Almost unusable due to lag

[jstkruzen]

Hi All,

Running version 4.3.0.4. Doing a project with a board size of 100x100mm with ~220 components.

I have almost unusable lag with DipTrace right now. My rig isn't blazing fast by all means but it should be ample.

My rig:
GPU: 3060
Ram: 32GB
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600

Any suggestions?

Thank you

[Alex]

Thank you for the report.
Do the lags happen with specific only or any board design? In the first case, please send board file to DipTrace support for verification or upload it on the forum.

[KevinA]

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600->AMD EPYC 9654
Ram: 32GB? What speed?
GPU: 3060->Nvidia RTX 4090
Looks like a two or three year old machine.
A $12,000 CPU with a $2,300 GPU plus a motherboard should speed it up

[jstkruzen]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your response. It wasn't an issue until recently (no changes in hardware or software).

It's on most my boards except a few slightly smaller ones.

I can still send over a copy if that would help.

[dominicc]

Yeah, I'm also finding 4.3.0.4 EXTREMELY laggy.

For example:
* when I click the 'Route Manual' button it takes about 2 seconds for the UI to become responsive again.
* Starting to route, then pressing ESCAPE to cancel routing takes about 1 second
* bringing up the context menu takes about a second.
* pressing alt-tab to switch FROMthe app to another app (e.g. to reference a datasheet) causes a lag.


I tried the different rendering modes:
* Windows GDI - laughably slow.
* Direct3D - faster, but way worse than 4.1.x, noticably slow when zooming using the mouse-wheel.
* OpenGL - best, but way worse than 4.1.x.


My system is a 32-core AMD X5950 with 64GB of RAM and an NVidia 4090.

[KevinA]

I used diptrace/example/pcb6 with shape router free.dip and pcb6.dip 133 patterns as a test since everything I do is less than 50X50mm.
With an i5 9th Gen, 16GB, Nvidia Quadro there is no lag in PCB view or 3D view, I only use OpenGL. For routing and switching screens it is instant, no lag.
Is there a large test file/pcb we can share somewhere besides the example folder?

[jstkruzen]

I finally figured it out. It's the copper pours that cause the lag. My board is 100x75mm with 2 pour layers. Any ideas?

Have since upgraded to:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5700x
GPU: 3060
RAM: 64GB @ 3400 mhz

[dostr63]

On MacOS, people have noticed that turning off display of what layers they can - reduces lag.

That may also work on Windows platforms.

Other people have reported "hitting a wall" where adding just a little extra content to the PCB seems to result in a significant slowing-down.

Even just un-pouring your copper pours may help.

[friesen]

I've also been trying to nail this down. I have i5-14600K with 64gb ram.

I think that every PCB/Schematic window open counts. The first opens fast, subsequent pcb/schematic opens slower and slower.

I also notice that this gets slower and slower the more windows I have open, (win 10) I have 3 screens as well. I suspect this has something to do with either graphics or the splash screen.

[dominicc]

I've not done much PCB design recently, mostly been doing software for the last year.

I found it it still completely unusable after loading up a design today, panning around a design was super slow, however read on for a solution that worked for me...

* All my drivers, bios and everything are up-to-date.
* I tried killing every single background process and service, no change.
* Rebooting had no effect.
* Windows has been updated to 24H2 26100.4061 since I last posted.
* I'm using an AMD 5950X CPU with 16 cores (32 threads) + 64GB of RAM and an NVidia 4090 founders edition on a 3840x2160 monitor.
* Disabling copper pours had no noticable effect.
* It's not specific to a single design, a 6 layer 40x40mm design is just as bad as a 2 layer 59x91mm design.

I went through all the above and found the old tech support email from dip-trace tech support back in 2023/04/12 (case DT-20050) they said:

> Please notice, sometimes graphics initialization after waking up from sleep mode fails in DipTrace. In that case, the software switches to Windows GDI graphics mode after few unsuccessful attempts to initialize OpenGL or Direct3D mode. Of course, Windows GDI mode works much slower than either OpenGL or Direct3D. It looks like lags on medium and large boards. You can try to restore graphics mode (View -> Graphics Mode from main menu).

And lo-and behold, today, I found that even after the reboot the Graphics Mode was set to "Windows GDI", switching it to OpenGL or Direct3D fixed it.

I'll report back if I have issues in the future with regards to input lag, e.g. when using the context menu as per my previous post, but right now everthing seems ok.