Browser GPU acceleration + integrated graphics

Is it worth using gpu acceleration in your browser if youre stuck on a weak IGP.

 

I always wonder why people think these simple tasks need such a high end graphics card. That's like getting a Intel Core i7 to run Calculator.exe. Browser acceleration is trivial to all but the lowest IGPs today. It's not like you need a faster GPU to do it, you just need a GPU with the right instruction set and if it has it then having a top end GPU wont make it better.

Same goes for H264 acceleration!

 

same as for aero: yes. even the weakest igp is faster at "just drawing stuff" than the cpu. and by FAR faster.

AND it frees the cpu from doing that work which is not actually cpu-style work. so even while the igp might be slower at drawing (it really isn't), you still get a freed up cpu to let it do other things.

so yes, it is always worth it.

 

It depends what kind of GPU acceleration we are talking about. GPU accelerated video and graphics, or using the GPU's latent horsepower for other computational tasks, like accelerating photoshop or something.

 

no it never depends per se (but here we talk about accelerating mostly 2d animations and moves, fades and such). it's an additional, rather strange computing unit. dedicated to dump number crunching. why not use it for that? and then still use the cpu for what ever else?

no cpu is faster than the cpu + the gpu together. no matter what, you get >100% by using acceleration. you don't get that in any other way. and even if it woudl just be 110% thanks to it (if the gpu would be 10% the speed of the cpu), it's still faster than not using it.

and believe me, cpu's are MUCH slower at doing 2d and 3d graphics than gpus. that's what they're made for. even igps. even crappy ones. even old crappy ones.


oh, and same for power saving. the least efficient gpu is the cpu-that-has-to-do-graphics-stuff-itself.

 

If you want power savings, you want to disable Aero and not use anything that requires any calculations.

If you want aero and video acceleration and such, the GPU is by far the most efficient way to do it, even if it's an old IGP.

 

It doesn't quite work the way you said. With GPU acceleration, a task is given to the GPU instead of the CPU, not the GPU and CPU both working on the one task. If the GPU is not powerful enough, that task it going to be completed slower on the GPU than it was on the CPU. But the rest of what you say is correct now. Until recently drivers and software showed decreased performance by using GPU acceleration on Intel integrated graphics, but it looks like that has changed. And by acceleration, I am talking about flash, web browsers, photoshop, etc.

 

no. aero is often more power efficient as the gpu is MUCH MUCH more efficient at drawing stuff than the cpu will ever be. seriously. you might disable transparency, though.

i'm talking about multitasking. it frees cpu shifting stuff to the gpu. i mean, that's obvious. and thus it's beneficial even if it's slower on the gpu. freeing cpu is often the best thing in terms of user performance (snappiness) and power savings. the cpu is the most inefficient gpu existing.

oh, and they can work in tandem on the same job if programmed that way ( YouTube - Simen HQ.avi here you see pathtracing (used for movies and such) done on gpu and cpu at the same time. cpu is rather new high end. gpu's arent that new, and not that high end. still dancing around the cpu while doing non-gpu-optimized stuff).

most of the stuff a browser uses gpu acceleration is stuff that is really made for the gpu. scrolling, zooming, animating stuff. those are cpu hogs that don't need to. the gpu is MADE FOR THIS. especially igps. they're not made for gaming, they're made for accelerating small stuff. ui, video, some small 3d, etc..

 

Gotcha. Just that I remember about a year ago benchmarks were showing a decrease in performance, sometimes drastic, by choosing hardware acceleration in many cases on the Intel IGP, but it looks like that was cleared up.

 

compared to using the cpu?

now do the same while the cpu does something that uses cpu. compare the performance now

but yeah, igp of intel are really nice performers for ui, 2d, simple 3d and video processing by now.