OpenCL compute acceleration

[Felipe_RB]

I used to have a problem in V01 with freezing while this feature was enabled. At first, in V02 it seemed stable... but yesterday I had problems while using the perspective live filter (pc would slow down considerably, and I had to force close Affinity)

Disabling the OpenCL compute acceleration seemed to fix the problem.

Anyone else still having problems with the OpenCL feature? I guess hardware acceleration will differ depending on graphics cards

[lphilpot]

On my Windows 11 Acer laptop I had to disable OpenCL. I was getting video subsystem crashes that left the entire computer in a non-interactive state (as a result of accidentally making too many adjustments, too quickly). Same thing happened with darktable, so it might be my drivers (whatever / wherever they are) instead of purely Affinity apps. But turning OpenCL off has so far resulted in no crashes.

[cgidesign]

For me only one APh app hang so far with V2. V1 always hang after a few operations.

Nvidia RTX 2070, Intel i7 notebook. Driver version 517.48 Studio.

It happened with "protect transparency" enabled in a brush and after a few brush strokes.

Beside of that APh V2 is fast and stable for me so far.

One detail regarding the drivers.

Every nvidia driver between 517.48 and 526.98 has opencl issues confirmed by nvidia. I don't know If those issues are relevant for Affinity, but crashes of an opencl function in another product have been reported in high numbers.

[emmrecs01]

@cgidesign

As per my signature I run a GTX card, with the latest (526.98) Game-ready driver.  I never play any games on my PC but, following the advice of the manufacturer of the video editing software I use quite extensively, I have been using that driver type for several months (since I originally bought and installed the GPU) and have never experienced any OpenCL problems.

Is it worth you trying the game-ready driver?

[Felipe_RB]

Was using a 2080ti with Studio Drivers and I was hoping this issue was handled with the update. It really made a difference in a large file I was working on.

I will test game ready drivers, but I guess this will differ a lot depending on what hardware you are running

[Print Monkey]

I didn't have any crashes, but the latest "game ready" driver for the RTX 3070 Ti Laptop was causing some odd behavior in "refine selection" and "refine mask". I didn't notice any problems with other functions.

I recently updated the driver but haven't tried turning OpenCL back on.

I figured out that the main difference between the Game Ready and Studio drivers is that the Game Ready driver gets updated more frequently. Studio is basically a less frequently updated snapshot of the same Game Ready branch.

So if they think a bugfix is not relevant to "studio" applications then they add it to the Game Ready driver only and it stays out of the Studio driver for the time being. If a fix or function is needed for both games and "studio" then they add it to both, or release it on Game Ready first then release that as Studio if it seems to be working for those on the Game Ready branch.

So Studio: 1) gets less updates due to initially leaving out updates that mostly affect games 2) theoretically less likely to be broken by a less tested update, but 3) when an update improves something the Studio driver will lag behind on getting the update.

The recommendation for anyone using both "software" and games is use Game Ready rather than Studio. The Studio driver seems to be more for "if it ain't broke don't fix it" workplace situations where nobody ever updates anything unless necessary for a specific reason.

[Felipe_RB]

@Print Monkey

yeah technically mine was also "odd behavior" and not a crash (even though I had no choice but to force close)

after adding a perspective live filter and trying to add a mask to that same layer, the system slowed down to near freeze, then weird selections appeared on the screen (marching ant selection on the entire project), then grey blocks appeared

[Dan C]

Hi @Felipe_RB,

Thanks for your report and our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here. We are exceptionally busy following the release of V2 and we thank you for your continued patience and understanding here.

On 11/24/2022 at 10:53 AM, Felipe_RB said:

after adding a perspective live filter and trying to add a mask to that same layer, the system slowed down to near freeze, then weird selections appeared on the screen (marching ant selection on the entire project), then grey blocks appeared

I've tried replicating this issue in 2.0.4 with Hardware Acceleration enabled and I'm not seeing the same behaviour currently - can you please confirm for me, is this still occurring within the latest update for you?

[Felipe_RB]

Hi Dan

Thanks for the reply. I cant say if this is still occuring, as I decided to keep this feature switched off. Its just very unstable and usually causes problems, so for my own sanity its just better to disable it