Hardware Acceleration not working properly

[4NXIE7Y]

System Details

• Thorium Version 117.0.5938.157 (Official Build) (64-bit)
• Device: Legion 5 Pro Gen7
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800H
• GPU: RTX 3070 Mobile

Problem
Lots of dropped frames when watching videos on YouTube.
Disabling HW acceleration seems to fix the issue, but that is not a permanent and proper solution to the problem.

Additional Notes
I already reported this in the main Thorium repo but got no responses...so I am hoping to get some responses this time around as I main Windows and have reported it in the Windows ver. repo

[4NXIE7Y]

I want to main Thorium but can't get past this issue. Disabling HW acceleration seems to fix the dropped frames but that's not a complete solution...

[yuriko54]

Did you try the default Thorium for Windows builds without AVX2?

[danfgtn]

I have the same problem, I tried the versions with and without avx2 and the result was the same, it only works when I disable hardware acceleration.

• Thorium Version 117.0.5938.157 (Official Build) (64-bit)
• CPU: Ryzen 9 5950x
• GPU: RTX 3060 Ti

[4NXIE7Y]

I have the same problem, I tried the versions with and without avx2 and the result was the same, it only works when I disable hardware acceleration.

• Thorium Version 117.0.5938.157 (Official Build) (64-bit)

• CPU: Ryzen 9 5950x

• GPU: RTX 3060 Ti

Followed the same procedure of trying out the non avx2 version and nope… the issue persists.

[gz83]

Is the graphics card driver normal and the latest version?

In addition, do not enable experimental flags related to Vulkan, ANGLE, etc. (keep the default). The functions controlled by these experimental flags may have the opportunity to damage the browser at any time.

[danfgtn]

i haven't modified any flags, i'm using driver 537.42 and hardware acceleration works in vanilla chrome, no abnormal gpu behavior outside of thorium.

[4NXIE7Y]

i haven't modified any flags, i'm using driver 537.42 and hardware acceleration works in vanilla chrome, no abnormal gpu behavior outside of thorium.

Using 537.34 (stable for my system) and also haven't touched any flags, the issue is only with Thorium, other Chromium-based browsers like Edge and Chrome work fine.

[4NXIE7Y]

@hyperio546 any solutions?

[gz83]

Please provide the link(s) to the video(s) with the frame drop problem and I will try to reproduce the problem you are experiencing.

[4NXIE7Y]

Please provide the link(s) to the video(s) with the frame drop problem and I will try to reproduce the problem you are experiencing.

It's every video. Here I've attached a recording showing the problem.

[gz83]

I use Thorium on my computer to play the video you mentioned in full screen mode (and non-full screen mode), using the highest image quality, and under the default configuration, no abnormalities have been found (at least when I played the video). The progress bar can also be dragged at will

[4NXIE7Y]

I use Thorium on my computer to play the video you mentioned in full screen mode (and non-full screen mode), using the highest image quality, and under the default configuration, no abnormalities have been found (at least when I played the video). The progress bar can also be dragged at will

Even I wonder why it happens with Thorium only. I reinstalled it a couple of times to fix the issue, but nope...videos just refuse to play properly. The funny thing is that other Chromium-based browsers don't show this behavior...😭

[gz83]

There may be code differences between different versions. Our recent adjustments in hardware acceleration are more targeted at the Linux platform. We should not often encounter problems with hardware acceleration on the Windows platform.

Have you tried lowering the image quality? Can the video be played normally after reducing the image quality? Or if there is something incorrect in my test, please point it out.

[4NXIE7Y]

There may be code differences between different versions. Our recent adjustments in hardware acceleration are more targeted at the Linux platform. We should not often encounter problems with hardware acceleration on the Windows platform.

Have you tried lowering the image quality? Can the video be played normally after reducing the image quality? Or if there is something incorrect in my test, please point it out.

I've got a 300mbps connection and I can easily play videos in 4k 60fps. This problem is only faced in Thorium. Other browsers can easily play videos in the highest quality.

[sirxsniper]

Is quite interesting... on my intel gpu i have issues... on my nvidia gpu everything is flawless...

[RobRich999]

For those having hardware acceleration issues that want to share more info....

Enable hardware acceleration, play a video for a short period, then check the log messages at the bottom of the about://gpu/ page for errors. Also you can generate a GPU report at the top of the page. Attach it to a new comment.

