Slow performance on a new, high end Win10 desktop build
I saw that there are several related threads on here but the discussions were all over the board. I didn't want to add to the noise so figured it made more sense to just open up a new thread that was specific to my issues.
I've been running ON1 PR for several years on a very high end ASUS ROG laptop. ON1's performance on that machine has always been "disappointing", to be kind. As many here have noted, ON1 Support isn't much help with these sorts of issues and my take is that they probably don't know much about Microsoft internals or ON1 code even. I am definitely not a Microsoft guy having spent the past many decades as a *NIX systems engineer. I do know more about MS than most MCSEs (which isn't saying much...). Reading these threads it's obvious that there are a few very high powered Microsoft experts in this forum. I'm hoping to benefit from their wisdom.
After several years of pain trying to get ON1 to perform at least marginally as well as Lightroom, I decided to just go ahead and build a new desktop that will be totally dedicated to post processing work. It's currently running an ASRock Z370M Pro4 mobo, 32 GB RAM (soon to go to 64GB), an Intel I7-8700K 6-core CPU and a 1 TB Samsung EVO SSD. Running Win10 Pro (currently not activated). Nothing is overclocked at this time and this machine certainly has enough juice to run some pretty intense software. Currently running OTB graphics although I do plan to install a 1060 Video card soon.
Did a clean ON1 install and was VERY disappointed that this machines performance is even worse than what I'm getting from my laptop.
Most obvious problems are that the sliders respond extremely slowly like I have a mouse lag problem or something. But for everything else non-ON1-related, the mouse response is very snappy.
If I hover over an effect it takes a VERY long time for the GUI to actually "see" the selection and render the changes to the image on the screen. Just switching from develop to browse takes quite a while.
I'm not using catalogs, BTW. I have my RAW images on an external USB 3.0 HDD but I've also tried processing RAW files that were on the SSD so I don't think it's related to USB speed.
Also, late in the life of PR 2018 I had a problem where I would export an image and when it came up in explorer, NONE of the develop or effects adjustments were in the finished displayed jpg image.... just my watermark. This problem "went away" after a few days.... well, it's back on the new machine running the latest version of PR 2019.2. The laptop, running the same version of PR 2019 does not (currently) have this problem.
The workaround for the above problem is to go into the browse module and do the export from there. These symptoms are 100% repeatable. I sent all kinds of info, samples, log files and so on to support and they pretty much gave me the "it will be fixed in the next release" runaround.
As I said, I am not a MS guy but I am, after all, a well seasoned systems engineer. I do know my way around under the hood and so far I don't see any Windows-side issues that could be causing any of this. ON1 PR is using about 4 GB RAM and around 10-20% of the total CPU power. I don't think ON1 has done much in the area of multithreading so I don't know that 6 cores versus the quad core in my laptop is getting me much. Sysinternals process explorer indicates that there isn't much ON1 distributed processing going on.
So if there is anything I can do on my end to get this sorted out I'd very much appreciate knowledgeable advice.
I received no errors when installing ON1. The registry seems fine. Memtest ran fine and I really beat the machine HARD running benchmarks (without any issues) before installing ON1. And as I said, there is nothing running on this box other than ON1 and a couple of systems/process monitoring tools. Yes, of course a $500 video card will help and I'll be doing that. But this is a lot more than just an on-board versus PCI video card issue.
Many thanks to all in advance!
-
Larry, it looks like you hit all of the tweaks. I can't think of anything to add.
I wouldn't expect 2019.5 to have any major new features but I would expect a lot of bug fixes in that release.
0 -
Larry,
Your list seems complete and very similar to how I gilded the lily to get reasonable On1 operation.
My only difference is that I do not use MalwareBytes, So I did what you did, except I did it for Win10 Defender. You probably already thought of this, but it may be worth double checking the exclusion list in Windows Defender. (Of course, it is quite possible Defender is already turned off because of the install of Malwarebytes)
Sorry I can't be of much direct assistance.
0 -
Oh wait... I forgot one that is a bit tricky....
I thought I had installed the latest drivers.... As it turns out, with nVidia, using their tool to update drives found new drivers. Although this did not help me with On1, it did help me with a different application.
Thus, if you haven't done so already, it may be worth trying the drivers update from the video card manufacturer (not the one supplied with Windows)
0 -
If you are within a few releases of the nvidia drivers, it won't make a difference. This is pretty much the first thing support told me to get done. But I am a driver freak. I look for new drivers for each of my computer components almost everyday, including the SSD and the motherboard... LOL
Anyway, hopefully they will fix this.
