When will OpenCL be fixed? [1.9.xxxx]

[michabbb]

hi there,

it took a long time searching in the forum till i found the reason why 1.9.x is crashing all the time.

so i am asking the support here: is there any known date or version where the OpenCL thing will be fixed ???

thanks!

[walt.farrell]

Many of the issues in the Affinity code were fixed in 1.9.1.

Many more seem to be problems in the GPU drivers, not in the Affinity code.

If you're having problems with Hardware Acceleration (OpenCL) enabled, the best approach for you is probably to disable it in your Affinity Preferences, Performance tab. That will prevent the new code from being used, and you should have the same performance as in 1.8.5.

Someone from Serif may have more information, but they seldom comment on timeframes, and probably can't say much about when another vendor might fix their driver issues.

[michabbb]

pardon, solving a problem by "just don´t use it" is not a solution. should I now do without this feature forever? 
serif should be aware of this and debug that with most common graphics cards (and drivers). not supporting modern AMD cards is something i do understand,
this takes time. but i believe most people are using nvidia, that´s nothing that can be ignored. if there are problems with drivers, serif should talk to nvidia.
whatever, at the end, the customer is helpless and waiting. and i would like to hear a statement if serif is aware of that and if they are in the middle of trying
to fix that or if that is something they ignore, because they have the same attitude like you telling me: "there´s nothing we can do, buy yourself something different or wait till
next year when - with luck - a new driver comes out where this problems disappears by magic"....

[walt.farrell]

The error is in a new function that didn't exist before. At worst, if you have to disable the function, you don't get the increased performance, but you haven't "lost" anything because you never had that function. It would be a different story if it was an issue with an old function you had come to depend on, but that doesn't apply here.

Still, you're right that it would be nice to get this function working.

From what I've read, Serif has reported issues to Nvidia, but as I said Serif has no control over when Nvidia provides a fix. That means there's no good way to answer a "when" question. But if you've looked through the forum and found any of the discussions of this, you will have seen the posts by Mark Ingram, and can tell that Serif is well aware of the problems and is trying to fix them. Mark has been the leader on the development of this performance code since its inception, I believe.

And when he has time, he'll probably post here too if he has anything to add.

Can you provide any information on the GPU you're using, driver levels, and what you were working on when the problems occurred? Any crash reports you could provide to help with debugging? Have you tried updating the drivers?

[michabbb]

thanks for your detailed updates! if it helps, sure, i will provide everything that helps.
the crash is related to nothing specific, the app crahes when:

- opening a *.afphoto file
- pasting an image from clipboard
- opening a 2nd file
- in the middle of using the copy&paste tool
- while writing

nothing specific... but opening an existing afphoto file leads to a crash immediately.

my cards:
 

GPU 0

    Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630

    Treiberversion:    27.20.100.8682
    Treiberdatum:    05.09.2020
    DirectX-Version:    12 (FL 12.1)
    Physischer Standort:    PCI-Bus 0, Gerät 2, Funktion 0

    Auslastung    0%
    Dedizierter GPU-Speicher    
    Gemeinsamer GPU-Speicher    0,0/31,9 GB
    GPU-Speicher    0,0/31,9 GB



GPU 1

    NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 with Max-Q Design

    Treiberversion:    27.21.14.6172
    Treiberdatum:    23.02.2021
    DirectX-Version:    12 (FL 12.1)
    Physischer Standort:    PCI-Bus 1, Gerät 0, Funktion 0

    Auslastung    0%
    Dedizierter GPU-Speicher    1,5/8,0 GB
    Gemeinsamer GPU-Speicher    0,1/31,9 GB
    GPU-Speicher    1,6/39,9 GB

 

[Mark Ingram]

@michabbb, do you have Capture One installed?

[michabbb]

1 minute ago, Mark Ingram said:

@michabbb, do you have Capture One installed?

pardon, don´t even know this

[Mark Ingram]

2 minutes ago, michabbb said:

pardon, don´t even know this

OK, that's fine (that was one source of crashes for users). Do you have any crash reports you can share, in %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports\reports ?

[michabbb]

1 minute ago, Mark Ingram said:

OK, that's fine (that was one source of crashes for users). Do you have any crash reports you can share, in %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports\reports ?

would love to, but i don´t have the sub-folder "1.0" nor "CrashReports". but the reason could be, that photo is freezing when i check the task-manager and i waited more than 3 minutes
then i killed the process because it feels like , nothing will happen. shall i wait much longer ?

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, michabbb said:

would love to, but i don´t have the sub-folder "1.0

If you purchased from the Microsoft Store look for the "1.0 (Store)" folder instead.

