linux tip when folding on GPU and firefox

[MarcvdM]

Firefox hardware acceleration is claimed to be "used when available", but is actually turned off by default. When folding using a single laptop GPU this makes firefox excruciatingly slow, you can actually almost see pixels rendering.
solution: in about:config set "layers.acceleration.force-enabled" to true, and restart firefox.

[algorithminflux]

Thank you very much, MarcvdM! For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why a GPU folding at MEDIUM power caused Firefox to becomes sluggish beyond usability.

Cheers!


Folding on Pop!_OS 18.04 64-bit w/ NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti

[bruce]

When FAH is assigned to a relatively slow GPU, screen updates (whether by FF or Windows or other programs) are often delayed. Your screen may actually respond better if it's rasterized using your CPU rather than using GPU acceleration because the programmers falsely assume the GPU is never busy. The OS can manage the CPU resources much better than can the GPU, itself, since it doesn't recognize priority or interruptions like it would if it had an OS.

The ony other option (which may or may not work for you) is to configure FAH to fold with the GPU only when the OS says the computer is idle.