Affinity Designer struggling, it is utilizing my CPU 100% and my GPU barely

[Being Frank]

Hi there, I am using v1.10.5.1342 and it is running extremely slow, it also experiences lag when browsing for files to open or place. The program is utilizing my CPU more than my GPU, I would have expected the opposite for a graphics oriented software, when using games the opposite is the case, the GPU is utilised more, I have attached screenshots of the video card overlay when playing a game, vs the the overlay when using Designer, the same background tasks are running in each instance. It is reaching a point where I can get little done due to the software lagging. Granted it is only a hobby for me and I use it for texturing models, but I would still prefer to be able to do things efficiently.

 

My System

Motherboard: Asus ROG strix B550-f gaming Wifi

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x

RAM: Corsair 64GB 2133 MHz DDR4

GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

Storage Crucial P5 Plus 2TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD

OS Windows 11 64bit v21H2 Build 22000.795

Any advice on things I might need to change would be appreciated.

Watchdogs Legion when running a benchmark screenshot

 

Affinity Designer when scaling a group of Ellipses, they remain blurred for more than 5 minutes.

[Pšenda]

HW Acceleration is off? If not, try set off.

[Being Frank]

Thanks for the reply.

Hardware acceleration is off because Affinity Designer says my hardware configuration is not supported.

The other settings in performance is case they are hindering things.

[User_783649]

@Being Frank

1) You're using an unsupported GPU. All AMD cards starting from 5000 series are affected by this issue.
See the details in this thread.

2) You're using vector based editor which is an opposite to raster workloads such as games and photos.
It will primarily use CPU, GPU doesn't add much here. Vectors are better handled by CPU.

[Being Frank]

11 minutes ago, Alex M said:

@Being Frank

1) You're using an unsupported GPU. All AMD cards starting from 5000 series are affected by this issue.
See the details in this thread.

2) You're using vector based editor which is an opposite to raster workloads such as games and photos.
It will primarily use CPU, GPU doesn't add much here. Vectors are better handled by CPU.

Thanks for letting me know this,  however it doesn't explain why Affinity Designer is using 100% CPU power to do simple things like rescaling, zooming in, scrolling within the document, not to mention the temperature spike when doing such simple things is very concerning, and it doesn't explain why it is only the Affinity Designer and Photo software that experiences lag when browsing for documents. Is there maybe a compatibility issue with Windows 11? or a compatibility issue with my CPU or is it simply not powerful enough?

[User_783649]

@Being Frank

I'm trying to figure out this since I've started working with these apps.

Even with very basic operations they tend to use way too much CPU resources and produce way too much heat.

I've never seen anything like that in other apps I'm working with daily like Photoshop, Sketch, XD, Figma, Illustrator or InDesign.

They all use less CPU resources and I've never seen such high CPU temps as I sometimes see when working with Affinity apps.

[Being Frank]

3 hours ago, Alex M said:

@Being Frank

I'm trying to figure out this since I've started working with these apps.

Even with very basic operations they tend to use way too much CPU resources and produce way too much heat.

I've never seen anything like that in other apps I'm working with daily like Photoshop, Sketch, XD, Figma, Illustrator or InDesign.

They all use less CPU resources and I've never seen such high CPU temps as I sometimes see when working with Affinity apps.

Are you using an AMD system also? In all honesty I need to know if this system is the problem, I returned to AMD a couple of years ago after 12 years of system upgrades with intel processors. I usually only build a new system once every four years, but in all honesty if the affinity software is going to end up frying my CPU, I'd sooner upgrade now to a more powerful system than end up with one I can't sell on to contribute to the upgrade costs. The Ryzen processors run at a higher temp as a matter of course, but I imagine a piece of software taking temps into 90 degree zone must be getting close to a limit and that is with water cooling, I'd hate to think what the temperature would be without it. I will at least tomorrow explore whether Windows 11 has a compatibility issue with the Affinity software by restoring a backup of windows 10 and trying Designer in that.

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, Being Frank said:

Affinity Designer when scaling a group of Ellipses, they remain blurred for more than 5 minutes.

If you want to compare with other PCs, please provide the source file, which takes 5 minutes to view/zoom.

[User_783649]

@Being Frank

I have an Intel Core i9-9900k paired with AMD Radeon RX 580. Running latest macOS Monterey on it. Zooming in/out and scrolling the document canvas are buttery smooth on my system thanks to working hardware acceleration with macOS Metal technology. As far as I know, these things are intended to be performed on GPU in all Affinity apps and don't put any serious pressure on CPU.

Working with vector layers, groups of objects, editing or moving them around is another story. By design, AD will always aim to use 100% CPU to complete the job as fast as possible. On my system I also see sometimes 100% CPU usage. But these spikes are very short in time and everything instantly goes back to normal. So nothing like 5 mins redraw delays as you mentioned above.

I believe that Ryzen 9 3900X is still a very good 12C 24T CPU and running AD efficiently on it shouldn't be a problem at all.

[Mel_P]

The RX580 is an "old" GPU and probably supported by Affinity? Dont update your GPU!!

[Being Frank]

On 7/26/2022 at 11:18 PM, Pšenda said:

If you want to compare with other PCs, please provide the source file, which takes 5 minutes to view/zoom.

