A. Designer 1.7.x stuttering performance & screen flickering

[Pascal den Dekker]

Good day Affinity Forum,

 

Yesterday I bought the latest version of A. Designer for Windows. Sadly after installation I instantly ran into a very weird technical issue which makes the software unusable for me personally.

Once the application is launched, I get about 3-5 seconds of normal control/use. Then it starts stuttering and causing screen flickering on my monitor. The weird and interesting thing is that A. Designer application is only stuttering while I am ''in'' the application window with my cursor, and using the application. I have tested and replicated the issue with multiple applications opened and the stuttering & screen flickering only happens when I go into A. Designer. As soon as I move my cursor out A. Designer, the stuttering and flickering stops and other running applications are not affected by stuttering or flickering.

After tracking CPU and GPU temps/speeds/voltages whilst having this issue, I can safely say that all of those are stable, except for a small bump in load on the GPU, but of neglectable size I would think. 

I have a Dell S2417DG gaming monitor, 2560x1440, running at 144Hz, with Nvidia G-SYNC ENABLED. (While I am typing this it comes to my mind that I still need to try and reproduce the issue with lower Hz settings and with G-SYNC DISABLED). 

My gut gives me a feeling there is some sort of interferance from A. Designer with the Nvidia drivers or the Nvidia G-sync tech. I have the latest Nvidia drivers for my RTX2070 installed.

Now here comes a fun fact for the developers who read this; I had the exact same technical issue as described above, on the same new desktop with the Spotify Music application. After some testing with different Hz settings and G-SYNC on and off, the stuttering and screen flickering still happened in Spotify. Then when I went into advanced settings, I disabled the option ''Hardware acceleration'' and poof, spotify worked like a charm again. On all different Hz settings, with G-SYNC on and off. No more stuttering and screen flickering.

I do not know exactly what the ''Hardware acceleration'' option in Spotify does under the hood. I checked for a similar option in A. Designer but I could not find it. Perhaps this ''Hardware acceleration'' is built in the A. Designer code by default? I tested with Rendering settings in A. Designer on ''Warp'', but this doesnt fix the issue for me. 

I am very curious if the people from Affinity are perhaps able to reproduce this issue on similar hardware. Or if anybody has experienced this issue at all.

In the meanwhile I will wait and see if the next Nvidia driver update will fix this problem perhaps. The application is currently unusable for me sadly. Fingers crossed for me I will be able to use A. Designer in the future on my current desktop. 

My 2 weeks old desktop setup;

• W10 pro 64-bit
• Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO
• Intel i7-9700K
• Gigabyte RTX2070
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200Mhz

 

Thanks in advance for your time, best regards,

Pascal

 

[Dan C]

Hi Pascal den Dekker,

Welcome to the forums

We've had similar reports from users using G-sync with 'Full Screen & Windowed Apps' and this has been replicated by our QA team. Could you please try disabling G-sync and see if this issue still persists? 

[Pascal den Dekker]

Hi Dan,

 

Thanks! It appears to be the windowed mode from the G-sync options indeed. I set it to G-sync in fullscreen only and A. Designer works without issues again, lovely!

Regards,

 

Pascal

[mediumcheese]

I have performance issues with an Asus 1440p 144hz monitor, Intel i5 6600K CPU, and a Nvidia GTX 1070. My monitor does not have GSync. I do not get screen flicker, but the entire app is pretty laggy and objects kind of flicker and lag when transforming them.

There's a key input delay as well which is incredibly frustrating when you go to hold spacebar to pan the view around, if you don't wait long enough when you click then it doesn't switch the mouse cursor to the grabber before you click.

It just overall feels nowhere near as optimized as my Macbook Pro, even though my graphics capabilities on my Windows machine are much better.

Edited August 8, 2019 by mediumcheese

[Dan C]

Hi mediumcheese,

Welcome to the forums

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble, we've had a few customers recently report flickering UI and this has been caused by an out of date graphics card driver. Could you please use the following tool to remove the current version of the driver you have installed, then download the latest driver from your device from the following link and let me know if this helps?

