Affinity Photo crashes on opening after installing Intel GPU Arc a770

[Asudin]

All of my Affinity Suite programs started to crash on opening. The brand logo says, "Loading fonts" and on that exact moment the programs suddenly crash. So, I decided to see what was recently changed in my PC that could be the cause of crash. The only new thing that was changed is my GPU, which is the Intel's new Arc a770 LE. With it I am using the latest beta driver (31.0.101.3802).

I am unable to solve this issue by myself, so I came here to forums in hope that an Affinity support member has any ideas how we could workaround this issue. Thanks!

[DWright]

Hi @Asudin,

Welcome to the forum

We are aware on an crash on start issue with the Intel Arc GPU and our programs the following FAQ explains how to turn off the OpenCL acceleration to resolve this issue.

 

[GWR52]

As a user of an ARC750 together with V1 photo & publisher will this ever be fixed in V1 and is this issue now fixed in V2?

Thanks.

[cybertec69]

2 hours ago, GWR52 said:

As a user of an ARC750 together with V1 photo & publisher will this ever be fixed in V1 and is this issue now fixed in V2?

Thanks.

I also have the same issue with Affinity photo version 1.10 crashing on startup. The app crashes on my new system build with the Intel ARC 770. Affinity 1.9 work just fine with the same system when I switch to the Intel integrated UHD Graphics 770 GPU build into the CPU. But it crashed with the discreet ARC 770 GPU. Is there going to be a fix for this issue, and does this issue also exist in Affinity photo version 2.

[Komatös]

@GWR52 @cybertec69

I also use an Intel Arc 770 (LE 16 GB) GPU and I have no problems with the Affinity programs. However, I am using version 2 of the suite.
I would recommend installing all Windows updates and possible updates for system devices (chipset).
It is also possible that Microsoft .NET Framework components are faulty.
Please check with the MS .NET Framework Repair Tool!

Microsoft .NET Framework Repair Tool [Source]

[GWR52]

10 hours ago, Komatös said:

@GWR52 @cybertec69

I also use an Intel Arc 770 (LE 16 GB) GPU and I have no problems with the Affinity programs. However, I am using version 2 of the suite.
I would recommend installing all Windows updates and possible updates for system devices (chipset).
It is also possible that Microsoft .NET Framework components are faulty.
Please check with the MS .NET Framework Repair Tool!

Microsoft .NET Framework Repair Tool [Source]

 

[GWR52]

@Komatös@cybertec69

I would be interested to know if you have the V2 programs GPU acceleration turned on in the performance options as it is this feature that is stopping the V1 programs from running with the ARC7xx cards. Yesterday I found a work around  and by manually editing the config files , setting acceleration to "False".  it now allows the programs to open but  of course  this now means there will be an impact on performance with no GPU acceleration available.      

%AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\Settings\performancePreferences.xml   <UseHardwareAcceleration>False</UseHardwareAcceleration>

All Windows updates and possible updates are installed together with the latest Intel drivers and I have also now run .Net framework repair tool but this seems to have had no discernible affect.  

 

[Komatös]

36 minutes ago, GWR52 said:

All Windows updates and possible updates are installed together with the latest Intel drivers and I have also now run .Net framework repair tool but this seems to have had no discernible affect.  

Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled in V2. But, the speed loss without hardware acceleration is not so high that you notice a significant difference. Now I must confess that I mostly create smaller projects with maybe less then 50 layers.

In the Affinity programs, hardware acceleration is mainly used for displaying the user interface and for real-time display and calculating of effects and adjustments.

However, all this can cause some hardware configurations to become unstable or show other error patterns. With a Radeon RX 5600, the programs in V1 did not work at all for me, with hardware acceleration active. And in V2, the programs became lame when accessing assets, brushes and other content.

[GWR52]

Thanks for the response and your interesting comments regarding hardware acceleration.

For my needs, mainly Publisher, I can survive without acceleration and given that I have a work around and can now open Affinity V1 programs I will leave  this long standing  problem with the developers although I suspect the issue probably lies with Intel Arc compatibility with these older products.