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Choppy performance Issues with PC Photo


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Ok, so to humor those who insist my hardware is somehow at fault I ran your tests.

3DMark scored 9324 ahead of 89% of computers benchmarked
Memtest86 ran 4 rounds over 3 hours and came back 100% at 0 errors.
Not wasting any more time on the 3rd test when I know there is only one piece of software with an issue.

I'm going to do the windows refresh dealio and see if that helps at all and then I'll put together a demo video and post it here and through Twitter and see if that triggers any help.

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5 minutes ago, FolioGraphic said:

Ok, so to humor those who insist my hardware is somehow at fault I ran your tests.

3DMark scored 9324 ahead of 89% of computers benchmarked
Memtest86 ran 4 rounds over 3 hours and came back 100% at 0 errors.
Not wasting any more time on the 3rd test when I know there is only one piece of software with an issue.

So you know graphics and memory is not an issue (= Good data point),  but you leave the CPU untested.

It might interest you that prime95 can run in background while you browse. It just takes performance.

Windows 10 Pro x64 (1903). Intel Core i7-9700K @ 3.60GHz, 32 GB memory, NVidia RTX 2080
Affinity Photo 1.7.2.471, Affinity Designer 1.7.2.471, Affinity Publisher 1.7.2.471

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CPU was tested in 3DMark, but I don't see it being the problem in any possible situation. When I tested an issue in SWTOR for Bioware we found a very edge case where their program was very sensitive to ram errors. My gaming laptop had run everything at the time with no problems but was crashing for SWTOR repeatedly. In that case it turned out that RAM was the problem so I am familiar with the idea but this is not an issue with the CPU as I've watched the CPU closely (On CAM) while the problem is occurring and nothing else becomes bottle necked by the issues in Photo.

I am satisfied that if this system is the problem the software is not worth a penny. I'd suggest maybe the RTX GC might be a problem because it's newer and different but if Affinity doesn't even use hardware acceleration I don't know how that could be. I like Affinity so I'm hoping there's a way to solve this.

Anyhow I'm done till tomorrow so we'll see if anything changes by then.

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  • Staff

Hi FolioGraphic :)

Thanks for all the information provided, it's very useful.

Could you please provide us with a screen recording of these performance issues? If you could include task manager in the recording this will allow us to investigate further.

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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  • 2 months later...

This topic may be a bit old but I want to add my angle to it.

I'm on Windows 10 on what can be considered a max-spec machine: i9900K, 2080TI, 32GB DDR4. The machine is hooked up to a 34" wide angle IPS 120Hz G-sync enabled monitor. So hardware-wise, this machine has very little compromises, and you'd expect good to great performance.

My monitor has a built-in overlay option that outputs the current FPS. Within Windows, it is overall a steady 120FPS, no matter what you throw at it, it stays at 120FPS. Within games, the FPS is obviously variable, as is the point of G-sync.

But there are exceptions. Both Spotify and Affinity Photo show dramatic FPS drops when using them. This user seems to have the exact same problem:

...although the user may be using slightly different hardware.

Note that my problem is not flickering, its heavy frame drops. To start with Spotify, FPS drops from 120 to < 10! You can barely move your mouse. Within Affinity Photo, the problem is less severe but definitely there. Even without doing any operation other than moving the mouse, FPS drops into the 20s or 30s. The behavior suggests that it's not a matter of load on the system. I'm basically not doing anything and I'm on ultra powerful hardware, yet still the program stutters like crazy. It stutters badly enough that it makes it very difficult to do anything precise, say a detailed selection or brush action.

To indicate that this is not a load or hardware problem, I can work within Lightroom for an hour and not once drop below 120FPS. Even if I intentionally try to overload it by aggressively painting with an adjustment brush on a 40MP photo, nothing happens to the FPS, it stays at a rock steady 120FPS. Lightroom has horrible performance in general but never shows frame drops.

It seems Lightroom (and most other programs) consistently "paint" at native FPS (120 in my case) no matter what it is doing in internal processing. This is not what Spotify and Affinity Photo seem to be doing.

Anyway, I don't know what the true root cause is, but I'm thinking it may be G-sync related.

 

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The graphic engine in Affinity is constantly refreshing what is in canvas, if I understood well ? Could that have some relation with it ? But I believe that update only happens when you at least move the cursor over the canvas or do some operation. And I don't know about what that refresh is doing.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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I'm sorry for not coming back to this topic sooner.

