Affinity Designer using CPU resources when it shouldn't

[Adam_D]

Even if I have no file open, when Affinity Designer 2.0 is open on my Windows 11 machine it is using substantial CPU resources. Here is my resource monitor when Designer was doing nothing at all. And yet using 33% of my CPU.

Is this a known issue? Is there a fix or something I can do to troubleshoot it? 

[deeds]

It's been like this on Macs for a few years. 

GPU, too!

[MikeTO]

7 hours ago, deeds said:

It's been like this on Macs for a few years. 

GPU, too!

Not for me on macOS. Even with an incredibly complex document open in Designer, it uses almost no resources when it's in the background.

[deeds]

33 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Not for me on macOS. Even with an incredibly complex document open in Designer, it uses almost no resources when it's in the background.

Lucky you.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Not for me on macOS. Even with an incredibly complex document open in Designer, it uses almost no resources when it's in the background.

Same for me.

[thomaso]

17 hours ago, deeds said:

It's been like this on Macs for a few years. 

Don't Affinity apps use "App Nap" on your mac? It can be displayed in the Activity Monitor:

This older (2018) article of Apple Developers appears to state that OpenGL may prevent App Nap. So, if this is still true for macOS then your Affinity performance setting can matter here.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/power_efficiency_guidelines_osx/AppNap.html

Quote

 

Generally, an app is a candidate for App Nap if:

•     It isn’t the foreground app
•     It hasn’t recently updated content in the visible portion of a window
•     It isn’t audible
•     It hasn’t taken any IOKit power management or NSProcessInfo assertions
•     It isn’t using OpenGL

When the above conditions are met, OS X may put the app in App Nap. When the user brings the app to the foreground or when the app receives an XPC message or an Apple event, the app is automatically taken out of App Nap and resumes normal execution.

 

[deeds]

This might not impact you if you're not using Designer's bitmap effects (shadows, blurs, glows etc heavily), might not impact you if you don't use OTHER OpenGL and/or Metal apps that have live and constant screen updates (think game engines and motion graphics software), don't use the versions of MacOS that I use and/or don't use the same hardware and/or don't work at the same resolutions I do.

There is a "bug" in Affinity Designer that causes it to maintain a strong connection between itself and the GPU, through the CPU, at all times, regardless of the state of the app (minimised, on another screen, in another space, behind other apps with a file open that uses their visual effects). Affinity has made the choice of how they run their app, and it's not ideal for effects. Just about all other creative apps are more performant, doing more difficult tasks... mind you... I'm using the visual effects of Designer, a lot. Most people barely use these, so won't notice how poorly performing these things are.

If this doesn't impact your usage, congratulations.

This has been the case for me on 3 different Macs, across multiple versions of the Affinity Designer releases. I've confirmed this with dozens of other Affinity users over several years, and with other software companies much bigger than Affinity, who've taken the time to check what Affinity does in terms of communicating with the GPU, because it impacts other concurrently open creative apps.

One of them (Unity) is positively affected in terms of performance by having Affinity running the background, ironically, as it has similar issues which are reduced whilst Affinity and it are seemingly pinging the GPU, as both of them doing it at the same time forces the OS to do some flushing and/or make decisions about favouring one over the other. If Unity is in the foreground, it gets the favoured treatment and performs better than if Affinity Designer is not open. This is the only case of this. In all other cases the concurrently open apps (even Safari) are significantly negatively impacted in terms of graphical performance whilst Affinity is open.

 

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, deeds said:

If this doesn't impact your usage, congratulations.

It does not affect me; in fact AD is reasonably fast & lag free on my current Mac even when I load it up with multiple docs with lots of bitmaps & effects.

[deeds]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

It does not affect me; in fact AD is reasonably fast & lag free on my current Mac even when I load it up with multiple docs with lots of bitmaps & effects.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

 

Want a medal?

 

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, deeds said:

Want a medal?

Nope. I just wonder why it is so different for you vs. for me.

[Adam_D]

I hate it. What is the program even doing? It just likes to hear my laptop fans whirring?

[deeds]

23 minutes ago, Adam_D said:

I hate it. What is the program even doing? It just likes to hear my laptop fans whirring?

Close Microsoft Edge when using Affinity. And never reopen Edge again. Only partly kidding.

Opera is the most efficient browser for CPU and GPU usage. Vivaldi is about the worst. Google Chrome is second worst. Firefox varies too much to comment on.

Generally speaking, if you can work without a browser open you'll be more productive AND your computer will run faster. This forum is testament to this fact, alone

Close all programs you don't need open, and restart your computer, and then only open Affinity Designer. If things run cooler, it was fighting for resources when other apps were open.

 

 

[carl123]

On 12/3/2022 at 5:49 AM, Adam_D said:

Even if I have no file open, when Affinity Designer 2.0 is open on my Windows 11 machine

I get 0% CPU usage in V2 on Windows 11 with no file open

You should ignore any Affinity bashing in this thread and investigate further

E.g. Is it synching/downloading content in the background (leave on with Designer running for a few hours to check)

If not, investigate further, 30% usage when doing nothing with no document open is not the norm!

[Adam_D]

46 minutes ago, deeds said:

Close Microsoft Edge when using Affinity. And never reopen Edge again. Only partly kidding.

