Brave browser lags/stutter/GPU spikes at 100%

Good day! I’ve encountered a terrible decrease in performance of my brave browser (windows) since september 29, 2022 (GMT+8). I am using this browser with my work for several months. Tried to upload the video here but it prompts that I am not allowed because I am a new user.

youtube link:

As you can see in the video. When I am turning on 2 floor plans using brave browser, it lags and it appears that it is using 100% of my Nvidia GTX 1050Ti. But when I am using microsoft edge. It has no problems.

PC specs:
Intel Core i5 8400
16gb ram 2666mhz
Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti 4gb
Samsung SATA SSD

Tried solutions: (but nothings change)
-Clean brave browser using ccleaner
-reinstall gpu drivers
-reinstall brave browser (uninstalled using revo uninstaller for a better cleaning of files)
-turned off and on hardware acceleration in browser
-tried to go in settings>graphic settings> and set graphic reference in brave app to power saving and high perf and nothing works

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Try with hardware acceleration off, to see if it makes a difference.
In my case, without HW acceleration the browser is much faster.

brave://settings/system

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Oh I’m sorry. I forgot to add that one in the list. I’ve also tried that but the result is it can’t open 2 floor plans at the same time and my browser freezes. Anyways thank you for your suggestion.

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Never turn hardware acceleration off, that’s the worst advice, there is a reason why hardware acceleration exists and that’s because it has hundred of cores compared to CPUs.

But all you could do is to compare edge://gpu vs brave://gpu and see if you see some problem in the logs or some information, it will not be the same.
There are going to be some differences, especially in newest Brave update,
Edge stable uses chromium 105 and Brave 106, when Brave switched from 105 to 106, it switched

  1. Canvas out-of-process rasterization (chrome://flags/#canvas-oop-rasterization)
  2. WebGPU (I don’t know why this shows as enabled, if you go to a WebGPU samples page, it will still say WebGPU API is disabled, but Edge has it disabled it as well)

So you could run Edge with --enable-features=CanvasOopRasterization or disable it in Brave and test to see if that changes anything, that should be the most obvious difference between both.

I guess Edge probably optimizes the engines for Windows better than Google would, but the difference is way too much to ignore it.

There are things you can change the way GPU acceleration works. You go to brave://flags/#use-angle and see if OpenGL works better or D3D11on12. (I am sure all Hardware Acceleration features should be supported even in D3D11on12 but make sure that’s the case).
You could also give brave://flags/#enable-vulkan a try if you want to try it and see how much difference that also makes.

Do you see a same behavior in other websites? since I couldn’t test the one you are using, I tested https://floorplanner.com/demo and other heavy GPU ones like https://webglsamples.org/ and everything seemed okay between Brave and Edge, in fact, Edge was using more GPU than Brave, tiny little more.

What if you run --no-sandbox with Brave? to see if it changes performance when no sandbox is forced in the browser and the GPU process.

are Edge and Brave using the same GPU engine?

Note: I kind of recommend also use ProcessHacker 3 (nightly) that way you can easily use | symbol to include multiple filters in the filter box, for example Brave|Edge so you will only see them, plus you can go to settings and enable “Include usage of collapsed processes” so if you collapse the processes it will combine the usage numbers from all child processes (if it doesn’t let you collapse, you click the column name until you see the arrow to collapse) then you also enable the GPU column and you can easily see the % between both, also in graph GPU you can get the nodes just just like Windows task manager, which tells you about the GPU engines being used but you can hover on the graph and get which process is using it, same with CPU.
But to troubleshoot and monitor PH is just better (it also has dark mode if you enable theme support is on).

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Hi Emi! Thank you for your very detailed reply. I compared the gpu of both browsers and yes, the only difference I have noticed was the Canvas out-of-process rasterization. I disabled that feature in brave browser and it works like a charm :grinning: it fixed the lag/stuttering issue when I am turning on 2 floor plans at the same time. But one thing I have noticed is the range of usage in my gtx1050ti using brave with this fixed is about 5% to 20%, But in edge is only 3 to 7%. I think this is another problem right now. But most importantly, my problem has been fixed. Thank you so much. :blush:

@CCiCC Glad your problem was fixed! Could you please mark a post as the solution? It will help community members and Brave support know your issue is solved. It will also help others looking for a solution that have the same (or similar) issue.

I just would like to comment on enabling/disabling HWA. My understanding is that disabling/enabling hardware acceleration is a common troubleshooting technique for performance/GPU issues and Brave support staff often suggest testing (or fixing) performance issues by disabling HWA. There are many reasons why this works in some cases including having a low-end or integrated GPU (I think). Whether to disable/enable HWA can depend on a slew of things but is a good first step in troubleshooting issues and sometimes the only fix.

