Good day Affinity Forum,
Yesterday I bought the latest version of A. Designer for Windows. Sadly after installation I instantly ran into a very weird technical issue which makes the software unusable for me personally.
Once the application is launched, I get about 3-5 seconds of normal control/use. Then it starts stuttering and causing screen flickering on my monitor. The weird and interesting thing is that A. Designer application is only stuttering while I am ''in'' the application window with my cursor, and using the application. I have tested and replicated the issue with multiple applications opened and the stuttering & screen flickering only happens when I go into A. Designer. As soon as I move my cursor out A. Designer, the stuttering and flickering stops and other running applications are not affected by stuttering or flickering.
After tracking CPU and GPU temps/speeds/voltages whilst having this issue, I can safely say that all of those are stable, except for a small bump in load on the GPU, but of neglectable size I would think.
I have a Dell S2417DG gaming monitor, 2560x1440, running at 144Hz, with Nvidia G-SYNC ENABLED. (While I am typing this it comes to my mind that I still need to try and reproduce the issue with lower Hz settings and with G-SYNC DISABLED).
My gut gives me a feeling there is some sort of interferance from A. Designer with the Nvidia drivers or the Nvidia G-sync tech. I have the latest Nvidia drivers for my RTX2070 installed.
Now here comes a fun fact for the developers who read this; I had the exact same technical issue as described above, on the same new desktop with the Spotify Music application. After some testing with different Hz settings and G-SYNC on and off, the stuttering and screen flickering still happened in Spotify. Then when I went into advanced settings, I disabled the option ''Hardware acceleration'' and poof, spotify worked like a charm again. On all different Hz settings, with G-SYNC on and off. No more stuttering and screen flickering.
I do not know exactly what the ''Hardware acceleration'' option in Spotify does under the hood. I checked for a similar option in A. Designer but I could not find it. Perhaps this ''Hardware acceleration'' is built in the A. Designer code by default? I tested with Rendering settings in A. Designer on ''Warp'', but this doesnt fix the issue for me.
I am very curious if the people from Affinity are perhaps able to reproduce this issue on similar hardware. Or if anybody has experienced this issue at all.
In the meanwhile I will wait and see if the next Nvidia driver update will fix this problem perhaps. The application is currently unusable for me sadly. Fingers crossed for me I will be able to use A. Designer in the future on my current desktop.
My 2 weeks old desktop setup;
W10 pro 64-bit
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO
Intel i7-9700K
Gigabyte RTX2070
16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200Mhz
Thanks in advance for your time, best regards,
Pascal