Use about:config to set:
gfx.xrender.enabled = false
layers.acceleration.force-enabled = true
Canvas rendering should be much much faster. Remember to set these to defaults if you switch drivers, the same isn’t true on DRI/Gallium Radeon.
I just tried this on Devian sid, Iceweasel (Firefox rebranded) 10.0.11 on ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200 Graphics & fglrx 8.97.100.3 and it messed up all the browser. All the widgets were shifted downwards and there were all sorts of funky artefacts.
On a GPU that old, you might as well just switch to radeon instead of fglrx.
I would switch to radeon, if it would stop torching the GPU. The temperature of the GPU gets so high when running the radeon driver that my laptop’s cooling fan runs like a helicopter making a hell of a noise. And I’m not alone: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50327 . Many more people over the net have this problem. The “radeon” driver is simply not useable at this time due to this power management problem.
Using it now on CentOS 5 with Firefox 17, ATI RS690 and fglrx 9.3. Canvas performance definitely improved. Thanks for the tip.
Have tried the settings. Scrolling is much more fluent now.
Thanks!
Thorsten