Firefox plugin-container problem - again

[arcanum]

Hi all,

When im using heavily web flash based applications, firefox plugin-container eats a lot of CPU time, about 25% on an 2,8ghz quad core. PL does not seem to help this situation. But when i switch to chrome browser, everything is so smooth.

Is this the problem of firefox itself? Im running newest firefox 13. I do like to continue using firefox, because i like the GUI of it.

Only addons i currently use are as follows:
-Calomel SSL Validation
-Ghostery
-Keyscrambler

Above ones does not have anything to do with flash or otwherwise degrading performance.

Best regards,

-arcanum

[edkiefer]

do you run FF with hardware acceleration turned on (options>advanced>general tab ) . do note you probably will need or have fairly new vid drivers loaded as it can crash FF if not . try toggling this on /off and see if any difference .

[Jeremy Collake]

Ed's suggestion may help.

Process Lasso really can't increase the performance of Firefox and/or Flash or other plugins. It can not reduce CPU consumption under any circumstance, as the same amount of CPU instructions must be executed regardless. Process Lasso can only help to achieve more responsiveness in high loads, something some people mistake for 'reducing CPU consumption'.

It also already avoids interfering with Firefox's plugin-container process.

That means that there is nothing else you can do to speed Firefox up with Process Lasso. (EDIT: with the exception of the possible marginal improvements I added in my second response)

Chrome has an entirely different, and very unique, design. It may simply be the better choice, if you're looking for performance. Each has their advantages and disadvantages, and for your PC, on the site(s) you visit, Chrome may simply offer superior performance. The opposite may be true for another user (to avert a browser war discussion ;p).

[arcanum]

Hi Ed,

I have fairly ATI driver installed, about 2 month old. My gfx card is 4870 x2. Win XP 3 with latest flash etc installed.

Why do i have to disable hw acceleration? If i disable it, whole rendering is done by the CPU then? I do not use any WebGL based websites. With youtube i have constant 1-2 sec lag with the videos or anything flash based websites.

And also, my connection is 10/10mbit, which is, suitable enough.

But when im using chrome, everything is so silky smooth with PL. So nothing to do with ati drivers installed.

So can Jeremy disassemble this friggin plugin-container.exe(and processes within), because with PL, stuttering is still there.

Its clearly browser based problem, and i do like to know whats Jeremy's opinion of it.

Sincerely,

-arcanum

[arcanum]

Jeremy,

I know, that chrome is faster than firefox in java performace. In flash rendereing both are quite equal.

Seem so, this plugin-container.exe is not a separated process, so PL cant handle it? Does it make any child processes that PL can prioritize?.

As im aware of, plugin-container is that renders and handle flash?

Jeremy, Is there anything you can do? Or do i have to switch to chrome browser.

Best regards,

-arcanum

[edkiefer]

Hi Ed,

I have fairly ATI driver installed, about 2 month old. My gfx card is 4870 x2. Win XP 3 with latest flash etc installed.

Why do i have to disable hw acceleration? If i disable it, whole rendering is done by the CPU then? I do not use any WebGL based websites. With youtube i have constant 1-2 sec lag with the videos or anything flash based websites.

And also, my connection is 10/10mbit, which is, suitable enough.

But when im using chrome, everything is so silky smooth with PL. So nothing to do with ati drivers installed.

So can Jeremy disassemble this friggin plugin-container.exe(and processes within), because with PL, stuttering is still there.

Its clearly browser based problem, and i do like to know whats Jeremy's opinion of it.

Sincerely,

-arcanum

well , I would give it a try , I have no stuttering in FF (I use Palemoon which is optimized based on FF ) .
I would still give it a try might be a issue with how ATI hardware acceleration is coded . I run HW acceleration off and vids are silky smooth .
you can also try in the vidio option too . only takes a second to do .

On CPU % I don't see how PL would affect this , I never really checked CPU % while viewing movies .
Ok, just tested on a you-tub vid , my CPU % goes from 8 - 20% and avg around 12% , this is on XP SP3 Intel core duel 2.13 ghz  for reference .