I am not tech savvy at all and maybe I am misunderstanding the issue, but I do think there are instances where turning HWA off is a valid troubleshooting tool at the very minimum regardless of whether it is disabled permanently or temporarily.

@CCiCC I am glad it worked.
it is good you can use pages correctly now, for whatever reason Chromium 106 enabled that option, which was off in 105, maybe for a reason like messing with some GPU acceleration, it’s hard to keep up with updates like that for sure, I am sure not many would notice these types of changes that are so internal.

About the % usage between Edge or Brave, less doesn’t necessarily mean better, it is good it is using the GPU if the acceleration is there, you would have to see if Brave CPU consumption is less, so it uses less CPU but more GPU which should be the best way and maybe Brave is using more fps when dealing with the GPU acceleration.

And the only way to see fps count clearly is by using something like https://webglsamples.org/, which is not the same as the floor plans, but it is the only way to see if Edge is really more efficient while using less GPU.
You will notice Chromium will limit FPS to 60, so if you want to unlock FPS and temporary go beyond 60, you can always run browsers with:

--disable-frame-rate-limit  --disable-gpu-vsync

@Chocoholic exactly, “common troubleshooting technique” a temporary test, a way to see if the GPU (like in this case) is causing more issues than good, but usually GPU information is going to be a better place to start than going with the “disable it” right away, without knowing what brave://gpu says, they don’t even know if GPU acceleration is working properly.
And also mostly the problem is people using is as a permanent solution because ‘it works’ , yeah maybe it works in a 720p youtube video with a decent CPU, but if we talk about more heavy stuff like this floor plans website or a webgl or game or something or 4k or something then no.

Yes, GPU matters, an old GPU as you say, might be slower in some stuff, but never to work worst than CPU would, since CPU has way less cores, any decent new GPU with DX11 support should handle things okay. If not they would use DX9 which barely supports any Hardware Acceleration features.
Some old or not so old GPUs might be even blacklisted so it is not even going to use the GPU anyway, so you have to enable the #ignore-gpu-blocklist flag. So sometimes people think they are even using GPU acceleration when they aren’t.

So there are many variables to just say “turn it off” as the first anything, and to be honest, people don’t really compare the before and after, sometimes it is more a ‘placebo’ effect because maybe they were using CPU already and they think it is performing better.

Few weeks ago I helped someone to troubleshoot GPU and with just GPU page information I told him that his GPU was not able to do true decoding of vp9 format which is what Youtube uses, but it was like a hybrid solution so it wasn’t completely done by CPU, his GPU only supported full acceleration up to H265.
So that’s the most important part too, to check GPU and see what it even supports.

Of course I don’t expect many people to know Out-of-process 2D canvas rasterization, was enabled by default, but it was pretty easy to figure out by looking at Edge and Brave GPU pages, so the obvious test was to turn it off.

Hardware acceleration is better, look at 3D rendering, in many cases CPU will be more stable, won’t have problems with memory since it will use computer’s memory and not the GPU memory which is less, and have more features and all, which is the reason why big studios still use CPU and have their big rendering farms, but the truth is GPU is faster and it can work in many many ways, so imagine GPU for websites which will never be as heavy as a 3D renderer.
Of course GPU acceleration is kind of bad, especially since it is tied to JS and other web technologies, if you run a youtube 1080p video in mpv vs browser, mpv will use like 1% CPU, while no a browser it might use 9% for example, of course many times it has to do with the Audio service too, so that’s why I say things are heavier in Web Browsers, many variables and not just simple hardware acceleration.

Anyway! that’s why I always mention turning hardware acceleration off is a bad advice, not because it is, it is a valid troubleshooting solution but I know people will use it as a permanent solution instead of truly fix their GPU issue, and running things only on CPU seems okay but it is not good for so many things.

Thanks for expanding information on HWA options. I definitely agree with what you are saying. :slightly_smiling_face:

I also think there are a lot of users who are satisfied if just turning it off fixes their problem even if it doesn’t fix anything, is not a good solution, and/or is not optimizing performance. Quick easy fix and gets the job done. Who needs all that fancy stuff. :laughing: I think the users who are concerned and know better (like those you pointed out) would definitely not be satisfied with that solution or even with suggesting that option be a permanent “fix”.

As always, enjoyed your posts! Always learn a lot (and get lost a lot lol). Take care. :slightly_smiling_face:

@CCiCC You should mark one of the above posts as a solution if your original problem has been solved. It will help community members and Brave support know you no longer have an issue and also help anyone looking for a solution to the same or similar problem. You can always open another topic if you do identify another problem. :slightly_smiling_face:

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