WayfireWM / WayfireWM/wayfire

Vulkan renderer uses more GPU and battery than GLES one

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low-priority wlroots
Dominant language
C++
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Description

Just wanted to try vulkan, as it advertized to be more efficient. Now it works with wayfire too, unfortunately many features that makes wayfire special are not supported there. And noticed that vulkan uses twice more GPU (measured by gputop or intel_gputop) than gles2. At idle arount 0.2-0.4% of rendering cores vs 0.1 in gles, and same on firefox youtube - 6-14% vs 3-7%. Tested on the same video same config just chenging WLR_RENDER and restart. Tried this many times and that is not measuring statostical fluctuation, that's how it is working.

Tried with git snaphot of wlroots which had more vulkan improvements over the stable 0.19 - but nothing changes, vulkan is worse than gles2 in all aspects. Both in features and efficiency. And - it does not show HDR content on firefox-youtube, just green rectangle. As I undestand gles does not as well - it shows SDR video instead of HDR bit that's better than green rect.

Not a bug - as I uderstand vulkan rendering is pretty experimental for all software involved - wlroots, wayfire and firefox. But so far not good. starting - but not a single reason for use so far.

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Research direction

Reproduce the comparison using the same video and configuration while switching WLR_RENDER, then measure idle and Firefox YouTube GPU usage with gputop or intel_gputop. Compare the Vulkan and GLES2 paths in Wayfire, wlroots, and Firefox, including the reported green rectangle for HDR content; done means identifying a concrete cause or documenting the relevant limitation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
computer-graphics, desktop, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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