[Jeremy Collake]

I pretty much gave my opinion above, here's my last additions.

It should be noted that Chrome might actually make better use of your GPU, and that *may* be the difference in performance. They have really been working hard in the area of better GPU acceleration. While it sounds like Flash is more the issue, I don't know the entirety of the situation (the site visited, etc..).

The *one* other thing you could try is limiting the CPU affinity of plugin-container.exe to a single core. Why? At 25% CPU consumption on a quad core system, that means it has a single CPU bound (CPU hungry) thread that is eating up every cycle it can get. Every time this thread gets swapped to a different core, it takes a performance hit. Thus, limiting the plugin-container.exe process to a single core *might* improve performance. I'm not sure which processor your have, so would recommend picking cores 0 or 2, in case it is HyperThreaded. If you set it to a HyperThreaded core, then you will reduce performance substantially. They are every other core. However, the performance gain from such an action would seem marginal at best, unless the scheduler is just really screwing up and causing a lot of core thrashing. Similarly, the 'HyperThreaded core avoidance' might help, if it is an Intel HyperThreaded CPU.

[Jeremy Collake]

... and as far as *what* the bottleneck *is*, it is definitely your CPU. Any time you see 25% utilization on a quad core system, you known that it is a single thread that is consuming every CPU cycle it can get, meaning that it needs more. So, to be sure, just FWIW, that is the bottleneck and cause of the performance difference. I'd be curious to hear the CPU utilization under Chrome. If it is *less*, then you know Chrome was able to offload more to your GPU, or has other optimizations to reduce CPU utilization for that situation.

It is also possible the CPU consumption is equal, but better spread out in Chrome. Meaning it is able to better divert the CPU load onto multiple threads.

UPDATE: Oh ... and of course make SURE you have the latest version of Flash installed. It's updater is stupid, always waits for a reboot before telling you an update is available. For some, like me, who rarely ever reboot, I never notice updates until then. Chrome may have a newer Flash version than what Firefox is using. Chrome's Flash plug-in is built in, as opposed to external. That may also be another reason it offers better performance, just having superior Flash integration.

In short:

Chrome = Built in Flash player, auto-updated with browser.
Firefox = Separate, external Flash player.

[Jeremy Collake]

see amended post above.

[arcanum]

Jeremy,

Just uninstalled my GFI antivirus. Everything works just fine, well without antivirus. Do you inject your code to running processes(and child ones)?

I love PL, but it seems when you "tame" certain system prosesses, many AV with HIPS gone mad. Is there any way to hardcode those AV prosesses in your code, to prevent this?

According to PL log, it tamed some of GFI antivirus prosecces, which is ubearable in my poitn of view.

Regards,

-arcanum

[Jeremy Collake]

Just uninstalled my GFI antivirus. Everything works just fine, well without antivirus.

Figures. That is the #1 cause of performance problems, though I wouldn't have guessed in this case. Please see this post - http://bitsum.com/forum/index.php/topic,1440.0.html

I love PL, but it seems when you "tame" certain system prosesses, many AV with HIPS gone mad. Is there any way to hardcode those AV prosesses in your code, to prevent this?

Already do. But if your particular security software's real time scanning process(es), or certain system processes, do get 'tamed', you should exclude them from Probalance restraint. Simple right click on them. Report the problematic processes and I will investigate them for hard-coded exclusion.

[Jeremy Collake]

Do you inject your code to running processes(and child ones)?

Absolutely not!

Forgot to answer that! Many applications do, and they often are the cause of crashes in Process Lasso. It pisses me off every time. It is something I have a policy against. I have seen minidumps that have 10 third-party DLLs injected into Process Lasso, it is absurd! I end up wasting time debugging these problems, mostly just to prove to the user that it was not Process Lasso crashing, but some foreign DLL injected into its process.