[michabbb]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

If you purchased from the Microsoft Store look for the "1.0 (Store)" folder instead.

nope, installed via regular setup exe..... the only thing inside "Affinity" folder that has something in common with "crash" is "crashpad_handler.exe" - no folder, sorry.

[michabbb]

i see the "crashpad_handler.exe" in my processlist when the app crashes... but again: i guess there is no report because i had to kill the process from the taskmanager because nothing is happening...
maybe i'm too impatient and i should wait longer, can try....but looked to me, the whole process (even creating the crash report) is frozen....

[v_kyr]

You can try if "ProcDump" from the MS Sysinternals Suite can get a dump created then instead (see it's usage and sample calls there on the MS site). Or use the Process Explorer from there to see which DLLs are used etc. - The ProcessMonitor from there is also a very powerful tool (if not the most powerful), but it has a steap leaning curve, thus you would first need some time to get familiar with it and see of how to make use of it.

[IceH]

Since I do have the same problems with 1.9.1 (immediate crash of Photo, Designer or Publisher after Splash Screen), and disable Hardware Acceleration does not solve the problem, I attach my crash report for whoever might be interested in it. Configuration (Dell says these are the newest available drivers for my laptop):

[DXCore] Found 3 adapters
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
    Version: 27.21.14.6140
    IsHardware: Yes
    Supports D3D12 Feature Level 12.0: Yes
    HardwareID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1C8D&SUBSYS_07BE0000&REV_A1
    LUID: 0x11614
Microsoft Basic Render Driver
    Version: 10.0.19041.546
    IsHardware: No
    Supports D3D12 Feature Level 12.0: Yes
    HardwareID: PCI\VEN_1414&DEV_008C&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_00
    LUID: 0x115EE
Intel(R) HD Graphics 630
    Version: 26.20.100.8142
    IsHardware: Yes
    Supports D3D12 Feature Level 12.0: Yes
    HardwareID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_591B&SUBSYS_07BE0000&REV_04
    LUID: 0x10F0C

9870ab68-ae78-47ca-9a24-8b64eb7f1a41.dmp

[Pauls]

Are there any more entries in the log.txt file ?

[IceH]

1 minute ago, Pauls said:

Are there any more entries in the log.txt file ?

No. That's it.

[Mark Ingram]

2 minutes ago, IceH said:

No. That's it.

Thanks for the report. I've identified that your crash is related to your Intel OpenCL driver. Intel are aware of this issue and are working on a fix. 

[IceH]

Just now, Pauls said:

Has you computer ever had an AMD graphics card in it before?

Don't know if I understand this correct. It is a Dell XPS 15. There is an integrated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050; this was the standard configuration. I did not buy it separately.

[Mark Ingram]

@IceH, see my post above, this is related to your Intel OpenCL driver.

[IceH]

Just now, Mark Ingram said:

@IceH, see my post above, this is related to your Intel OpenCL driver.

ok, thank you. Then: waiting for Intel. Or is there another (temporary) solution?

[Mark Ingram]

Just now, IceH said:

ok, thank you. Then: waiting for Intel. Or is there another (temporary) solution?

We will release a beta update shortly that will hopefully mitigate the crash (but it will disable hardware acceleration until the driver has been fixed).

[v_kyr]

23 minutes ago, IceH said:

ok, thank you. Then: waiting for Intel. Or is there another (temporary) solution?

According to the output that igdrcl64.dll being the related cause, you can only search and try if possbly another version (older or newer) of the Intel driver works. Though it might be that Windows either way when performing it auto-updates next time again overwrites it, then you will possibly get the same state again, as far as Intel's newest drivers aren't fixed here.

[IceH]

5 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

According to the output that igdrcl64.dll being the related cause, you can only search and try if possbly another version (older or newer) of the Intel driver works. Though it might be that Windows either way when performing it auto-updates next time again overwrites it, then you will possibly get the same state again, as far as Intel's newest drivers aren't fixed here.

Thank you. I don't have the time for that, so I will wait and work with 1.8.5 for the time being..

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, IceH said:

Thank you. I don't have the time for that, so I will wait and work with 1.8.5 for the time being..

Understandable, the whole OpenCL GPU driver stuff under Windows systems has generally (independently of the Affinity products) been always very weak, often causing problems and side effects for different software!

[walt.farrell]

12 hours ago, michabbb said:

nope, installed via regular setup exe..... the only thing inside "Affinity" folder that has something in common with "crash" is "crashpad_handler.exe" - no folder, sorry.

You're looking in Program Files, not in %AppData%.

Press the Windows Key and R. In the Run dialog, type %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports\reports and then click  OK. (Or, you can open File Explorer directly, click in the location bar, and paste in that string.)