Opera is the most efficient browser for CPU and GPU usage. Vivaldi is about the worst. Google Chrome is second worst. Firefox varies too much to comment on.

Generally speaking, if you can work without a browser open you'll be more productive AND your computer will run faster. This forum is testament to this fact, alone

Close all programs you don't need open, and restart your computer, and then only open Affinity Designer. If things run cooler, it was fighting for resources when other apps were open.

 

 

This advice doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Having a browser open (any browser) shouldn't cause an idle Affinity Designer to be actively using 30% CPU. I have a robust machine, and am accustomed to running many heavy programs concurrently. Just for giggles, I closed all my other programs and, yeah, Designer is still inexplicably using thirty-something percent CPU. 

[Adam_D]

20 minutes ago, carl123 said:

I get 0% CPU usage in V2 on Windows 11 with no file open

You should ignore any Affinity bashing in this thread and investigate further

E.g. Is it synching/downloading content in the background (leave on with Designer running for a few hours to check)

If not, investigate further, 30% usage when doing nothing with no document open is not the norm!

definitely not normal - I've been using V1 Affinity software for years now and never saw anything like this. I did check other system resources and there is no internet traffic ... nothing I can identify as the culprit. I often need to leave it open for hours during work and my computer is strong enough that, even with CPU being chewed up by Designer, I get by fine enough but I've seen it do this long enough to know it's not going to just stop when it finished something. It doesn't appear to be doing anything at all. Just crunching ghost number problems. 

Maybe I'll try a re-install. 

[Brian_J]

Would it be worth logging out of your affinity account in the apps and using the apps logged out to see if that makes a difference? I’m shooting from the hip… I don’t know a thing about how Affinity apps use system resources.

[deeds]

29 minutes ago, Adam_D said:

This advice doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Having a browser open (any browser) shouldn't cause an idle Affinity Designer to be actively using 30% CPU. I have a robust machine, and am accustomed to running many heavy programs concurrently. Just for giggles, I closed all my other programs and, yeah, Designer is still inexplicably using thirty-something percent CPU. 

That's ok, that it doesn't make sense to you... you weren't expected to understand it. Hence the jovial manner this elimination of possible conflicts suggestion was made.

 

That's eliminated conflict between apps for resources, which can sometimes occur (more often than you might expect, much more than you can make sense of), thank you for testing that. Well done. 

Now to divine if the conflict is with hardware, the most likely being that the 30% CPU is actually Affinity trying to communicate constantly with your GPU, since (despite some not liking the "bashing") Affinity are not absolute experts in GPU programming and are trying to make a graphical app for multiple platforms, so using compromised (not optimised) means of addressing all manner of GPUs on all manner of platforms.

To see if it's a video card communication issue, update your video card driver to the very latest STABLE (not daily, not bleeding edge) driver version. You seem to be somewhat technically proficient and probably know how to do that. Having done that, let us know exactly which CPU you have, which motherboard, which GPU, and which version of the driver you've got installed. 

And test performance with the stable GPU driver, after a restart.

Is there anything else non-standard about your system?

 

[Adam_D]

5 minutes ago, deeds said:

That's ok, that it doesn't make sense to you... you weren't expected to understand it. Hence the jovial manner this elimination of possible conflicts suggestion was made.

 

That's eliminated conflict between apps for resources, which can sometimes occur (more often than you might expect, much more than you can make sense of), thank you for testing that. Well done. 

Now to divine if the conflict is with hardware, the most likely being that the 30% CPU is actually Affinity trying to communicate constantly with your GPU, since (despite some not liking the "bashing") Affinity are not absolute experts in GPU programming and are trying to make a graphical app for multiple platforms, so using compromised (not optimised) means of addressing all manner of GPUs on all manner of platforms.

To see if it's a video card communication issue, update your video card driver to the very latest STABLE (not daily, not bleeding edge) driver version. You seem to be somewhat technically proficient and probably know how to do that. Having done that, let us know exactly which CPU you have, which motherboard, which GPU, and which version of the driver you've got installed. 

And test performance with the stable GPU driver, after a restart.

Is there anything else non-standard about your system?

 

Nvidia drivers haven't had an update in about a month - they've been up-to-date for quite some time.

And maybe it's worth noting, this is only Designer. I also can open Affinity Photo and Publisher (all at the same time) and only Designer is being a jerk with my CPU. 

[Felix P]

Had the same issue with Affinity Designer2 on Win 10, CPU at ca. 14-18%, with Affinity D2 idle running - when starting the program by opening with double-click on the App-ikon.

When starting the program out of the Explorer-folder by double-clicking on a .afdesign-file, it runs smooth at 1.5-2%.

[Adam_D]

7 minutes ago, Felix P said:

Had the same issue with Affinity Designer2 on Win 10, CPU at ca. 14-18%, with Affinity D2 idle running - when starting the program by opening with double-click on the App-ikon.

When starting the program out of the Explorer-folder by double-clicking on a .afdesign-file, it runs smooth at 1.5-2%.

 

You're my hero! That works on my end too. I had been seeing Designer sometimes behaving properly and almost came back here to say it seemed to resolve itself, only some time later to then hear my fans whirring up and, lo! there was Designer again churning CPU cycles. I couldn't figure out why it sometimes behaved itself, but it must be this exact workaround. I'll live with it for now, thank you!