You might also want to check the status of the currently running player instance via about://media-internals while playing the video. Look for the kVideoDecoderName to determine if running software or hardware decoding. Likewise look for issues like buffer faillout or similar.

[sternskr]

For those having hardware acceleration issues that want to share more info....

Enable hardware acceleration, play a video for a short period, then check the log messages at the bottom of the about://gpu/ page for errors. Also you can generate a GPU report at the top of the page. Attach it to a new comment.

You might also want to check the status of the currently running player instance via about://media-internals while playing the video. Look for the kVideoDecoderName to determine if running software or hardware decoding. Likewise look for issues like buffer faillout or similar.

I'm running into something slightly different, but related to HW acceleration. I have no issues with dropped frames in playback but the videos flicker horrifically while playing. It might be related to MPO but that's already disabled, see this nvidia workaround from ages ago here

As you can see SpecialK which can read the MPO state shows that I have it currently off already. So that old workaround doesn't seem to work anymore

Below are my media internals screenshot & the GPU report

Graphics Feature Status.txt

[sternskr]

Oh and this issue persists across the standard AVX windows build and the AVX512 build. I tried both

In addition I've tried forcing off G-Sync and messing around with all the various V-Sync settings in the Nvidia Control Panel. None of these have fixed it in case anyone else is trying workarounds

[hallelion]

I'm just an end-user, but I made some tweaks in NVIDIA Control Panel specific to this browser, and then re-enabled HW Acceleration. So far the browser's no longer flickering in and out of existence (yes, you read that right), I have also used this on another Chromium-based browser (Brave) as a workaround (which I never reverted):

1. Turn OFF Antialiasing - FXAA - I have the global setting of "OFF", so feel free not to change it if you have it disabled globally
2. Turn OFF Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) - Even if your global default is "OFF", manually set it
3. Turn ON VSync

I hope it helps, at least as a workaround :)

[sternskr]

I'm just an end-user, but I made some tweaks in NVIDIA Control Panel specific to this browser, and then re-enabled HW Acceleration. So far the browser's no longer flickering in and out of existence (yes, you read that right), I have also used this on another Chromium-based browser (Brave) as a workaround (which I never reverted):

1. Turn OFF Antialiasing - FXAA - I have the global setting of "OFF", so feel free not to change it if you have it disabled globally
2. Turn OFF Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) - Even if your global default is "OFF", manually set it
3. Turn ON VSync

I hope it helps, at least as a workaround :)

Can confirm that this fix works, I suspect the MFAA setting is the real culprit as that's the only difference I have vs the config you suggest. Might also be an issue on linux seeing this issue from the non AVX2 build here: Alex313031/thorium#446

[neegool]

On my end, it doesn't play well on displays with VRR enabled. I have an Radeon GPU and I'm getting a lot of dropped frames especially when playing YouTube fullscreen. Disabling VRR fixes the issue (even with HW acceleration enabled)

[Fefonfon]

On my end, it doesn't play well on displays with VRR enabled. I have an Radeon GPU and I'm getting a lot of dropped frames especially when playing YouTube fullscreen. Disabling VRR fixes the issue (even with HW acceleration enabled)

Can confirm. My system has an RTX 2060 Super, and setting the "Monitor technology" on the Control Panel to "Fixed refresh rate" fixed all the stuttering I had been encountering, now Thorium works with hardware acceleration enabled.

[Nagarafas]

I'm just an end-user, but I made some tweaks in NVIDIA Control Panel specific to this browser, and then re-enabled HW Acceleration. So far the browser's no longer flickering in and out of existence (yes, you read that right), I have also used this on another Chromium-based browser (Brave) as a workaround (which I never reverted):

1. Turn OFF Antialiasing - FXAA - I have the global setting of "OFF", so feel free not to change it if you have it disabled globally
2. Turn OFF Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) - Even if your global default is "OFF", manually set it
3. Turn ON VSync

I hope it helps, at least as a workaround :)

This does in-fact work, found issue.

I did some testing and found out that MFAA does produce problems, but the biggest culprit is "Background Application Max Framerate" interfering with V-sync and the two battle each other, if you have those two options enabled by default (MFAA+BAMF) overwrite them to off in the NVIDIA control panel and restart the browser.(you can configure anything else ,including V-sync, to whatever you like, if you see probs then revert).

my specs: rtx 3060, ryzen 5 7th gen, 32 gigs ddr5

-Edit: Punctuation, spelling, formatting-