0 -
I generally agree and do the same....
In a recent case that happened to me, the November 2018 nVidia drivers fixed an issue with that an application released in October 2018 that I tried to unsuccessfully use with September 2018 drivers. (I typically only check drivers about once a quarter). I never would have guessed that September 2018 drivers would not have worked in a October 2018 release. Of course, I guess it could have been a buggy driver release in September, but I never went back to confirm the issue. I may have just been at the wrong place at the wrong time I guess.
0 -
Did I miss something? I am running 2019.2 and everyone is talking about 2019.5 being release this year. What happened to 2019.3 and .4? My version of PR says I am up to date with 2019.2.
0 -
I found a new one... not sure it will help anyone, because it seems like a special cause... In any case, here it is....
I found a system setting that can slow On1 to a crawl. Specifically, any brush work (masking or otherwise) becomes exceedingly less responsive. (I did not test other features)
Flipping the switch one way, causes the issue, tuning it the other way, and the system response is back to normal. Here is how to flip the switch:
Win10 > Search > Graphics Settings > Classic App > Browse > [browse_to_on1 executable_and_select]
On1 will now appear in the list. Thee ill be two buttons "Options" and "Remove"
Choose Options > Power Saving; This results in everything slows to a crawl
Choose Options > High Performance; This results in everything speeds up nicely
the default seems to be "System Default"
In my case, High Performance references my nVidia card for the GPU while Power Saving references the Intel built-in GPU.
Here is an interesting factoid... I monitored the task manager when flipping the switch. When I chose Power Saving, ONLY the Intel GPU was used while masking. When I choose High Performance or System, BOTH GPUs are used when masking.
As always, your mileage may vary.... Moral of the story, make sure you are not using PowerSaving Mode when running On1.
0 -
I should have mentioned, you need to restart On1 between switch flips to see the impact.
0 -
Kevin - in an email from ON1 support they indicated to me that a known bug is going to be fixed in the 2019.5 release in late spring. I guess it's possible that a different update could be before then but that is what I'm thinking is going to happen.
Gus - interesting find ... since I only have one graphics card it was selected but I did put it on performance incase Windows does something different with the setting.0 -
I just changed mine from Power Saving to High Performance and it actually does speed things up!!! Good catch Gus.
I set Capture and Sandbox to High Performance as well.
It doesn't fix my sticky brush though, it just makes switching modes faster.
I don't recall this particular setting ever being mentioned before, I'll add it to my list of tweaks.
0 -
I don't know about anyone else but it seems that Gus' find has actually sped up RAW on my computer, even zooming into 100% and cloning seems faster. I do have a lag while cloning but with the age of my computer I expect that ... it doesn't seem quite as bad as it was. It could also be my imagination but looking at the Task Manager while using RAW it also seems to be using less memory and splitting the function of processing between the CPU and GPU more now with neither bogging down on the few photos I tried.
THANKS Gus!
0 -
Yes the Graphics setting thing set to high performance was presented to me in one of the support emails and as part of a knowledge base entry on this site. It does help, mostly in the slider real-time previewing. But it didn't help much, if any at all, with zoomed in masking on a 36MP RAW file.
0 -
Further testing shows that while the HP tweak doesn't fix my sticking brush, it does make the brush move twice as far now before it sticks.
Still need to figure out if it helps keep the CPU from pining at 100%
0 -
Thanks Gus and everyone - The last thing I mentioned in the post for fixes was setting Win 10 Graphics to Performance (I never tried Power Saving) and that does appear to help. Overall, with all those fixes applied AND booting into my 2nd Windows instance with only Photo apps installed makes using On1 tolerable however, even then, if I am trying to do lots of zoomed in masking, performance drops and eventually is completely un-usable until I exit On1 and restart.
Hopefully these spring fixes improve this as I really don't want to buy a Mac (doesn't it seem like all the On1 videos are on a Mac? I think someone mentioned that) having been a Windows guy since ummm before Windows!
Larry
0 -
As I mentioned before, I asked support if it affected the Mac version. The answer was it affected all platforms with certain graphics card setup.
So don't buy a Mac just because the demo videos look fast. The reason that the videos look fast is because the photo files that they use for the demos are small.
