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Is Graphisoft actively doing anything about the shocking graphics & input lag of ArchiCAD 27?

Paul King
Mentor

Under Windows 11, using a pretty high end Workstation with high end GPU with lots of gRAM, with even small residential scale projects, ArchiCAD 27 is still an absolute dog to use performance wise compared with earlier versions.

 

I could perhaps understand if this was a beta, or maybe a first release, but this issue has persisted through several updates.

 

Performance seems to get even worse when zoomed in, in both plan and 3D.  Sometimes literally seconds of lag occur - for example when holding shift while selecting (to constrain movement direction). in reasonably simple contexts without lots of objects on screen.  Hotspots are offset from actual geometry in 3D when zoomed in even moderately close,.  in 2D windows, black linework visually thickens and changes colour to red depending on orientation - harking back 30 years to the the way lines would change appearance on old NTSC CRT monitors.

 

etc

 

Windows Task Manager often shows minimal CPU utilization while these lags are occurring, so my semi random guess is the bottleneck is in utilization of the GPU (despite its high specs) and is something to do with a poorly optimised OpenGL implementation

 

My reseller advised months ago that Graphisoft was aware of the issue - but things are still no better three versions/hotfixes later.   

Have GS lost most of their developers or just lost interest?

 

PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
22 REPLIES 22

This DEF-16662 bug was mentioned in another post and related to the slow trace reference.

Does it also expand to this general lagging that is reffered in the current post?

Botonis Botonakis
Civil Engineer, Enviromental Design MSc., BIM Manager for BS ArhitectsVR
Company or personal website
Archicad 27. Windows 11. Intel Xeon 2699x2,64 GB RAM, Nvidia 3080Ti. 2 Monitors.
Jaime-airc_digital
Enthusiast

Normally this behaviour of displaced hotspots and low graphics performance is caused by elements being very far away from the project origin. Can you check that is not the problem?

Archicad 27 ARM, MacBook Pro M3 Max 128Gb, macOS Sonoma.
Allegri
Newcomer
 
In macOS things are no better, to move a normal morph object it takes a couple of seconds. I was hoping for updates, but nothing has changed

Yes, I have seen that before as well.  Accidentally had round columns placed waaaaaaaay off screen.  Took a long time to figure it out.

Robert Mariani
MARIANI design studio, PLLC
Architecture / Architectural Photography
www.robertmariani.com

Mac OSX 13.1
AC 24 / 25 / 26

The project origin is nearby.  What I did find on a hidden layer was some 2D linework (presumably imported from a surveyor by another user) that was fairly distant.

I deleted it, but did not notice any obvious improvement at the time, though am not currently active on that project.

Ordinary line work seems fine in 3D, so it seems to only be whatever subsystem is responsible for dynamic feedback that is affected.

 

Perhaps the fact that the distant elements existed at one time in the project is enough to permanently trigger rounding of the least significant bits in coordinates for the dynamic feedback subsystem? 

 

Either way, the dynamic feedback system I think needs a good overhaul - both for speed, and resilience , given that imported surveyor's info with distant origins or distant elements is part of nearly any architectural job.

 

This is also the case on any multidisciplinary job, where adherence to an agreed universal project origin between disciplines and BIM/CAD systems is important - local origin workarounds to reduce memory requirements should no longer be required , given that nowadays we all run 64 bit machines, with minimum 16/32 GB RAM.  

 

Perhaps there could be a 'legacy coordinates memory usage' tick box for those that don't need it?

 

PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop

Just checked. We are still in the RAM limbo of 12gb.

Johnva
Participant

Have you considered the monitors you are using. It could be due to the double 4K setup. I have noticed that Archicad feels sluggish on my 4K 32” monitor but smooth on a regular 1080p monitor. Both having  refresh rate of 60hz. I have wanted to try a higher refresh rate to see what happens. Maybe this is the issue?


@Johnva wrote:

Have you considered the monitors you are using. It could be due to the double 4K setup. I have noticed that Archicad feels sluggish on my 4K 32” monitor but smooth on a regular 1080p monitor. Both having  refresh rate of 60hz. I have wanted to try a higher refresh rate to see what happens. Maybe this is the issue?


Hi @Johnva Yes every chance this is resolution related.

The issue is that other 3D and 2D graphically intensive software, and my dedicated graphics hardware is more than capable of delivering a very responsive experience under 2x4K monitors.

 

The issue is really exacerbated with trace reference on in 2D - with even very simple models in foreground and simple 2D line drawings as the reference in the background.

 

Suggests to me that perhaps the way ArchiCAD is trying to use GPU hardware memory (which is inherently VERY fast)  is a long way from optimal - perhaps for compatibility reasons.

 

At the end of the day, 4K is just the resolution that most professionals use in the design disciplines, and dual and multi-monitor setups are the norm rather than the exception - so GS treating this as some sort of low priority 'edge' case is not ok.

PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
Botonis
Mentor

There is another similar thread here:

 

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Modeling/AC27-3d-window-performance-broken-on-Windows-developers...

 

I am reposting what I did as a test and in my case it had some positive results in matters of scrolling  and screen refreshing in both 2d and 3d.

Both in Archicad 27 and 28. The DirectX transition (in comparison to OpenGL) may causes problems or conflicts with other apps.

 

I did some tests by disabling the "Hardware acceleration" for some apps that were running always on my PC (simultaneously with archicad) like:

Discord

Chrome

Steam

Tidal

Windows GPU "Hardware Acceleration"

 

It seems that Archicad runs smoothly without lagging. Usually Archicad started fine but when I was using those apps a response lag appeared.

This has dissapeared and 2d and 3d loads faster and scrolling is normal always. 

 

I am not sure if there is still a problem with the mouse DPI settings . Although Archicad is supposed to support 500rps polling rate, when I set my mouse it lags so I have set it to the lowest 125, and it feels OK. After all I am not playing in game!

 

Can someone try and describe the results?

Greetings to all.

  

Botonis Botonakis
Civil Engineer, Enviromental Design MSc., BIM Manager for BS ArhitectsVR
Company or personal website
Archicad 27. Windows 11. Intel Xeon 2699x2,64 GB RAM, Nvidia 3080Ti. 2 Monitors.

I find disabling hardware acceleration results in video corruption, with parts of the screen containing remnants of previous views etc.

PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-28 | Twinmotion 2024
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop