AMD Radeon RX Hardware Acceleration

[Mark Ingram]

Unfortunately we have discovered a bug with AMD's OpenCL driver in the AMD Radeon RX 5000 series and above graphics cards. This has been reported to AMD, and while we wait on a solution, we have blocked these cards from enabling hardware acceleration. We hope this will be a temporary change, but unfortunately we can't give estimates on when it's likely to be fixed. There is no need to downgrade from 1.9.1 to 1.8.5, as the software-only performance will be the same between these two versions. Thanks for your patience. 

[Artisan9]

Thanks Mark for the update.  I wondered why I still could not get HW acceleration in v19.1

[Tony Cotterill]

Hi.

I'm using a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M.

Recently I have been getting a pop-up saying that Photo.exe has been blocked from accessing the graphics hardware, and, of course, the laptop then starts to struggle.

Is this part of this same issue? Or do I have another problem?

Cheers,

Tony

[Rafael reina]

Thanks Mark. I'm using AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with AMD Radeon graphics and performance is very slow if I use hardware acceleration, everithig works fine if I disabled it.

Regards.

Rafa

[carl123]

@Tony Cotterill

Your post may get lost/missed in this thread

Please start a new thread restating your problem and specify in that thread if turning off Hardware Acceleration resolves the issue for you or not

[Artisan9]

Mark, I have a couple of comments.   First, is topaz Labs uses hardware acceleration for their AI products and it works on AMD GPUs.  Why is affinity Photo not able to do it while theirs does?  Are they using different hardware functions?    

Second, Topaz also uses Open VINO acceleration for CPU processing which is much faster than without it.   It works on AMD and Intel CPUs.  Can you use this to speed up the processing of CPUs?

Ron

[Vasto7]

Version 1.9.2 did not correct this issue.  Would it be possible to get an update on the progress toward resolution?

Thanks.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Vasto7 said:

Version 1.9.2 did not correct this issue.  Would it be possible to get an update on the progress toward resolution?

From the first post, Serif is waiting for AMD to fix bugs in the AMD drivers. When that has happened I'm sure that Mark will let us know.

[Vasto7]

@walt.farrell I was hoping there might be some progress to report, other than waiting on AMD, particularly since GPU acceleration seems to be fine for my card in other graphics programs.  Might Serif be working the issue from their end as well?  Just a thought.  Mind you, this has very little affect on my use of AP.  I just get hopeful when I see a new release.

Kind Regards.

[Mark Ingram]

13 minutes ago, Vasto7 said:

@walt.farrell I was hoping there might be some progress to report, other than waiting on AMD, particularly since GPU acceleration seems to be fine for my card in other graphics programs.  Might Serif be working the issue from their end as well?  Just a thought.  Mind you, this has very little affect on my use of AP.  I just get hopeful when I see a new release.

Kind Regards.

No sorry, we're waiting on AMD for this. When there is more information to share, I will update the thread.

[Vasto7]

@Mark Ingram Thanks for responding.  Happy Easter!

[Finch]

I'm running a Windows laptop with an Nvidia 1660Ti and I have to disable hardware acceleration if I want Affinity Photo to run for more than 1-2 minutes before crashing.. I've uninstalled, reinstalled, changed driver, and even formatted my system..  problem still persists and through MULTIPLE versions of Affinity Photo...  (I've been having to disable it since version 1.8 to avoid this)..  so it has gone through MULTIPLE Nvidia Studio Drivers as well... 

I think Affinity is pointing the finger in the wrong direction "Contacting AMD about their drivers" when obviously so many other people, not even using AMD 5000 GPU's, are experiencing problems with hardware acceleration enabled..  The common denominator in all of this is Affinity's approach to how THEY are accessing cards for hardware acceleration in Windows if I was to guess.. I mean let's face it, their software runs beautifully on Macs most of the time, so I'm of the strong opinion their focus is primarily on Mac..  I'm honestly just glad I've never canceled my Adobe subscription because I can't rely on their software alone to handle my work and I probably wouldn't have even started experimenting with it had it not been for a 50% off sale where I purchased all 3 applications and a number of brush packs..