Using the software on my D700 RAW file (12MP) is "almost" ok. But my regular camera now is 36MP RAW file.
0 -
I did not expect my little find to have a positive impact on so many, but I am glad it did. Hip Hooray!
Because of the drastic difference that tracks on/off of the high performance feature, I would expect there is a switch setting in the compiler that may need attention.
I have included a link to this thread as a part of a trouble ticket.
0 -
Well, looks like they are going to fix most of the things that affect me and also made for 4K monitors, in the coming release. Let's just hope they really fix it.
In the meantime, I have bought Skylum software and explored my options. The two software they have run very well on my monster PC so far.
0 -
Yep Yuti, lets hope for the best as far as fixing the bugs!
As far as Skylum's software I couldn't get it to run on my machine. Tech support was almost useless and I gave up after trying off and on for about a week. I think the photography gods want me to stay with ON1! :-)
0 -
So I tried this new version last night. It is much improved, but still, on a 36MP RAW file zoomed in at any level, it is very laggy. Sometimes it seems that it crashed, but it came back.
I looked at the resources being used. There are quite a bit of GPU utilization and a lot less CPU use, which is what we want. So they are doing the right thing, but just not quite polished.
For now, I found the Skylum suite of software is much smoother. So I may just go that route for a while. I am tired of waiting for a finalized and polished product from On1.
0 -
I find this interesting Yuti as I have a much lower end and older computer and my 24 Mp Nikon files don't lag when zoomed in and I'm masking or cloning. I find at the end of the cloning it will lag for a second or two but the actual cloning is smooth.
I guess it's good that we have different software to use!
0 -
Vinny,
It's just one particular file that I used to gauge the performance of the software. This file has a lot of tree branches from willow trees, branches and little leaves everywhere. I offered this file to the support team to try, but they never took it.
If I was masking in areas with a lot less details, it's quite OK to use.
Overall, I think they improved this software quite a bit, but they have not solved the issues like mine.
0 -
Just bumping this for people on FB page.
0 -
So I got the 2020... I did NOT want to upgrade, but I got a complimentary copy because I bought the X-Rite target.
So, on the same test file, it's improved a bit, but STILL works like crap when masking at 50 or 100% zoom. I played with the GPU settings. It made some differences, but not enough to make me buy this software.
I've offered this file for them to play with, but they did not respond.
0 -
I upgraded to 2020 not long after the official release. However I still have the latest version of PR2019 still installed "just in case". ON1 has an annoying habit of breaking important features that previously worked any time they release a new "upgrade". It's blindingly obvious that ON1 PR releases receive little or no regression testing. This has been an undeniable fact for years.
I'm finding PR2020 to be more usable than previous releases and there are several new features that I like and appreciate. Layers, sky replacement, A! features have improved considerably since PR2019.
As for performance, although ON1 Marketing people made a big deal announcing how much faster PR2020 is (compared to previous releases) I see little or no improvement.
I have a very high end Win10 machine that I built exclusively for ON1 use. The biggest, fastest Intel CPU available, 64 GB RAM and a pretty hefty GTX1070 Video card. The turtle slow masking issues improved (at least for me) near the end of the PR2010 life cycle. The main slowness I'm seeing is with exporting, pano and things along those lines. Since these are quasi batch operations I can live with the poor performance. What's most important to me are that these features work flawlessly.... speed is far less a priority for me.
There are numerous tools for Microsoft operating systems that show each CPU and Cuda thread. Apparently no one at ON1 knows about any of these tools. But these tools clearly demonstrate that ON1 software is *NOT* utilizing the ample resources that are available on my PC. Or anything even close to it. In fact, the GPU is still so underutilized that the cooling fans never turn on even during the most extremely compute-intensive operations. Suffice it to say that the third party ON1 "Developers" in India or where ever they are still have a LOT of work to do to get ON1 to perform on a par with products like LR and PS. ON1 flatly refuses to accommodate tour requests so it's fairly obvious that one reason for this is the fact that they do not write their own code. Also, it's obvious that ON1 SQA people have zero or extremely limited access to the coders.
I've seen a few hangs/crashes but not nearly as frequent as I experienced with PR2019. As a *NIX guy I hope ON1 management understands that ZERO crashes/hangs is the only acceptable level of dependability for products selling at this price point. Of course it has also been an undeniable fact that ON1 management is completely disengaged in anything remotely related to product reliability or customer satisfaction. One gets the impression that senior management at ON1 is spending their time perfecting their golf game while pumping up the company's numbers in the hopes that ON1 will be purchased by Adobe or some other competitor.
