I am having an issue watching hd (720 or 1080) videos on Ubuntu 21.04 fresh install. I get really high cpu usage (50% on all cores) which is pretty high for a 720p vid. I tried watching the same video on vlc (hw acceleration) and it works perfectly fine. I even tried a 4k video and it works fine cpu usage < 20%. Why is chrome consuming so much cpu?
flags enabled:
![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KNDf3.png)
Here is what I have tried:
sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver
CPU usage on vlc with 4k video h265, vlc is on second line, gnome for some reason takes a HUGE screenshot (6MB, had to compress):
![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HcyQY.jpg)
CPU usage chrome + youtube:
Stats for nerds:
![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/573EB.jpg)
On my laptop I have an intel cpu:
lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
Address sizes: 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s): 8
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-7
Thread(s) per core: 2
Core(s) per socket: 4
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 142
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz
Stepping: 11
CPU MHz: 2000.000
CPU max MHz: 4600.0000
CPU min MHz: 400.0000
BogoMIPS: 3999.93
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 128 KiB
L1i cache: 128 KiB
L2 cache: 1 MiB
L3 cache: 8 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-7
Vulnerability Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: VMX disabled
Vulnerability L1tf: Not affected
Vulnerability Mds: Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Vulnerability Meltdown: Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled v
ia prctl and seccomp
Vulnerability Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user
pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2: Mitigation; Full generic retpoline, IBPB condit
ional, IBRS_FW, STIBP conditional, RSB filling
Vulnerability Srbds: Mitigation; Microcode
Vulnerability Tsx async abort: Not affected
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtr
r pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx f
xsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rd
tscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts
rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperf
mperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx e
st tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_
1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer
aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowpre
fetch cpuid_fault epb invpcid_single ssbd ibrs
ibpb stibp tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpi
d ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi
2 erms invpcid mpx rdseed adx smap clflushopt i
ntel_pt xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves dtherm i
da arat pln pts hwp hwp_notify hwp_act_window h
wp_epp md_clear flush_l1d arch_capabilities
I have enabled hw acceleration on chrome:
Graphics Feature Status
Canvas: Hardware accelerated
Compositing: Hardware accelerated
Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
Out-of-process Rasterization: Hardware accelerated
OpenGL: Enabled
Rasterization: Hardware accelerated
Skia Renderer: Enabled
Video Decode: Hardware accelerated
Vulkan: Enabled
WebGL: Hardware accelerated
WebGL2: Hardware accelerated
Driver Bug Workarounds
adjust_src_dst_region_for_blitframebuffer
clear_uniforms_before_first_program_use
count_all_in_varyings_packing
decode_encode_srgb_for_generatemipmap
enable_webgl_timer_query_extensions
exit_on_context_lost
msaa_is_slow
disabled_extension_GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced
disabled_extension_GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced_coherent
Problems Detected
Clear uniforms before first program use on all platforms: 124764, 349137
Applied Workarounds: clear_uniforms_before_first_program_use
Mesa drivers in Linux handle varyings without static use incorrectly: 333885
Applied Workarounds: count_all_in_varyings_packing
On Intel GPUs MSAA performance is not acceptable for GPU rasterization: 527565
Applied Workarounds: msaa_is_slow
adjust src/dst region if blitting pixels outside framebuffer on Linux Intel: 664740
Applied Workarounds: adjust_src_dst_region_for_blitframebuffer
Disable KHR_blend_equation_advanced until cc shaders are updated: 661715
Applied Workarounds: disable(GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced), disable(GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced_coherent)
Decode and Encode before generateMipmap for srgb format textures on Linux Mesa ANGLE path: 634519
Applied Workarounds: decode_encode_srgb_for_generatemipmap
Expose WebGL's disjoint_timer_query extensions on platforms with site isolation: 808744, 870491
Applied Workarounds: enable_webgl_timer_query_extensions
Some drivers can't recover after OUT_OF_MEM and context lost: 893177
Applied Workarounds: exit_on_context_lost
ANGLE Features
allow_compressed_formats (Frontend workarounds): Enabled: true
Allow compressed formats
disable_anisotropic_filtering (Frontend workarounds): Disabled
Disable support for anisotropic filtering
disable_program_binary (Frontend features) anglebug:5007: Disabled:
<SNIP!>
...
<SNIP!>
Device Performance Information
Log Messages
[17135:17135:1001/094454.627605:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(374)] : InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[17135:17135:1001/094454.630728:ERROR:vulkan_device_queue.cc(217)] : Vulkan: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 (WHL GT2)
EDIT:
Okay, this may be something more deep than I originally thought. Ubuntu has performance settings powersave, balanced, and performance. Setting it to performance works great and everything seems normal. But checking the governer:
sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils
Check the governer
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor
powersave
powersave
powersave
powersave
powersave
powersave
powersave
powersave
I set the governer to performance and now it looks to be working much better:
sudo nano /etc/default/cpufrequtils
and setting:
GOVERNOR="performance"
Then restarting the service
sudo systemctl restart cpufrequtils
EDIT 2:
Following along with what Michal Przybylowicz said, it looks like the decoder is not a hardware decoder? What is going on here? Why isnt chome or ubuntu using the hardware decoder?
![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iI6m9.jpg)
EDIT 2.5: Here is the output of vainfo:
vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_10
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.10 (libva 2.10.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel iHD driver for Intel(R) Gen Graphics - 21.1.1 ()
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointEncPicture
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile2 : VAEntrypointVLD
Edit 3: after trying to run it with --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder I got:
google-chrome --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder
MESA-INTEL: warning: Performance support disabled, consider sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0
[11790:11790:1003/113422.312061:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(374)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[11790:11790:1003/113422.314845:ERROR:vulkan_device_queue.cc(217)] Vulkan: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 (WHL GT2)
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
and whats up with this issue:
MESA-INTEL: warning: Performance support disabled, consider sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0
I also saw this when loading retroarch, I tried launching chrome after setting sysctl dev.i915.perf_stream_paranoid=0
and it made no change, still sw decoder.
It looks like others have been having the same issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/n6qywt/hardware_acceleration_fail_in_chrome_on_linux/