Firefox vs. Chromium Battery Performance for Video Playback on Intel N4120 Chuwi Hi10 XR

Hi there, Chards here.

I did a little research on the tablet I bought, namely Chuwi Hi10 XR.
I will continue to improve this data with more samples and more scenarios for the tablet, so please stay tuned.
I am aware that I'm using this research format incorrectly, but I will improve it over time.

P.S. Iridium Browser is based on the Chromium Browser. Performance may be similar or better on other Chromium-based browsers.

When I disabled overlay on Windows 10 20H2 (it did not show any effect on Windows 10 1909) using this command (use it at your own risk) 

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers /v DisableOverlays /t REG_DWORD /d 1 

It dramatically reduced the 3D engine use of Chromium Browsers to 0% and only used the Video Decode and Video Processing engines when viewing videos on the browser. There was no effect on Firefox. I did not know about this prior to conducting this research and thus the results are not included.

Also of note, various visual bugs will appear on Chuwi Hi10 X / XR devices if Windows 10 were to be updated to 20H2 or future releases. The most stable version I can use for my Chuwi device is Windows 10 1909 as of writing this.

Abstract (the research conclusion)

Chards conducted a study in which he tested one Chuwi Hi10 XR Intel N4120 to test out two browsers for their battery efficiency. Firefox and Iridium (a Chromium-based browser) were pitted against each other using Youtube as the benchmark site. Iridium/Chromium won the battle against Firefox in both video playback performance and battery efficiency, using only 16Watts as opposed to Firefox's 19.65Watts on the device. The study also found some factors that suggests that Chromium-based browsers have better video playback performance than Firefox.

Intro

The Chuwi Hi10 XR is a tablet with the Intel Celeron N4120 inside of it, giving users the performance of the latest Celeron CPUs Intel can offer. Celerons are the lowest tier of the Intel lineup, excluding the now-discontinued Intel Atom lineup. Being very cheap, Intel Celerons can offer good performance for its price, and in turn are very battery-efficient.

The Intel Celeron N4120 is the upgraded version of the upgraded version of N4000.

Scope of the Study

The study is only applicable to Chuwi Hi10 XR and similar tablet devices. This is due to Chuwi Hi10 XR having a severe symptom of "unremovable Power Limits" and thus cannot perform beyond its base clock.

Methodology

The experiment I used the following programs:
Firefox 84.0.2 (64-bit)
Iridium Version 2020.11 (Official Build) (64-bit)
BatteryMon V2.1
Throttlestop


For the experiment, I made sure that the only peripherals connected to the tablet is the keyboard attachment and a generic USB mouse to ensure a better reflection of data for tablets fresh out of the box.

I also ensured that no other tabs or windows are open aside from the browser, Task Manager, and BatteryMon.

The browsers themselves will be mostly barebones. I used a minimum of three addons/extensions for both browsers, Multi-Account Containers not included for Firefox.

Figure 1.1 Firefox addons used in the research.

Figure 1.2 Iridium/Chromium extensions used in the research.

I will be taking note of the performance of the video at 1080p60, with or without Intel Turbo Boost, and measure the discharge rate during experiments. Video used is in this link. 

All Display Graphics settings are set to Performance, along with other settings regarding Video Playback in Windows Settings -> Apps -> Video Playback.

Results

Figure 2.1 Table of results

Figure 2.2 Chart generated from the table



Figure 2.3 CPU Clock Average 

As shown in Figure 2.3, Iridium boasts the least battery consumed without Intel's Turbo Boost enabled. I can only assume that the tablet's built-in Power Limit is the culprit in such a performance downgrade for video playback


Figure 2.4 Battery Consumption in Watts

Power consumption is very inaccurate and pretty much useless data for Chuwi Hi10 XR. You can skip this, or read this and take it by a grain of salt. The mWh is very dependent on battery percentage. I measured the average of the displayed mWh from 80% to 75%. Gives me an idea on how much energy is used by each browser on Youtube.

Iridium on base clock only consumes around 16Watts on the Chuwi Tablet, which is quite efficient compared to Firefox's 19.56W on the same settings.


Figure 2.5 GPU Usage

It can also be seen in Figure 2.5 that Iridium/Chromium used Video Processing on the Intel GPU in order to boost its video playback performance for VP09 decoding, and thus improved performance and reduced the use of CPU and 3D GPU renderer.

It is also of note that video playback on Firefox with Intel Turbo Boost enabled degrades the video playback performance and introduced stutters that impacts viewing experience. Not only on Firefox but also everywhere if CPU is heavily utilized at the same time.

As shown in Figure 2.4, Iridium boasts the least battery consumed without Intel's Turbo Boost enabled. I can only assume that the tablet's built-in Power Limit is the culprit in such a performance downgrade for video playback. 

Conclusion

Chromium browsers have better video decoders which utilizes the Video Decoder engine as well as the Video Processing engine. This leads to better user experience overall. Iridium as a fork did not disappoint when it comes to performance to websites.

Firefox as a very customizable and open source browser is performing worse than Chromium when it comes to video playback. It may have its own merits on other aspects, such as customizability and potential privacy and security hardening modifications, but it still needs more work in this world of online streaming.