UI messes up in Firefox on NVIDIA graphic card

[ZonoBurk]

Does anyone else have strange UI deformities in Firefox (any version) using a NVIDIA graphic card? To solve the problem you have to disable hardware acceleration. Also a green bar and picture degration occurs in Flash videos. I'm using the latest driver version. Wondering if it's a problem with a specific NVIDA graphic card or drivers.

[bogas04]

What benefit u get by turning it on , i mean REAL BIG advantage ? I myself have kept it off and my graphic card stays silent and cool

[ZonoBurk]

It's on by default, thus people notice.

[FalseAgent]

yeah, turning off the hardware acceleration is the 'fix' for now, but that causes all the graphics rendering to be done via the CPU, impacting battery life on laptops.

[migo]

I had that happen too. Nvidia really needs to work on their drivers.

[Lindkvist]

how do i turn off HA in Windows 8?

[farmeunit]

how do i turn off HA in Windows 8?

Just change from Areo to a basic theme. I had to do this on Win7. Not sure exactly how to do this in Win8 as I don't have that laptop here.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

What specific model are you using? Also, did the issue come up after you updated your drivers? If so, then the cause of the issue is likely the drivers. Anytime that happens, it's best to reinstall the previous version.

[Stokkolm]

I've had a bunch of visual problems with Firefox on Windows 8, so I'm using IE10. I'm using a GeForce 560M with the latest driver.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

yeah, turning off the hardware acceleration is the 'fix' for now, but that causes all the graphics rendering to be done via the CPU, impacting battery life on laptops.

Why do you think this is the case? I would imagine the CPU is far more battery efficient than the GPU. After all, once I do anything GPU intensive my battery gets burned a fair bit faster on my laptop.

[ahhell]

The drivers in Win8 are still a little buggy.??It's to be expected for a BETA OS.

[Stokkolm]

I had attributed the problem to Firefox itself, since I haven't had any other problems with the graphics drivers.

[Aergan]

I have the same issue with a GT555M 3GB.

1. URL: about:config
   
2. Find: gfx.direct2d.disabled
   
3. Set to True
   
4. Restart Firefox
   

No need to disable Aero etc.

[ozgeek]

I get this too on the latest firefox beta (I'm on the beta update channel). It looks fine in Win7 but the same profile in Win8 has the UI issue you are describing here.

[butilikethecookie]

Yeah that's a FF bug not NVIDIA's problem.

[farmeunit]

Yeah that's a FF bug not NVIDIA's problem.

I hard to turn off Aero in Win7 with a Quadro NVS285. I got the same artifacts even when not running Firefox, so yes it is partly NVidia's problem. In XP turning off HA in Firefox did the trick, but didn't in Win7 with Aero on.

I have not seen this on an AMD system, yet, or Intel, but several NVidia machines.

[migo]

Why do you think this is the case? I would imagine the CPU is far more battery efficient than the GPU. After all, once I do anything GPU intensive my battery gets burned a fair bit faster on my laptop.

Gpus are many orders of magnitude more powerful than cpus for operations they are well suited to. Hw acceleration is much more efficient for rendering, and uses a fraction of the gpu's power compared to the cpu for the same task.

[neo1911]

I have similar UI bugs in Office 2010 as well.

[Steven P. Administrators]

No need to mess about with about:config or Windows Aero, just go to Firefox button > options > advanced > and uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available".

Hopefully NVidia or Mozilla fix this pretty soon, because this isn't affected in Chrome or IE with the same NVidia drivers.

Edit: scratch that, it appears that the d2d set to false with hw acceleration enabled actually works too (better).

[Aergan]

No need to mess about with about:config or Windows Aero, just go to Firefox button > options > advanced > and uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available".

Hopefully NVidia or Mozilla fix this pretty soon, because this isn't affected in Chrome or IE with the same NVidia drivers.

Edit: scratch that, it appears that the d2d set to false with hw acceleration enabled actually works too (better).

Yeah, it runs crappy if you turn off HW acceleration completely.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Yeah, it runs crappy if you turn off HW acceleration completely.

Yeah found that out :p

[FalseAgent]

Why do you think this is the case? I would imagine the CPU is far more battery efficient than the GPU. After all, once I do anything GPU intensive my battery gets burned a fair bit faster on my laptop.

It varies. On ultrabooks with integrated intel graphics, offloading graphics processing unto the GPU does help the battery life alot. However, on an Alienware with a beefy Nvidia card, it probably won't be the same case.

[+DKAngel Subscriber²]

yeah i got same problem firefox on desktop windows 8cp witha gtx470 on latest nvidia drivers randome garble on menus and tabs

[SikSlayer]

Actually, the conclusion I came to was it depended on the skin. Certain skins had this issue, others didn't. I would notice issues in the text of the YouTube flash player, and other Flash-based software and such. But it wasn't a Flash-exclusive bug. I think it's not Nvidia's fault, but a bug in FF.

[Darrian]

I have the same issue with a GT555M 3GB.

1. URL: about:config
   
2. Find: gfx.direct2d.disabled
   
3. Set to True
   
4. Restart Firefox
   

No need to disable Aero etc.

OMG, thanks! I've been suffering with this on Windows 8 for a while now, and since it only happens with Firefox I assumed that eventually a newer version would come out that had it fixed. I'm so glad I can use my browser without cringing again!