As a professional Engineer with decades of experience working in SW development environments I would characterize ON1 PR2020 as beta-level software as far as product maturity is concerned.
No surprise that support ignored you. ON1 has some of the worst customer support on the planet. I am a Plus tier customer and support typically responds only half the time I open a ticket, if that often. I typically have to open multiple tickets before I get even one response.
0 -
Frank,
I completely agree with your assessment!
I built my Win10 machine to run this, with the 16 core AMD Threadripper over-clocked, with 64GB RAM running on the fastest XMP profile, and I got the GTX1080Ti to boot. Boot drive runs on NVMe SSD; in fact, in this build, I have not used any conventional HD.
And just as you mentioned, the usage on the GPU is stupidly small. As an electrical engineer close to 40 years of experience working on hardware and software, I also know that they can do better (but they have not on certain areas).
I've been upgrading since the early years, but I finally decided not to spend money on it this year. Skylum and Aurora are very promising. I've been using those mainly these days.
0 -
Yuti,
I just recently purchased Aurora HDR 2019. It is AMAZING. I love the tonal spread I can get using a single image and if I need more I can do a set of images. And I even tested it using 3 hand held images and I do not believe a tripod would have made any better work of it. Simply amazing alignments The only con I have is the way it does not remember or use the current directory for exporting. But I can live with that for now. I am now exporting my raw images into tiff files, sending them thru Aurora, and then editing them in ON1. I also do infrared monochrome and Aurora saves me tons of time getting the tonal spread I want as compared to my methods and filters in ON1.
What can you tell me about Sklyum as it compares to PR?
Thanks,
Kevin
0 -
Interesting as 2020 is somewhat faster on my older machine and so far no crashes.
I did want to try Luminar but it refused to work on my machine and their tech support had no clue what was going on. After almost 2 weeks of trying to get it to run I called it quits.
I was hoping to see that things have changed for the better for everyone but it is still hit or miss.
0 -
Kevin,
Yes, I love Aurora HDR. I don't do HDR in it all the time as it can also just enhance photos. I had Sklum, then Luminar 3, now I am waiting for Luminar 4 (to be release very soon). The UI is different than a typical RAW developer, and a bit clunky at the beginning. But it's getting better. It didn't have asset management, but now it does. It uses my machine resources better than 2020. But unfortunately, as of now at Luminar 3, it is not integrated with Aurora. I wished it did so that I didn't have to leave the Skylum environment. But still, I find myself using the Skylum suite of software more than On1 now, mostly because of it's responsiveness to my input, and its nice output.
I think in terms of AI integration, Skylum started earlier than On1, and it shows.
Vinny,
I tried to play with the GPU setting in 2020. When I put it to the minimum setting, the zoomed in masking worked barely ok, but I think by doing so is defeating the purpose of having a powerful GPU.
If you only tried Luminar, which didn't work for you, you should try Aurora, just to see if it runs. It's a nice software.
0 -
If you have a Powerful GPU, you shouldn't need to be playing with any of the settings in On1. My 10yo PC that barely meets the minimum specs runs just fine with On1. It's not lightning-fast, but I can do my brushing and make masks with no problem. If there is an odd stutter here and there it's not like the whole program has to be condemned. Not saying that On1 doesn't have problems, but some people seem to be very picky when comparing with other programs.
I have to wonder if you've checked your Powerful GPU to make sure it's set for On1 to use it. If you have, then you shouldn't be having the problems that you describe. See the link below.
For whoever mentioned it above, On1 is a small company in Portland Oregon and I've never heard even a hint that they have anyone outside of their office doing the software for them.
0 -
Hi Rick,
That link has been shown to me to death by the support manager. It does NOT help. And I've never used other software where I had to tell my computer's GPU to support it. I've been setting this thing according to the link for years, and no, it doesn't help much, if any at all.
Adobe products doesn't need me to do this. Skylum products doesn't need me to do this. They just detect and use the GPU. I am beginning to wonder if On1's software development platform is antiquated or not.
Anyway, when I zoomed in to auto mask a complicated foliage scene, the thing just crawls and stutters. And looking at the CPU and GPU usage while doing that, GPU usage is a joke, but there are a lot of CPU usage.
I've offered this file for support to play with, no response.
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
70 comments