Sorry for the delay guys, I had to go away and didn't have access to the file. The 5 minute delay seems more on the area where I am doing small vent holes where you have the black ellipses on a black 3D rounded rectangle, the ones that are black on grey, don't seem to struggle as much or hang as long, which may be relevant. In either case, my PC fans kick in the minute I zoom, try to move a group of them or rescale and even when scrolling within the document and the CPU remains at 100% throughout.

It may be I'm trying to do work that is too intricate of late for my PC to handle, there are a lot of ellipses and rounded rectangles with effects involved, but would appreciate knowing if a system upgrade would help me. I found a workaround which was to scale in Photo instead, the ellipses appear rasterised in that and it doesn't struggle. Though I would have preferred to remain in Designer rather than having to switch back and forth.

I will certainly be looking into a graphics card upgrade even though someone mentioned it won't help with vector software, but this graphics card of mine has compatibility issues with the latest versions of Blender too, so I picked one that isn't useful enough to me, fine for games, but I rarely play games and tend to model more these days.

 

Microwave Back Features.afdesign

[Being Frank]

On 7/27/2022 at 8:44 AM, Alex M said:

 

@Alex M Cheers for the info

[NathanC]

26 minutes ago, Being Frank said:

Sorry for the delay guys, I had to go away and didn't have access to the file. The 5 minute delay seems more on the area where I am doing small vent holes where you have the black ellipses on a black 3D rounded rectangle, the ones that are black on grey, don't seem to struggle as much or hang as long, which may be relevant. In either case, my PC fans kick in the minute I zoom, try to move a group of them or rescale and even when scrolling within the document and the CPU remains at 100% throughout.

It may be I'm trying to do work that is too intricate of late for my PC to handle, there are a lot of ellipses and rounded rectangles with effects involved, but would appreciate knowing if a system upgrade would help me. I found a workaround which was to scale in Photo instead, the ellipses appear rasterised in that and it doesn't struggle. Though I would have preferred to remain in Designer rather than having to switch back and forth.

For comparison, I've opened this file on my system (Ryzen 9 5950x with RTX 3090) and H/A enabled. Zooming in on those Bevel ellipses pins my CPU at 100% and it takes around 30 seconds to redraw/render the ellipses when I zoom in but it doesn't outright freeze the app, they appear low resolution as shown in your initial screenshot and render in sections.

The GPU is idle during this process since it's a very heavy vector workload which looks like it's caused by the number of objects with the Bevel FX applied.

[Being Frank]

@NathanCCheers Nathan. A 30 second delay I wouldn't have minded, once I'm happy the ellipses are all in the right positions etc, I will simply rasterise them, which will help things. Though you are getting a significantly smaller delay than me.

Once I've finished the models of kitchen appliances, I won't need to be doing textures with so many vent holes involved thankfully, it may seem a waste to put such effort into something that will be rasterised in the end and some of the detail lost, but I do enjoy making my own textures for my models, more so given I didn't use to have any artistic temperament whatsoever, which is why I love Affinity Designer, it allows even us non artists to get creative.

 

[Pšenda]

50 minutes ago, Being Frank said:

are all in the right positions

You could try Outline view mode (wireframe), where only the basic shapes of objects are displayed, so that their rendering is significantly faster and with less CPU load.

You could then use Symbols for the holes - so that they are all the same (the modification of one will then be transferred to the others).
It probably won't help (?) for display speed, but it's a "cleaner" design 🙂

 

@NathanC, in Outline view mode I get some errors in the display - is it just me? (HWA off/on)

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, Being Frank said:

making my own textures for my models

Your holes are too perfect - the circles/cuts are too clean.

In reality, however, the cutouts have light moldings - try this, for example.

It would also like a less sharp transition between the sheet and the hole.

 

Edit:

Edited July 28, 2022 by Pšenda

[User_783649]

@Being Frank 

I've inspected the document you posted here. 

The reason of the slowdown is Live Perspective filter being applied to a couple of groups in your layer stack.

These are known to be very resource consuming as they constantly re-render the canvas everytime you change anything or change the zoom level.

Once I hide those groups — zooming, panning around and all other actions are instant on my system.

[NathanC]

37 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

@NathanC, in Outline view mode I get some errors in the display - is it just me? (HWA off/on)

This is the same for me, although when I zoom in on the affected areas the redraw re-aligns the outlines correctly. We do have a very similar issue to this logged to the developers so I'll update it with this occurrence.

6 minutes ago, Alex M said:

The reason of the slowdown is Live Perspective filter being applied to a couple of groups in your layer stack.

Great find, I've disabled these perspective filters and the rendering is almost instant now on my PC.

[Being Frank]

22 hours ago, Alex M said:

@Being Frank 

I've inspected the document you posted here. 

The reason of the slowdown is Live Perspective filter being applied to a couple of groups in your layer stack.

These are known to be very resource consuming as they constantly re-render the canvas everytime you change anything or change the zoom level.

Once I hide those groups — zooming, panning around and all other actions are instant on my system.

Thanks to all of you for being so helpful and providing useful tips, it was the Live Perspective Filter causing the issue, with that disabled, no delay whatsoever and a happy CPU.  I also never even noticed the Views section in the menu, so didn't know about Outline view, which will prove useful in the future.

I really appreciate all the help, have a great day guys.