Affinity Designer is a completely different story when it comes to performance on my laptop..  I can leave hardware acceleration enabled and work inside the program for HOURS without it having any issues whatsoever.. this too has been the case through MULTIPLE versions of Affinity, multiple Nvidia Studio drivers, several full system restores, etc..  again.. making me think this is a problem inside the Affinity Photo application.. 

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, Finch said:

I've been having to disable it since version 1.8 to avoid this

Hardware Acceleration on Windows, in Affinity, did not exist in 1.8. It was new in 1.9. If you've been having problems since 1.8 you're having an unrelated problem.

 

[Finch]

My mistake on the version number... I was thinking I'd purchased the software in the last iteration of 1.8 but looking at my install files it was in fact 1.9...  so..  Wrong about the version number, my mistake, but definitely accurate on the other information regarding different Nvidia Studio Drivers, system restores, and multiple versions of Affinity Photo (starting with 1.9 as I was incorrect about when I first purchased the software). 

I've been using the Nvidia Studio drivers since they became "A thing" and also tried switching to the Game Ready driver to see if it would fix this issue, but it did not.. 

[walt.farrell]

Thanks for that update, @Finch.

Re: the Nvidia drivers: we do know that Nvidia found some bugs from the information that Serif reported to them, and released a new set of drivers for testing, so I would not assume the issue is in the Serif code.

[Mark Ingram]

11 hours ago, Finch said:

I'm running a Windows laptop with an Nvidia 1660Ti and I have to disable hardware acceleration if I want Affinity Photo to run for more than 1-2 minutes before crashing.. I've uninstalled, reinstalled, changed driver, and even formatted my system..  problem still persists and through MULTIPLE versions of Affinity Photo...  (I've been having to disable it since version 1.8 to avoid this)..  so it has gone through MULTIPLE Nvidia Studio Drivers as well... 

I think Affinity is pointing the finger in the wrong direction "Contacting AMD about their drivers" when obviously so many other people, not even using AMD 5000 GPU's, are experiencing problems with hardware acceleration enabled..  The common denominator in all of this is Affinity's approach to how THEY are accessing cards for hardware acceleration in Windows if I was to guess.. I mean let's face it, their software runs beautifully on Macs most of the time, so I'm of the strong opinion their focus is primarily on Mac..  I'm honestly just glad I've never canceled my Adobe subscription because I can't rely on their software alone to handle my work and I probably wouldn't have even started experimenting with it had it not been for a 50% off sale where I purchased all 3 applications and a number of brush packs..

Affinity Designer is a completely different story when it comes to performance on my laptop..  I can leave hardware acceleration enabled and work inside the program for HOURS without it having any issues whatsoever.. this too has been the case through MULTIPLE versions of Affinity, multiple Nvidia Studio drivers, several full system restores, etc..  again.. making me think this is a problem inside the Affinity Photo application.. 

This thread is about AMD drivers, and you're posting an issue about an NVIDIA card, which hopefully you can understand, are two separate things (and off-topic for this thread).

AMD have acknowledged the bug I've reported, and are working to fix it. As you're experiencing a different problem, please can you make a new thread so that we can investigate effectively. Please attach your log file (%APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\Log.txt) in this new thread. 

RE: Designer vs Photo. They use hardware acceleration in different ways, so you will likely see differences like this. 

Finally, if hardware acceleration isn't working, you can disable it in Preferences while we investigate.

[Finch]

6 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

This thread is about AMD drivers, and you're posting an issue about an NVIDIA card, which hopefully you can understand, are two separate things (and off-topic for this thread).

AMD have acknowledged the bug I've reported, and are working to fix it. As you're experiencing a different problem, please can you make a new thread so that we can investigate effectively. Please attach your log file (%APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\Log.txt) in this new thread. 

RE: Designer vs Photo. They use hardware acceleration in different ways, so you will likely see differences like this. 

Finally, if hardware acceleration isn't working, you can disable it in Preferences while we investigate.

I've no issues posting to a new thread..  I posted this HERE because there were OTHER people reporting issues not only with 4000 series AMD GPUs (seeing as the initial comment specifically states 5000 series)  but another one with an Nvidia GPU as well.. 

AMD may very well have said they "know about and are working on a fix" but we've all heard this response from many companies and in many (not all) cases, the problem is not rectified until the developers who contacted one of the largest, and right now by far the most popular, CPU & GPU manufacturers.

