Xara Xtreme Pro 5 Laggy

[Mart]

Xara Photo & Graphics Designer 6 seems to only use 1 core of my quad core processor. First noticed when Xara Xtreme 5.1 was used to open an animated gif (not made in Xtreme). Norton Internet Security 2011 monitors CPU usage and after a while of running the animation in 'Preview', a Norton message popped up saying that 100% CPU was being used. Looking in Task Manager showed the 4 cores of the CPU and sure enough, only 1 was in use and was running at 100%. The graph line on the other 3 cores had hardly a ripple on them.

I wondered if this might still be the case in the new version of Xara so I installed the trial of Xara Photo & Graphics Designer 6 and opened the same animated gif. Still only 1 core being used at near 100%. I had hoped the new version might be able to support multi-cores. Or perhaps it does and something is amiss somewhere?

[Xhris]

Hi. Xara Photo & Graphics Designer 6 supports only a single core; Pro supports multi-core. This is by design. The V5 multi-core stuttering problems this thread relates to were fixed in V6. (http://www.xara.com/uk/products/designer/advanced/)

[Mart]

Thanks for the link Xhris. I can't stretch to the price of the Pro version, so I guess I won't be upgrading until multi-core support is included in a standard version. It's not often I need to make or or run animated gifs in the program anyway. Not intended as a dig because Xtreme is a fine program but DrawPlus X4 does support muti-core and even recommends multi-core processor technology.

[ad1066]

I began to have similar issues with XX4 once I installed Win7 64bit. I was able to fix it by opening the properties on the Xtreme.exe file, going to the Compatibility tab, and selecting WinXP SP3. The problem emerged once again when I upgraded to XX5, and the same solution worked. I have since upgraded to XDP6, and the problem has not resurfaced, so apparently they've fixed something fairly recently.

-- Ben