UI is super slow with eGPU connected

Submitted by feklee on Sun, 12/29/2024 - 13:58
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General discussion

When I have my Nvidia A2000 connected via Thunderbolt, opening a menu can take a few seconds. Browsing through images is slower than with Bridge.
What could be the issue?
I am using Windows 11 Pro.

lexa

Sun, 12/29/2024 - 23:38

What is your complete setup? In particular: to which GPU you connect your display when using A2000?

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Alex Tutubalin/FastRawViewer team

feklee

Mon, 12/30/2024 - 04:15

For completeness, see below. After reinstalling FastRawViewer, restarting Windows, and restoring the preferences, the issue went away. But I'm also now running the machine without the eGPU. It is currently only with the internal Intel GPU. At the moment I cannot do further tests because the eGPU is not detected anymore. Possibly the Thunderbolt ports in my machine are flaky again. So, for now, the issue is solved, but it may resurface once I get the eGPU running again.
Screenshot of Task Manager showing the FastRawViewer process
Screenshot of Task Manager showing GPUs

feklee

Mon, 12/30/2024 - 09:37

Update: After getting the eGPU up and running again, I cannot reproduce the issue anymore. As before, I can see that FastRawViewer is using the eGPU in the Task Manager. It starts being used when I zoom into an image. Possibly, with the previous installation of FastRawViewer, I had eGPU use assigned externally via the NVIDIA Control Panel.
Anyhow, even though I have no idea what was the cause of the issue, I am happy to have FastRawViewer’s fastness back!

feklee

Fri, 01/10/2025 - 05:26

The slowness is back: Nvidia RTX A2000 12GB
What can I check?

feklee

Fri, 01/10/2025 - 05:34

It is slow now even with the eGPU connected, like super slow: After clicking on File in the menu bar, I have to wait several seconds for the menu to appear. Navigating into Preferences takes a lot of patience.

lexa

Fri, 01/10/2025 - 07:52

Could you please answer the question asked in our 1st reply:  to which GPU you connect your display when using A2000?

--

Alex Tutubalin/FastRawViewer team

feklee

Fri, 01/10/2025 - 08:06

Sure! I use the display of my ThinkPad X1 Tablet 3rd gen. I don’t connect an external display. It is not necessary to use an external display with an eGPU, something which I didn’t know myself for quite a while. The eGPU sends its output back via Thunderbolt to the host.
 
Anyhow, the slowness now also happens without eGPU. I assume a reinstall of FastRawViewer would fix the issue, like it did the last time. Slow is the whole UI. I tried changing the graphics engine from OpenGL to DirectX 11, but that had no effect on performance. It’s still super slow.

lexa

Fri, 01/10/2025 - 09:58

If your display is connected to internal GPU: please force to use internal GPU with FastRawViewer (via NVidia control panel).

Rendering on eGPU results in lot of extra overhead: data uploaded to eGPU, rendered on eGPU then rendering result transferred to iGPU and re-rendered on it in framebuffer (and all transfers are done via 4-lane-max thunderbolt connection).

--

Alex Tutubalin/FastRawViewer team

feklee

Fri, 01/10/2025 - 10:09

The slowness persists after unplugging the eGPU.
Regarding overhead: Maybe some microseconds, but generally the eGPU greatly speeds up applications that depend on graphics. I regularly use it for highly interactive applications such as Rhino 3D, as well as for Adobe Camera Raw. eGPUs are popular for gaming.

feklee

Sun, 01/12/2025 - 06:03

Reinstalling didn't have an effect this time. It's still ultra slow. I try to reset the settings, but when I click on Restore Defaults in the Preferences, then nothing happens. The settings stay as they are.
Where are the settings stored so that I can delete them?

feklee

Sun, 01/12/2025 - 06:12

I just deleted %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\LibRaw LLC\FastRawViewer, but again no positive effect on performance.

feklee

Sun, 01/12/2025 - 06:17

Now I uninstalled and remove the registry entry %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\LibRaw LLC\FastRawViewer. After reinstalling it's still slow. In the past, I did not have that issue. Maybe I should go back to an earlier version?

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