If you're reporting on 5000 series AMD GPUs..  and you have complaints from people running 4000 series, as well as Nvidia cards, then as I originally stated, perhaps there is something that needs to be done on Affinity's side as they seem to be the common denominator when other GPUs are experiencing similar problems.

And I have no problem leaving hardware acceleration disabled, as I already mentioned I have to do if I want to use the software in my initial comment, but this is exactly why I will not make the switch from to Affinity Photo from Photoshop.. Again.. I absolutely love Affinity Designer and have no issues with it whatsoever (as you pointed out they use different hardware acceleration.. perhaps the answer lies in that statement alone)

Though I've no issues gladly saying that if I was within my window of getting a refund for Photo and I had not got it for only $25 during a 50% off sale, I would have already been requesting it. A quick google search proves Affinity is much more focused on Mac than Windows because the number of complaints about software performance is significantly higher..  Let's face it.. developing software for Windows is not as easy as Mac OS due to the extensive range of available hardware you need to support when compared to the handful of configuration options when developing for Mac.

My apologies for simply trying to add to this post that a problem relating to hardware acceleration may not just be limited to AMD 5000 series... At least now I know not to even try and contribute any bug reports I've experienced.

[Mark Ingram]

2 hours ago, Finch said:

If you're reporting on 5000 series AMD GPUs..  and you have complaints from people running 4000 series, as well as Nvidia cards, then as I originally stated, perhaps there is something that needs to be done on Affinity's side as they seem to be the common denominator when other GPUs are experiencing similar problems.

As I mentioned, there are 2 issues here. One that only affects only AMD Radeon RX 5000 series and later (and as such, we disable hardware acceleration in the application if we detect this card). Any other issue with hardware acceleration is unrelated to this one specific issue (in this thread).

2 hours ago, Finch said:

A quick google search proves Affinity is much more focused on Mac than Windows

I'm not sure what leads to that impression, we develop for both OSes at the same time (and iOS too). Yes, hardware acceleration was available in the macOS builds earlier, but as you mentioned, Windows is more tricky in this regard due to a wider pool of available hardware and drivers.

2 hours ago, Finch said:

At least now I know not to even try and contribute any bug reports I've experienced.

In my previous post I asked you to post a new thread, with some extra information to help us diagnose your specific issue, so we definitely welcome the discussions and the bug reports.

[Trensharo]

Ugh.  Just came to report this "bug."  Performance is pretty mediocre on my machine, which is what made me go to settings to see if this was on or off.

Subscribing to Photoshop until there is a solution.

[DancePanda42]

Hi,

i have also a bug with my Radeon 6800 xt. When i try to enable the OpenCl Acceleration, Affinity show me a wired Message.

My system is not supported because:

I musst have the Windows version 10.0.19042. But i have exact this version.

Edited April 22, 2021 by DancePanda42

[walt.farrell]

49 minutes ago, DancePanda42 said:

My system is not supported because:

I musst have the Windows version 10.0.19042. But i have exact this version.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

The message is a bit unclear, but the dialog tells you that you must have a supported GPU and the right level of Windows. You have the right level of Windows, and therefore you are supposed to figure out that you do not have a supported GPU.

Please see the pinned topic at the top of this forum:

 

[DenisD84]

@DancePanda42,

Graphics cards from AMD (rx 5000- rx 6000) that support DirextX12 or better are not supported under Windows and therefore you have to live without the acceleration. Is a little confusing what is said a Current GPU, so it is meant if you have a Nvidia GPU or an Intel iGPU, you get OPEN-CL.

[Photo amateur]

AMD released the driver update 21.4.1. Does Serif have news about that the issues with Open GL are fixed? If that were the case, Serif could re-enable the hardware acceleration for Radean graphics cards with an update or a patch.

 

[DancePanda42]

Thanks all, for the answers. Then i will wait for next update and hope the best. 

[Subclavius]

@Thorsten Photo Worker, just to be clear - it's OpenCL that's the issue here. OpenGL (in your post) is a different product.  The release notes for 21.4.1 from AMD make no mention of OpenCL either in "Fixed Issues" or "Known Issues", so AMD haven't openly acknowledged the problem yet. I am sure that Serif will post something as soon as AMD responds to their bug report.  At the moment, it's a case of waiting, frustrating though it is.