it on my app, and it seems that as soon as AdView is shown, it causes a lot of GPU overdraw even though it seems static.

The layout (for now) is just a vertical LinearLayout with a listView and the AdView.

You can check it out by installing the app and look at the counter. 

You can also stop the app, close internet connectivitiy and start the app again, so that a button will show up instead of the AdView, so that you could see that the counter is low when AdView isn't used.

Here are screenshot of with and without AdMob's AdView:

Why does this occur?

What can be done to improve it?

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

What is your app? I can't reproduce with a sample app on my Nexus 5.

Thanks,
Eric

[Liran Barsisa]

For some reason I can't edit my post.

Anyway, here it is:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lb.app_manager

[Eric Leichtenschlag]

I see. So the issue seems related to hardware acceleration - if you turn off hardware acceleration on the AdView this doesn't happen:

adView.setLayerType(View.LAYER_TYPE_SOFTWARE, null);

Thanks,
Eric

[Liran Barsisa]

But wouldn't disabling it make it even worse?

And isn't it considered an issue with the AdView itself? 

[Liran Barsisa]

BTW, the emulator doesn't support the GPU overdraw feature at all.

Sadly, it's also as slow as ever, even though Google promised to make it so fast it could play games (on one of its lectures, about 2 years ago).

[Liran Barsisa]

OK, I've disabled hardware acceleration, and now it does show that it causes less overdraw.

Thank you.

If there is a way to improve it, please do it, or at least write about it on the documentation.

[Tony Alvarez]

I'm upgrading form the old Admob SDK to GPS. With GPS I've this same problem on my application. I disabled the hardware acceleration on the AdView, but the same problem appear after the first Interstitial ad appear. How I can disable the hardware acceleration in the Interstitial?

[Tony Alvarez]

Edit: The problem only appear on Android "L" Preview, the Interstitial causes bad rendering on the images. 

This was caused also by the AdView in any Android version, but disabling the hardware acceleration fixed it. Now the problem are the Interstitials in "L" Preview.

[Liran Barsisa]

@tony did android L handle normal adviews fine?

[Antoni Alvarez]

No, I tested the old standalone Admob SDK with Android L and the animations of my images also have rendering problems. So the problem seems to be on the "L" Preview. I hope they solve it on the final release.

[Liran Barsisa]

So android L can't handle the ads well no matter what type they are.
Maybe you should  create a new thread about it

On Jul 25, 2014 1:17 AM, "Antoni Alvarez" <gpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

No, I tested the old standalone Admob SDK with Android L and the animations of my images also have rendering problems. So the problem seems to be on the "L" Preview. I hope they solve it on the final release.

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[Eric Leichtenschlag]

Do you have any screenshots on what's wrong with the rendering?

On Friday, July 25, 2014 12:04:37 AM UTC-7, Liran Barsisa wrote:

So android L can't handle the ads well no matter what type they are.
Maybe you should  create a new thread about it

On Jul 25, 2014 1:17 AM, "Antoni Alvarez" <gpr...@gmail.com> wrote:

No, I tested the old standalone Admob SDK with Android L and the animations of my images also have rendering problems. So the problem seems to be on the "L" Preview. I hope they solve it on the final release.

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[Liran Barsisa]

Didn't you want to post this reply to Tony ?

I wasn't the one complaining about Android L .

I didn't even test it yet on Android L, as I don't have it yet.

I only asked what's the situation there... 

I've now tested it on Android L emulator, and sadly th GPU overdraw drawing doesn't work there.

You can add this to the issues that the Android L emulator has...

[Liran Barsisa]

Any news about this?
Are there any plans on fixing this?
Is the workaround still needed?

I've noticed that even after setting this workaround, if the banner ad has animated-capability, it has a lot of going on for the CPU/GPU, that it can affect performance, especially on Android 8.x.