Firefox and Edge render this 4K video at 60 FPS without any stuttering, Brave at 5-9 FPS

Feedback Browser Feedback
, , ,
1

Test case YouTube video (starts at the relevant time)

IMPORTANT POINTS:

  • Both Firefox and MS Edge render this video without ANY stuttering, at glitch-free 60 FPS. Period.
  • Brave renders it at 5-9 FPS with heavy stuttering
  • This is on a home-theater PC with the NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3050 (6GB), which is a special low-power desktop graphics card, whose design was released by NVIDIA in 2024 (yes, in 2024, it’s not a mistake, its TDP is 75W and it has no extra PCIe power cable input).

My setup:

  • Windows 11 Pro 24H2
  • NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3050 6GB (design from 2024, bought in 2025)
  • AMD Ryzen 7 8700G (I verified NONE of the tested browsers was rendering on the iGPU, which is poor performing – all of them were rendering on the RTX 3050)
  • 4K monitor running at 60 Hz
  • Latest NVIDIA drivers
  • 32 GB RAM
  • 1TB SSD
  • Brave settings: Tried both ON and OFF for: System > “Use graphics acceleration when available” – neither of them produces smooth playback (see below).

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Install NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3050 6G and latest NVIDIA drivers
  2. Make sure Windows 11 is configured to force Brave to render on that graphics card (and not on the iGPU built in the CPU).
  3. Set your Windows desktop resolution to 4K (3840 x 2160) and screen refresh rate to 60 Hz or a higher integer multiple of it (e.g. 120).
  4. Play the following video in Brave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNS5Piu-EII&t=271s
  5. Observe in Windows Task Manager Performance tab that the dedicated GPU is utilized only at 10-16% (check that iGPU is at 0%) whereas in Firefox it’s 40-50%.
  6. Try to toggle the Brave setting “Use graphics acceleration when available”. When ON, Brave crashes after about 10 seconds of trying to play the video, still stuttering. Also, when this setting is ON, the entire Brave UI flickers, so I have to set it to OFF and restart Brave (which yields the low FPS video replay).
  7. Try different NVIDIA drivers, including older good ones, nothing helps.

What happens:
Video being replayed at 5-9 FPS with heavy stuttering

What should have happened:
Video should have been playing at 60 FPS, just like in Firefox and Edge

Personal comment: I was so excited about the privacy features of Brave that I wanted to migrate to it from Firefox permanently. But this issue literally stopped me. What a pitty. I hope you can fix it. I’m willing to help you with anything you want!