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Speed up Google Chrome by enabling hardware acceleration and pre-rendering
We've spent a lot of time jabbering on and on and on about hardware acceleration in the next generation of Web browsers.The problem, however, is that no stable browsers have it turned on by default. Unless you're running Firefox 4 beta or Internet Explorer 9 RC, you're probably not enjoying hardware acceleration. Heck, our latest poll shows that almost 50% of Download Squad readers run Chrome, anyway!
Turning hardware acceleration on in Chrome 9, 10 and 11 (stable, beta and canary) is easy, and it can significantly speed up surfing on low-powered devices, like laptops -- or if you're the kind of person who has 30+ tabs open on your desktop PC. We'll show you how to turn on pre-rendering, too, which provides another nice speed boost.
Scroll down and enable GPU Accelerated Compositing. Just below that, also enable GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D. Chrome 11 doesn't have the 'GPU Accelerated Compositing' option, because it's now turned on by default (hooray!). Mac users, you can only enable GPU Accelerated Compositing; GPU Accelerated Canvas 2D is not yet available.
Scroll down a little, and enable Web Page Prerendering.
Finally, hit the Restart button at the bottom of the page.
Now head to your favorite shiny, graphical site (Engadget is good) and try scrolling! It should be a lot smoother.
For more Chrome tips, see our tips index.
Comments
16
Subscribe to commentsmurlidharMar 3rd 2011 1:54PM
offtopic : :|
Well almost half of the downloadsquad readers use chrome but it still doesn't support proper handling of custom fonts.
i mean we can't force chrome to use our own fonts!
zombiesMar 3rd 2011 2:56PM
I didn't notice a difference, anyone know if theres another way to test this?
thanks
Sebastian AnthonyMar 3rd 2011 2:58PM
@zombies Try the FishIE Tank test :)
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/FishIETank/Default.html
mailMar 6th 2011 1:47AM
@zombies, Yeah, I enabled all of these flags. But does this create a huge noticeable difference? Any website that could measure the loading time of the website/images in the browser?
Crazy SerbMar 3rd 2011 5:39PM
Gee, thanks for the suggestion...
After enabling those three, restarting Chrome, boy, did I get a nice surprise... all extensions nixed, as if they were never there. Chrome 9 reduced to a default, out of the box, package... with those three options still disabled (after going back into about:flags screen).
(thank God for backups)
Sebastian AnthonyMar 3rd 2011 5:48PM
@Crazy Serb Wow! Sorry to hear that.
We've never had any issues like that, and we tinker with Chrome and Firefox all day long! :(
3tearMar 3rd 2011 6:02PM
Does the GPU acceleration work on Chrome for OSX as well?
Sebastian AnthonyMar 3rd 2011 6:42PM
@3tear You should read ALL of the words in the article :P
(Compositing/rendering works on OS X, but no Canvas 2D acceleration.)
R_JMeltingMar 3rd 2011 11:07PM
FishIE with 1000 fish still runs at 32fps in Chrome for me. I own a fairly new HP laptop with a quality GPU.
Sebastian AnthonyMar 4th 2011 8:00AM
@R_JMelting 32 FPS is pretty good for 1000 fishes on a non-desktop machine :)
PoopMar 4th 2011 1:28AM
Awesome, I definitely see the difference, the pictures on engadget loads much quicker. It used to load one by one as I scrolled down.
Thanks guys :D
PhilipMar 4th 2011 1:58AM
if it's so great, why doesn't chrome turn it on by default. It must be bc there is some kind of trade-off
Sebastian AnthonyMar 4th 2011 7:59AM
@Philip Yeah, it's not considered ready for prime-time. Probably not 100% stable (and there's the outdated driver issue, which we reported earlier this week.)
speedracerx808Mar 4th 2011 7:42PM
@Sebastian Anthony
30+ on anything is a good measure. I'm running at about 36fps with a non overclocked i7, 6GB Ram, GTX580. 500 fishes run at the max 60fps.
Sebastian AnthonyMar 4th 2011 7:43PM
@speedracerx808 Hmmm... you should do a little better than that! I'm running an i7 @ 4GHz, but only a GTX 460 -- and I can hit 60 FPS with 1000 fish.
Maybe it's still limited by the CPU, rather than GPU. Not sure :)
FlamMar 7th 2011 7:12PM
Wow! I didn't expect it to be this much faster! Incredible tip, thanks