slow start up on Affinity Photo 2

[Dell U2713HM]

I've just bought and installed Affinity Photo 2. Unfortunately the start up time is very slow. It takes 50 sec.before the tool bar is displayed and it takes 26 seconds to load a 20Mb MFT raw file!. I'm using W11 V21H2 on a desktop computer using an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor and a M.2 system disk. AF 1.10.5 was a bit slow starting up but nothing like V2.

sincerely

neil

[carl123]

Try disabling (if enabled) Hardware Acceleration in...

Edit > Preferences > Performance

If that does not work, please upload a screenshot of that dialog

[Chris B]

The opening of raw files being slow is already logged and I believe a fix is in the works. 

The app may run up slower from a cold start but subsequent runs should be much faster. From clickingt he icon, to clicking Create I've got a new document in front of me in ~8 seconds.

50 seconds seems like a very long time if it's on each run.

[TheFlow]

Same here, AP and AD 1.10 felt slower compared to older versions (I think up to 1.8 or something, if I remember right) and V2 seem to even be slower than that. Hardware acceleration doesn't seem to be the issue, same in both settings.

Windows 10, AMD Ryzen 1700X, 16GB Ram, M2 NVMe SSD by Samsung.

It's about 40 seconds from start until the "new file" dialog shows up.
There's also a thread I created talking about it more in-depth.

Do you know if the developers have an idea what it could be? Is the hardware just "too old" for the newer generations of Affinity apps or something? Thank you Chris and everyone else involved.
 

 

[Chris B]

We are aware that raw files are loading slower. I believe this was because we applied some automatic corrections during load instead of after load - this will be corrected.

Other than that, general performance of the app for me seems the same as V1. I have seen threads of people saying it's slower in V2 but not specifically what is slower. Slightly slower load times from a cold run have been mentioned.

@TheFlowYour hardware is not too old and should be adequate. There shouldn't be a difference between V1 and V2 for general performance. It might be worth throwing some Benchmark results into this thread. Do not compare V1 to V2 Benchmarks though as they are not comparable. 

 

[myclay]

@TheFlow

By any chance, do you have the Ryzen Powerplan (inside your Energy-settings) installed? (on windows 10 and 11)
you would need to install the AMD chipset drivers to get the correct one for your cpu. https://www.amd.com/en/support

The Powerplan helps your OS(win 10/11) in selecting the fastest single core on your CPU for every application/program etc.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-and-Microsoft-finally-acknowledge-poor-L3-cache-performance-and-CPU-scheduling-issues-with-Ryzen-processors-in-Windows-11-after-nearly-three-months-of-complaining.569990.0.html

It takes roughly <12 seconds on my PC and Ryzen 2700 to get to the "New" screen. the CPU is only one gen higher than yours.
 

[cgidesign]

6 hours ago, Chris B said:

Other than that, general performance of the app for me seems the same as V1. I have seen threads of people saying it's slower in V2 but not specifically what is slower

Chris a kind request: Please consider to browse through the forum again or make a special thread asking users to post speed issues with details. I follow the forum since V2 got released and even posted a few solution suggestions. I am sure there have been several threads where the uses wrote details about what is slow. I remember "switching from from layer to another", "just opening a dialogue box" and so on.

This mentioning of "slow" etc. is really all over the place in the forum and often the users write that Open CL on / off does not make a difference.

I think this "Affinity V2 is a slow and sluggish software" feeling that grows in the forum does not serve you well. For me V2 is faster than V1 and Open CL works (only one total app stall so far). So it seems the software in general can be fast, but to many user write V2 is slow while V1 on the same PC / MAC is not. There seems to be an issue beside the RAW load times.

[Chris B]

I've been trawling those threads for the last hour or so and have since spoken with the developers and I've had some feedback, as follows;

1. RAW files are opening slower because we are applying noise reduction on open, as opposed to after it has opened. This behaviour will be reversed.

2. There have been some significant OpenCL improvements in terms of stability, this has had a slight knock-on effect with perfromance. However it should not be substantial or even that noticable. We will endeavour to improve and work on this.

3. iPad is now using Metal instead of OpenGL but there may be some teething issues. Again we will endeavour to resolve any issues found and logged.

[cgidesign]

Thanks for the reply.

[Dell U2713HM]

Regarding my message from Nov.15 on the start up and loading times of raw files in AF2 I would like to mention that the problem is now resolved. Since the slow  start up time began with AF1.8 it occurred to me that the problem  has been inherited by subsequent updates of AF. So I decided to erase the C drive, reinstall W11 (Version 22H2) and all apps including AF2 (no version 1 releases of AF)

The start up time for AF2 is now 5-6sec (prev.40-50sec) and load time for a 20MB MFT raw file is 8-9 sec (prev, 20sec ). 

[AndyCham]

On 11/22/2022 at 6:36 PM, Dell U2713HM said:

Regarding my message from Nov.15 on the start up and loading times of raw files in AF2 I would like to mention that the problem is now resolved. Since the slow  start up time began with AF1.8 it occurred to me that the problem  has been inherited by subsequent updates of AF. So I decided to erase the C drive, reinstall W11 (Version 22H2) and all apps including AF2 (no version 1 releases of AF)

The start up time for AF2 is now 5-6sec (prev.40-50sec) and load time for a 20MB MFT raw file is 8-9 sec (prev, 20sec ). 

If that is the solution, then it's not a good position for AF2 to be in.  Much less drastic and simpler solutions need to be found, quickly.  Me experience of V2 is not good with regard to crashes, loading speed and some tool speed.  I've used V1 for quite a few years.