In my case the issue has been resolved and I have to attribute one of the problems to Windows 10 and not Affinity. I had mentioned seeing similar behaviour on another PC when there was a windows update waiting to install but that it couldn't be the case this time because Windows was up to date. I have this PC set to ask to update rather than automatically do it because Microsoft Chooses the worst times to hog my limited bandwidth with downloads. Even though I have this PC set to ask when to update and after manually checking if there were any updates, it was after updating a day later that the issue disappeared. Hidden downloads and network activity in Windows has always been a problem but this was behaving like RAM was fully used when it was showing only 30-45% used. Completely fine now and since that Windows update I've had no more choppy behaviour. I've found Microsoft loves making a liar out of me, but I assure you I checked for updates multiple times before turning to this forum.

The other issue I was having seems to be a bit of a unique situation related to a specific texture from a slide scan. I have been archiving slides digitally at very high resolutions and a batch of very old ones have a high detail texture (Looks like bacteria under a microscope) that seems to mess with the noise reduction filter. It cleans the image up and then reverts almost instantly. I can see the image noise reduction and then it's like it changes its mind and says, NOPE that's not noise, that's detail and puts it right back where it started even if I crank the settings way up. Since it is only the one batch of slides this filter has problems with I've since moved on happily with my product and without an Adobe subscription TYVM.

(I also have a G-Sync monitor and my issue is resolved even with it.)

Edited by FolioGraphic
Added a related note about G-Sync
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  • Staff

Hi @Fledder,

Welcome to the forums :)

This has been noted as improved/fixed in our latest BETA version for Windows (although admittedly no g-sync specific testing has been done AFAIK). Could you please download and install the beta version alongside your retail version to see if this improves things -

I personally have used the retail version & the latest beta on my Windows PC at home (i7-6700k, GTX 1070, 16GB DDR4 @ 1440p 144hz g-sync) and I can confirm that in the retail version I have seen FPS drops, and so far using the beta I have not. Please do let us know how you get on!

 

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

hi @Dan C

Sorry for the late response, did not get a notification somehow. I should have reported back my workaround which is to allow G-sync for full screen apps only, so not for Windowed apps. Most programs that suffer from this problem seem to be based on Electron. Is Affinity Photo also based on Electron, I wonder?

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  • Staff

No problem at all, thanks for letting me know. I too have this option set to full-screen only, I'll do some more testing at home and report back to the devs with my findings :)

On 4/13/2019 at 11:38 PM, Fledder said:

Is Affinity Photo also based on Electron, I wonder?

None of the Affinity apps are based on Electron, but thanks for the suggestion!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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  • 2 months later...

12 Core AMD Threadripper 1920x with 4.1 GHz in every core. 32 GB RAM 3200 MHz. nVidia 1080 Ti with 11 GB Vram. 

System disk: 1 TB NVMe

Working disk: 512 GB SSD in raid

Affinity with one Window open is more choppy than trying to game while rendering 4k video in DaVinci Resolve, go figure. 

I also have very little GPU and CPU usage by Affinity, like it almost not using the available resources

I forgot to mention, yes, this is on Windows 10 Professional, clean install 1 week ago. Slow before, slow after.

Affinity Designer: Moving a 400x400px image around is choppy, yet 10% CPU utilization and 25% GPU and no disk read/write. Notice the bad utilization.

This happens in all Affinity programs. Not in Adobe programs, not in CaptureOne, not Luminar, On1, etc.

 

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Has anyone tried assigning higher priority to the task / process in one of those taskmanager's-like utilities ? (like Dtask monitor). I mean, setting priority as high instead of normal, or "very high". Dunno, maybe wont change a thing, but if you are noticing low usage, maybe this would help  ?  In my machine, it's not choppy (the zoom-in-out does show a graphic glitch of quads,  but that could be my card, or sth in my system (does not happen in other apps, tho)

I've been able by doing this to play games that are too much for this old machine (in some cases setting the process priority as high, in others as low, go figure) . Dunno, I just like experiments, in case some1 else around does, too....

That machine is impressive... [ My only grip is, for the tier it's in, 4.1 GHz (and in AMD's current lower ipc) is a bit low (for the price tier), still 1k GHZ higher than mine, lol) . Anyway, the 7th july will bring AMDs mainstream quite faster than these. ] You shouldn't see choppy performance, tho anything can end so if the task is really heavy, in every thing there's a limit. IE, mine can't deal with a 2 meters 300 dpi raster, layered image for painting (well, fluidly)  neither have a brush larger than 500 px and still be fluid.

Are you in game mode? or in the default one ? I know threadripper has that possible config for gamers.

Oh, wait, watching the vid, you refer as choppiness that the image does not fully follow the gizmo when moving it... That seems to me more of another issue, rather than raw power of the machine.  How do you have configured in Affinity's preference the performance option ? ("warp", your card, etc)

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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