Edge Chromium Video Acceleration Is Not As Good As EdgeHTML -iGPU switchable graphics

Iron Contributor
Version 76.0.146.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit)
Specs: iGPU: Intel HD 3000, dGPU: ATI 6850m
 
Issue: Livestream playback is not as smooth and lags behind EdgeHTML by 4 seconds when compared side by side between EdgeChromium and EdgeHTML.
 
Background: A general issue on Chromium exists concerning accelerated video on switchable graphics devices causing a blacklist to be employed for these systems resulting in the blocking of video hardware acceleration for the iGPU and instead utilising software rendering. dGPU is not used at all. This being not optimal itself.
 
Hence for this test the blacklist resulting in software rendering in EdgeChromium was disabled (#ignore-gpu-denylist was set to Enabled under ://flags) to enable Hardware Accelerated Video decode on the iGPU. All other flags relating to acceleration were unaltered.
 
The situation revolves around the iGPU not being utilised as well on EdgeChromium compared to EdgeHTML. 
 

A Live Stream was started at the same time and compared side by side.

 

MSI Afterburner/ Sysinternal Process Explorer were used to see the utilisation of the iGPU (noted as GPU2 on afterburner) between EdgeHTML and EdgeChromium.

 

EdgeHTML utilises the iGPU at 14%-20% 

iGPU 14-20% usage on EdgeHTMLiGPU 14-20% usage on EdgeHTML

EdgeChromium hovers around 8-9% (blacklist disabled)

iGPU 8-9% usage on EdgeChromium - Blacklist disablediGPU 8-9% usage on EdgeChromium - Blacklist disabled

EdgeChromium hovers around 8-10% (blacklist enabled - default setting)

 

iGPU 8-10% usage EdgeChromium default Blacklist enablediGPU 8-10% usage EdgeChromium default Blacklist enabled

 

Playback on EdgeHTML is smoother/faster at the moment for this older device.

Better utilisation of the iGPU in EdgeChromium would be very welcome.

 

Attached are 2 ://gpu reports.

 

  1. One with with #ignore-gpu-denylist set to disabled (default EdgeChromium setting) that shows that Video Decode is Unavailable / Disabled Features: accelerated_video_decode 
  2. The other html report showing the GPU state with the software rendering blacklist disabled
1 Reply

@VonCrisp 

 

Thank you for the information and your time in collecting it. This is a great suggestion and I will make sure to pass it along to the Product team.

 

Gabriel