Xtreme Pro slow

**killerwhale65** · 24 February 2010, 09:29 AM

Hello,

I have bought a new PC 2 Weeks ago. Installed Xara Xtreme Pro 5 from CD. At first i thought it was all ok. But after a few days i noticed that it's getting slow. In everything. For example dragging around the page with the middle mouse button pressed happens in "slideshow mode". Dragging any object does the same, and also when dragging an object, at first it shows the actual object moving, but when i drag it for too long it switches to contours only (i know you can switch this on or off but i did not do that).

I have bought the pro version since it makes use of multiple cpu cores, so i am expecting a fast program, and not what i have now. I have an i7 860 cpu with 4gb of ram.

Now it is possible (but not sure) that this happened only after updating to the latest version, and that it was still ok with the CD version without update. But i am not sure about this.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Matt

**killerwhale65** · 24 February 2010, 11:02 AM

hello,

I think a major problem here: i have just started Xara and for test i just dragged the empty document around the screen (pressed middle mouse button). Guess what: slideshow time again! Nothing smooth about dragging an empty document around the screen. What is wrong?

thanks!

**handrawn** · 24 February 2010, 11:23 AM

this may help?
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=43257

**killerwhale65** · 24 February 2010, 11:35 AM

ah how wonderfull!! Now its smooth again, thanks!

This seems a serious bug to me, strange that Xara has not yet addressed it.

**Soquili** · 24 February 2010, 01:04 PM

The problem is not exactly within Xtreme. The use of Hyper Threading which creates virtual processes seems to initiate the bug. The virtual processes seem to return their results after all physical processes return their results.

Turning off Hyper Threading also corrects the problem, at least on my systems.

**killerwhale65** · 24 February 2010, 01:21 PM

ok, well not that i am a technician, but i think i can follow you.

**willdean** · 24 February 2010, 03:24 PM

Originally Posted by killerwhale65

ok, well not that i am a technician, but i think i can follow you.

It's a fair point that Xara have been caught-out in some assumption about multi-core behaviour which doesn't hold true for recent processors.

But I suspect that anyone hoping for Intel to fix this rather than Xara will be in for a long wait...

**killerwhale65** · 24 February 2010, 03:36 PM

my thoughts exactly. But shouldn't there be other software that suffers from this?

**willdean** · 24 February 2010, 03:41 PM

Originally Posted by killerwhale65

my thoughts exactly. But shouldn't there be other software that suffers from this?

There are an almost infinite number of ways to introduce multi-threading bugs into applications. It would appear that Xara found a way which most other people have overlooked ;-)

I don't know why it isn't fixed yet when it's been talked about for six months or so, but it's never easy to tell what's happening at Xara-towers from the outside.

**Soquili** · 24 February 2010, 04:10 PM

Other software is not written in low level machine code, which is the source of Xara's speed in a 32bit environment.

I do not work for Xara and cannot speak for them but to assume that a fix can be quickly accomplished is overlooking too many variables.