Excessive CPU and GPU usage when idle

[CM0]

Affinity Designer: 1.9.1.979

I'm finding unusual CPU and GPU usage with very simple operations or even when doing nothing.  I was finally able to isolate one such case.

1. Using designer, create a artboard
2. Go to pixel persona
3. Create a pixel layer
4. Create a square selection
5. Watch CPU and GPU usage climb while doing nothing else
6. Press ESC to remove the selection
7. CPU and GPU usage drop back to near 0.

Attached are the CPU and GPU usage from task manager.  One view is with the selection.  The other view is when the selection is removed and you can see on the graph the change in CPU/GPU usage.

There is nothing else happening at the moment.   A single artboard, pixel layer and selection.

[Greyfox]

5 hours ago, CM0 said:

...There is nothing else happening at the moment.   A single artboard, pixel layer and selection.

In my case whilst the rectangular marquee selection is present the CPU use by Affinity is a mere 1.9%, and that drops to 0% when I click on Deselect. 
I assume that providing the marching ants when selected accounts for the small CPU usage.

 

[GarryP]

9 hours ago, CM0 said:

There is nothing else happening at the moment.

I think the important word here is “else”.
Nothing “else” may be happening but the marching ants are being displayed, which is something that is happening.
Drawing the marching ants will, by necessity, take some CPU/GPU resources, as mentioned by Greyfox above.
Try making a rectangular selection and noting the CPU/GPU use, and then make a more complex selection – maybe with the Flood Select Tool – and you will probably see that the same sort of CPU/GPU usage is needed.
This is probably because the code is not optimised for a rectangular selection and has to cope with all possibilities and, therefore, has to do quite a lot of work (in other words, complex selections are the same ‘price’ as simple ones).
The usages you are seeing are not excessive and those resources are only being used while you have a pixel selection active so it shouldn’t be a problem in most cases.

[CM0]

It is enough to make my fans on my laptop go to 100%.  There is no way this should happen.  Many operations feel sluggish and jittery and I hear my fans spin up.  Something is very wrong.

What Greyfox posted "1.9%" sounds reasonable, but my usage is about 10x of that value.

[walt.farrell]

Having the marching ants showing has always increased the CPU and GPU usage for me. If I create an empty pixel layer in Designer and then create a rectangular pixel selection Designer starts taking around 5% of the CPU and 30% of the GPU. (This is with Hardware Acceleration (OpenCL) disabled, by the way.)

And I recall seeing threads about this from several years ago. I'm not sure if it's logged as a bug, or not.

[CM0]

We can get a better view of the impact in the resource monitor.  It is taking a full 60% CPU of one of the cores.

[carl123]

Just double check your Renderer setting in Edit > Preferences > Performance

If set to Warp CPU usage will be much higher when a selection is active

But looking at your initial figures, they look very similar to mine (i.e. normal)

 

[CM0]

I do not have Warp selected.  I also have hardware acceleration enabled.

However, this is not normal, a selection should never consume this much resources.  The life should not be sucked out of my laptop battery just because I have a simple selection.

A selection in Krita increases the CPU by 0% and GPU by 2%.

[CM0]

Here is some more data.  If I use the Intel GPU only, then usage climbs almost to 80% just for having a selection.

However, the entire UI becomes more responsive.  Everything is sluggish using the Nvidia 2060 GPU.  However, this makes no sense as the 2060 is orders of magnitude better than the Intel.

[CM0]

Another data point.  If I use 'Warp' rendering.  The CPU goes to 100% across all 12 cores!!!

[CM0]

Is there anything else I can provide to have development look into this issue?

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, CM0 said:

Is there anything else I can provide to have development look into this issue?

They are probably aware of it already. However, if they need more, I'm sure they will ask when they have time to get to this thread. They're very busy right now.

 

[Sean P]

Hi CM0,

I've just been looking into this and found on one version I was getting high-ish CPU with a selection (around 4-5%), where as on another I wasn't. I then started poking into the App Data and found its actually down to 'Show Rulers' being enabled. When I turn this off my CPU usage drops to around 1%. GPU generally stayed around 3% with it occasionally rising to 30%, which is a little strange, but it is using a shader to draw the marching ants.

You've not shown a full screenshot so I cannot be sure, but I suspect this might be the case - if you turn rulers off does it go much lower? It would also explain why Greyfox is also not seeing this behaviour.

Also regarding your Task Manager screenshots I would avoid using the Performance tab to indicate how much CPU and GPU Affinity is using, as it doesn't give the full picture. You would be better showing the Processes tab, as that will break down usage by each process. Just look for the Affinity Process under 'Apps'. This is what I was using to measure my values (though obviously it doesn't show cores), it does remove other software from the equation.
 

[CM0]

Here is some info with ruler enabled and disabled.
The ruler does make a small difference in CPU, but there is still significant load on the GPU.

We can know that the GPU load is only Affinity by looking at the first graph which was captured when removing the selection.  You can see the GPU drops completely to 0 with no selection.  There are no other processes using the GPU.

[CM0]

Any other suggestions?  Anything else I can provide?

[Sean P]

12 hours ago, CM0 said:

Any other suggestions?  Anything else I can provide?

Hi CM0,

I've passed this on to development and I've been told that this is currently to be expected due to the shaders used to render the marching ants on the screen, and that the inclusion of the ruler is also to be expected that CPU usage will go up.

With that said they do have some changes in mind to improve this, but unfortunately I cannot say when they might be.

[JimBobbles]

Affinity Designer 1.10.5.1342

I've just created a new Affinity Designer file with 3 empty artboards. I've attached the file to this post. Nothing is selected. For some reason it's consuming 13-15% CPU but I'm not doing anything. I've tried closing an reopening, still high CPU. Very strange!

On a Dell XPS 8930 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz   3.19 GHz with nvidia GForce GTX 1070

 

1.afdesign

[cgidesign]

I have this issue as well. A file with around 20 pixel layers and a few masks and adjustments.

No rulers, no hardware acceleration, Windows, i7 tenth gen, RTX 2070 - notebook.

Just makeing a rectangle selection on one of the pixel layers let the CPU go over 30% from 4% without selection.

Hope this is optimized in V2.