[Miroku4444]

Your best bet is to disable this Firefox plugin-container. Its suppose to prevent your plugins from crashing. Ive never had a plugin crash, so i always dis-able that CPU eating machine Firefox plugin-container. Here's how:

In the address bar type about:config. In the filter bar type ipc. Then double click on the lines that say true to turn them to false. Something like this.



Now when you run Firefox and view flash, plugin-container wont run.

[edkiefer]

I ran across this checking if lastest flash plugin (11.3) was ok . It seems to cause crashes in FF based browsers .

here a fix that may help (I have not tried it as this does not apply to XP OS).

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/06/10/flash-player-update-fix-freezes-crashes-in-firefox/

[parkd1]

I ran across this checking if lastest flash plugin (11.3) was ok . It seems to cause crashes in FF based browsers .

here a fix that may help (I have not tried it as this does not apply to XP OS).

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/06/10/flash-player-update-fix-freezes-crashes-in-firefox/

Thanks for this fix. It seem not to freeze or crash for me. It just gave me an error when  I tried to play a youtube video. That did the trick. I am using the nightly build of Fire Fox. They are on version 16.

[Hotrod]

I discovered recently that although my flash and java had been updating regularly and telling me they were current, in reality they were obsolete and java had been installing new versions without uninstalling old ones(a fact they themselves tell you about when you go to their site to update manually). It was necessary to go to add and remove progs and remove ALL previous versions before it would let me get the newest software on both flash and java. After this my crashes went away. Take some time to visit their sites and see for yourself that you are indeed current, since the auto-updaters will lie to you. Also be aware that there have been reports of conflicts between realplayer, quicktime, and flash players. Adobe is recommending to disable realplayer and quicktime add ons.

[edkiefer]

I discovered recently that although my flash and java had been updating regularly and telling me they were current, in reality they were obsolete and java had been installing new versions without uninstalling old ones(a fact they themselves tell you about when you go to their site to update manually). It was necessary to go to add and remove progs and remove ALL previous versions before it would let me get the newest software on both flash and java. After this my crashes went away. Take some time to visit their sites and see for yourself that you are indeed current, since the auto-updaters will lie to you. Also be aware that there have been reports of conflicts between realplayer, quicktime, and flash players. Adobe is recommending to disable realplayer and quicktime add ons.

I meant to add this to my above post , many times when a full new version comes out you can have multiple versions or multiple files of older versions still loaded on system .
As you noted i have had java with more than one. good thing with the Java is you can delete it easy from control panel through Java icon (shows/lists versions installed).
With the flash ,best thing si to grab adobe flash uninstall utility which removes older version . Even this one I had to run it twice as the first time I saw if still had leftover older versions (control panel>Win uninstaller didn't show this) . ran the adobe uninstaller again an all was clean in "C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash " folder (that path is for XP, not sure on vista+ systems) .

Some info on it  http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

[parkd1]

I discovered recently that although my flash and java had been updating regularly and telling me they were current, in reality they were obsolete and java had been installing new versions without uninstalling old ones(a fact they themselves tell you about when you go to their site to update manually). It was necessary to go to add and remove progs and remove ALL previous versions before it would let me get the newest software on both flash and java. After this my crashes went away. Take some time to visit their sites and see for yourself that you are indeed current, since the auto-updaters will lie to you. Also be aware that there have been reports of conflicts between realplayer, quicktime, and flash players. Adobe is recommending to disable realplayer and quicktime add ons.

I was seeing that too with Java version 6. The new updates would go to a new folder. With Java version 7 it is going to the same folder with is does the update for version 7. I just got a disable from Fire Fox on Realplayer add-on with version 16 of the nightly build.

[Miroku4444]

I just got a disable from FireFox on Realplayer add-on with version 16 of the nightly build.

That's probably because 16 is a beta version. 13 is the current stable version. My Realplayer plugins are not getting a disable form firefox.

[Hotrod]

Silverlight is doing the same thing.