Uninstall - https://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/IO_13955.html

Reinstall - https://www.geforce.co.uk/drivers

After you have done this, please open Affinity then go to Edit>Preferences and provide a screenshot of your settings here, thanks in advance!

[Madsk]

I'm having the exact same issues.

Intel i7 8700k
16 GB Ram
Nvidia RTX 2080

I can use the app for 2-5 seconds before the mouse is lagging and the whole performance is degraded. 

It comes back for 2-5 seconds and then the performance decrease again

I've tried uninstalling drivers, affinity designer.

Tried every combination of changes in the performance tab and nothing works at all.

Not sure what to do anymore and I'm forced to work in Illustrator as it is not showing any of these problems.

[Pascal den Dekker]

Hi Madsk,

Go into your Nvidia control panel and go to G-Sync settings. Make sure you have it set to ONLY Full-screen mode. Do not tick Full-screen AND windowed mode.

This did the trick for me. I had it on Full-screen & windowed mode before and I got the stuttering issue, after I set to to Full-screen only mode, Affinity Designer worked like a charm again!

Regards,

Pascal

[mediumcheese]

On 8/9/2019 at 6:18 AM, Dan C said:

Hi mediumcheese,

Welcome to the forums

I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble, we've had a few customers recently report flickering UI and this has been caused by an out of date graphics card driver. Could you please use the following tool to remove the current version of the driver you have installed, then download the latest driver from your device from the following link and let me know if this helps?

Uninstall - https://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/IO_13955.html

Reinstall - https://www.geforce.co.uk/drivers

After you have done this, please open Affinity then go to Edit>Preferences and provide a screenshot of your settings here, thanks in advance!

My driver is up-to-date and I do clean installs. I've tried different performance options and nothing seems to change.

[Dan C]

@Madsk Could you please provide a screen recording showing this, as well as a screenshot of your Performance settings, from the creation of your document to the mouse lagging, as this isn't an issue I'm aware of.

On 8/12/2019 at 4:00 PM, mediumcheese said:

I've tried different performance options and nothing seems to change

Could you please provide a screenshot of the settings in use? Have you used the uninstall/reinstall method provided above? As other users have already been using the latest version, but the driver was still corrupting within Affinity and a full uninstall and reinstall fixed this.

[mediumcheese]

@Dan C

Here's a video and screenshot of my performance settings. Notice the stuttering behavior while creating/transforming vector objects? pretty much every action behaves like this. Obviously I am unable to convey the input lag in a video, but like I said in a previous comment, keyboard input is slightly delayed like from the time I hit spacebar to the time the cursor turns into the pan tool for example.

Intel i5 6600K
Gigabyte GTX 1070 G1 Gaming
16GB ram

[Dan C]

Thanks for that, I'm very sorry to see this.

Could you please open your snapping options and provide a screenshot of the settings in use? Does this lag/jitter dissipate if you turn snapping off?

Can any users with similar issues also please download and install the latest beta alongside your retail version and let me know if you're seeing the same issues here?

 

[mediumcheese]

@Dan C

Initially it didn't seem that turning snapping off did anything, but then I enabled force pixel alignment, and it started working smoothly after that. Now even when toggling snapping back on/off and toggling pixel alignment on/off it seems to stay smooth. So I'm not sure if it was just the snapping and it took a little bit, or if it was in conjunction with toggling pixel alignment. Thanks for the tip. Is this a known issue that will be addressed in a near future update? I will keep experimenting with it.

[Dan C]

Thanks for letting me know, I'm very glad to hear it!

This issue is something our dev team are aware of, however I can't currently provide a timescale for a resolution here, as it only seems to affect certain machines/documents and therefore makes eliminating the bug a more arduous process.

[mediumcheese]

@Dan C
Turns out that didn't totally fix performance issues. It appeared to for a short time but now after continuing to use it it doesn't seem to be a complete fix. Still getting lag when resizing certain things and moving color sliders etc.

[Dan C]

I'm sorry to hear this, as your issue isn't related to the OP (G-sync) could you please create a new post in the bugs section so our team can investigate this further for you?