meet.google.com - Bad performance

[mythmon]

URL: https://meet.google.com

Browser / Version: Firefox 102.0
Operating System: Linux
Tested Another Browser: Yes Chrome

Problem type: Something else
Description: performance is intermittetenly bad
Steps to Reproduce:
While one a video call with more than a couple people, my entire system will get slow, and the audio from Google Meet gets choppy (both incoming and outgoing).

I've found that my entire CPU is down clocking to less than 1GHz for about 15 seconds out of every two minutes. It comes in bursts, dropping frequency and then recovering, only to do it again a minute or two later.

Chrome does not exhibit this behavior. My laptop has a modern i7 Intel CPU with integrated graphics. Neither the laptop nor CPU are overheating.

Browser Configuration

• None

From webcompat.com with ❤️

[softvision-oana-arbuzov]

Thanks for the report @mythmon.

We have a few Bugzilla issues regarding bad performance on Google meet:

• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1666866
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1653112

Could you also provide a performance profile? https://profiler.firefox.com/

[qa_28/2022]

[mythmon]

I'll try and get a profile. Is it important to get it when the issue is happening, or is just using Meet enough? I'll try and get the former, but it can be a bit unpredictable, so it's hard to capture in a profile that is small enough to share.

In the meantime, here is a screenshot showing my CPU's behavior during an incident that I unfortunately couldn't get in the profile. I was actually profiling at the time, but when I tried to send it to profiler.firefox.com I got an error about the data being too large.

View the screenshot

[softvision-oana-arbuzov]

@mythmon try to get the profile when the issue occurs, and you don't need to leave it too long to record, just when you see it becomes slow and choppy, hopefully, it will record that part.

[inv_28/2022]

[mythmon]

I was able to catch it in a profile, here: https://share.firefox.dev/3IEKdBP. The entire time period of this profile was while the call was choppy and my CPU was downclocked.

It seems like it happens more when screen sharing is being used (another person sharing their screen with em), but not exclusively.

[janodvarko]

Thank you for the profile info!

Added also to: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1670633#c18

[padenot]

This is likely to be caused by thermal throttling. If you can do another recording with the Media preset, it would help confirm this.

[softvision-oana-arbuzov]

Ping @mythmon

[mythmon]

Sorry, I replied in the bug, but forgot to update here.

[softvision-oana-arbuzov]

Thanks @mythmon . I'll close this in favor of the Bugzilla issue: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1670633#c18

[inv_32/2022]