AC17 Slowness and Lag

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

I'm experiencing annoying lag/slowness on my new laptop when working in Archicad 17 (Built 8000Aus) Codemeter.

Here are the specs for my laptop:

i&-4720HQ 2.60
16 GB Ram
Windows 8.1
250GB SSD
Nividia GTX 960m (latest driver updated 350.12 - I've uninstalled GeForce Experience).

The file I'm working on isn't all that big - around 50mbs PLN file stored on my local hard drive.

The problem is when I zoom/navigate in the 2D window there is a slight lag of around 2 seconds during rebuilds - this is somewhat manageable.

The real issue is when I try to work in the 3D window - there is around a 1-2 second lag every time I try to select an object. For example when I click to select 5 windows in a wall it'll literally be 5 seconds before all the windows are selected.

This makes working in the 3D window a very painful experience.

It is especially frustrating given that an older desktop in the office (windows 8.1) with far more inferior hardware specs does not suffer from any lag issues when working on the same file.

I've tried all sorts different settings when it comes to the Redraw Options but nothing has helped.

Given my laptop specs I don't think I should be suffering from any performance issues at all...

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a graphics card issue. Does the problem occur at all times? when plugged in? when on battery?

Try turning off any energy saving options on the graphics card and see how that goes.

Scott

[Anonymous]

sboydturner wrote:
Sounds like a graphics card issue. Does the problem occur at all times? when plugged in? when on battery?

Try turning off any energy saving options on the graphics card and see how that goes.

Scott

Yep occurs all the time... I've been trying the numerous 3D settings in the Nvidia Control Panel but the lag and delay is always there even with power management mode on maximum performance.

I've read somewhere that Archicad doesn't play nicely with Nvidia's Gforce Experience so have also uninstalled it but to no avail.

Very frustrating given that it's a brand new laptop

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Okay a couple of observations that I've made after trying a whole bunch of different things:

DO NOT UPDATE YOUR GTX 960M GRAPHICS CARD DRIVER.

Performance definitely dropped off the driver was upgraded to the latest v350.12.

When I rolled the GPU driver back to 9.18.13.4505 (dated around December 2014 and the once that came with the laptop) performance in Archicad was slightly better.

Installing the latest Archicad hotfix also improved performance slightly.

However it is still not performing as well as my work desktop which is around 2 years old...

Any attached PDF plans kills my performance - it is literally rebuilding every time I zoom in/out. This can be somewhat mitigated if you turn off Precision Display but it's still an issue.

I'm resigned to think that Archicad simply does not play nicely with the Nvidia GTX 960M card... My previous laptop had a GTX860M and the work computer has a GTX 660 (It think) and neither of these cards had any issues with Archicad.

I'm beginning to think that Nvidia must have done something funky with their latest driver builds which is now causing me all sorts of speed/lag issues

Installing Archicad 18 this week so will see what happens.

[Katalin Borszeki]

Hi, Unfortunately we couldn't test this card, since it is a built in Laptop video card, and also a Gamer card. We don't have the resources to test all built in Laptop GPUs.
Our recommendation is to downgrade the video card driver...

[Richard Morrison]

Just in case it helps, are you sure that the laptop is actually using the Nvidia card? In most laptops, you have to explicitly tell the laptop to use the card on a per program basis, otherwise it defaults to its internal graphics card, which is much slower. Just because you have an Nvidia card in the laptop, doesn't mean that it is actually being used.