Affinity Designer 2 becomes laggy seemingly at random (Mac OS Sonoma)

[mattaq]

Version: 2.3.1

OS: Mac OS Sonoma 14.3.1

Hardware: M3 Max 2023 Macbook Pro 16"

Issue:  I am a long time user of Affinity Designer.  I normally use a 16" 2019 Intel Macbook Pro and have had no issues on both Affinity Designer 1 & 2.  I have now recently switched to an M3 Max Macbook, which is significantly faster than my older Intel machine.  However, Affinity Designer 2 on the new machine is very frequently laggy (zooming in/out and panning very choppy, obvious lag when clicking between objects) even with very small documents containing a small number of items.  Other times it goes back to normal with 0 lag.  I am not running any other high-demand applications while using Affinity Designer.

I have checked my performance settings but everything is set very high, including the use of OpenGL.  Is this behavious normal?  Is there something I am missing?  Has anyone else encountered this issue?

 

Would appreciate all insight, thanks!

 

[MikeTO]

Hi @mattaq and welcome to the forums.

What type of mouse are you using? Are you using a high resolution mouse with a high polling rate?

What type of monitor setup are you using?

Could you share a screenshot of your performance settings screen for Affinity?

[mattaq]

Hi Mike - the issues are happening both with the Mac's trackpad and with a standard mouse.  Issues also present both on my 4K 60Hz monitor and the mac's internal screen.  I'm finding it really difficult to pinpoint what causes the issues due to it being intermittent.

Screenshot of my performance settings attached here.

[MikeTO]

You should disable Hardware Acceleration > Enable Metal compute acceleration. It really doesn't work well on M1, M2, and M3 chips. I've had to keep it turned off since I got my M1 Pro. This might make no difference for this issue but it will save you from random crashes.

How much memory do you have in your MacBook?

Does the problem also happen when you are unplugged from the monitor?

[mattaq]

I have 36GB RAM available.  Have just turned off the metal setting but have seen no improvement.

Problem still happens when unplugged unfortunately.  All I need to do is resize an image or object a few times and it immediately starts to stutter.

[MikeTO]

Hopefully Serif will be able to help. I think this has come up before a with high end model and I thought it had something to do with the external monitor or a high resolution mouse but I can't find a thread on it.

Good luck.

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @mattaq,

Have you tried enabling the Display renderer as Metal instead of OpenGL, but then keeping Hardware Acceleration disabled for comparison?

It can sometimes be quite difficult to pinpoint performance issues particularly when they are intermittent, at the point at which the lag begins it may be worth checking the Activity monitor to see for any potential CPU/Memory/GPU usage spikes, and also if there was any specific trigger prior to it occuring.

 

[mattaq]

Hi @NathanC, thanks for your reply!

I have done some further investigation:

- I have tried switching the display renderer to Metal as you have suggested but I haven't seen any changes in performance.

- If anything, the issue appears to surface when affinity is taking less CPU/GPU rather than more.  When the system is running smoothly, the CPU utilization jumps to 80%+ and the GPU to 30/40%+.  When everything starts lagging badly (this includes almost everything: panning, zooming, moving objects, resizing objects, etc.), the CPU utilization is low (10-20%), as is the GPU utilization (<20%).

- Sometimes, the issue rectifies itself for a long time period.  However, I can routinely get it to resurface simply by restarting affinity, after which the default state is to immediately start being laggy after opening a document.

Could this be an issue where not enough resources are being allocated to affinity (although this is unexpected, since I have a high-spec machine)?

Thanks again!

[NathanC]

Hi @mattaq,

Thanks for the info, I wouldn't expect this to be the case but can you confirm if the app is being run through Rosetta? If it's being opened through Rosetta I would suggest just running the app natively as it is not required since it's a Universal App.

It's hard to say what the cause is at this stage, but it is unusual that the usages drop when the lag occurs. When this lag next begins to occur could you possibly capture it on a screen recording? I've linked the FAQ on recording below if you're not sure.

Many thanks!

[mattaq]

Hi @NathanC - have checked and the app is running natively.

Have sent you a screen capture video privately to show you what's going on, along with the activity monitor trace.  As I had mentioned earlier, the lag happens every time with certain files and is severe enough in certain cases to make Affinity basically unusable.  

Thanks again for your help!

[mattaq]

 

I have now managed to resolve this (all lag has vanished) by restarting my Mac - seemingly all the issues have gone away now.  Thanks @NathanC and @MikeTO for the help with debugging, sorry for not trying the obvious solution earlier (although I have no idea why a restart would have this effect on Affinity)!