This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox for Linux media, videos, maps much slower and resource intensive than Chrome

typhooncamel
typhooncamel
more options

I am partial to running Firefox over Chrome, however, there are several instances when the difference between the two is abysmal.

Whenever I play any videos (for example Youtube), browse any maps (Nokia Here, Google Maps), or do anything that requires media (Skype, Google Hangouts), Firefox is slow, a single core will go to 100%, Firefox will become slow to respond, and sometimes will hang. On the other hand, these same sites on Google Chrome (or Chromium) will be perfectly smooth and fast.

I have searched for several solutions, including enabling/disabling hardware acceleration, checking that addons are not the culprit, checking that the plugins are up to date, and so on, to no avail. I have also followed Mozilla's "high CPU" and "high RAM" pages, but finding no solution.

I am currently running Firefox 44 on Ubuntu 14.04. Does anyone have any suggestions?

I am partial to running Firefox over Chrome, however, there are several instances when the difference between the two is abysmal. Whenever I play any videos (for example Youtube), browse any maps (Nokia Here, Google Maps), or do anything that requires media (Skype, Google Hangouts), Firefox is slow, a single core will go to 100%, Firefox will become slow to respond, and sometimes will hang. On the other hand, these same sites on Google Chrome (or Chromium) will be perfectly smooth and fast. I have searched for several solutions, including enabling/disabling hardware acceleration, checking that addons are not the culprit, checking that the plugins are up to date, and so on, to no avail. I have also followed Mozilla's "high CPU" and "high RAM" pages, but finding no solution. I am currently running Firefox 44 on Ubuntu 14.04. Does anyone have any suggestions?

All Replies (1)

typhooncamel
typhooncamel Question owner
more options

I have eventually found what probably was the culprit

gfx.xrender.enabled

which needs to be set to false in my case.