Multi-core

[dpt]

Hi All,

I've just upgraded my PC to a quad-core Phenom CPU.

Xara Designer Pro 7 doesn't ever use more than one of the CPU cores.

Does it need explicitly enabling?

Dave

[gwpriester]

I don't think DP7 is written to take advantage of quad core.

It's still pretty fast though.

[MEB]

Hi Dave,
I remember that there was some discussion about this subject some time ago. As far as i know Xara does support multicore configs. I´m running it on a quad core (Intel Core i7, 4+4 core units) and it does take advantage of at least four cores (the other four are virtual units - Hyper threading technology by Intel). I assume that it does the same for AMD processors. I don´t remember anyone reporting problems with AMD processors before. I´m sure someone will step in and will give some more help.

[dpt]

I don't think DP7 is written to take advantage of quad core.

It's still pretty fast though.

From http://www.xara.com/uk/products/designer/advanced/

Multi-core processors (This feature is only in Designer Pro 7)

Xara Designer has always had by far the highest performing graphics rendering engine, up to ten times faster than Adobe Illustrator. V4 introduced support for multi-core processors in Xara Designer Pro making it even faster than before! Tests show approximate speed gains of 40% for a dual core processor with large screen images, and greater gains with more cores. Large full screen photos can render up to 75% faster on a dual core processor.

I'll have to try it on my work quad core box, which is a Core i5.

[gwpriester]

I am always learning something new (and then promptly forgetting it )

[Guest]

Fwiw: I do not see great scaling when using a fast Computer. The Software is fast on a Dual-Core already but it doesn't get noticeably faster on my other (greatly better) Computer.

I found something else interesting: The "advanced" page says that Designer allows for 16 Bit Vector to Bitmap Transfer in Photoshop-Format. While this is one of the things I personally found most useful I did not see a way to get stuff over to PS in anything higher as 8 Bit per Channel. Is this an Error in the Program-Description or am I doing something wrong?

[dpt]

It's clearly using all cores on the Core i5 in work (MacBook Pro, running a Windows 7 through VMware with two cores available), but on the quad core Phenom at home I only ever see a single core being used.

[GerryI]

Check the value of Options\Rendering\Maximum Threads. This should be set to 32 by default. Assuming this is the case then the only other possiblity I can think of is that the code that works out how many real CPU cores are available isn't working correctly on your processor. If so, I would suggest submitting a support ticket that includes as much detail as possible about the type of your processor. I expect that you may be asked to run a little test program to diagnose why the CPU detection code in DP7 is failing.

Gerry

[GerryI]

In fact, if you set Options\Rendering\ProcessorLog to 1 then DP7 should write out a file called XaraDrawLog.txt containing info about your processor to your AppData\Local\Xara\XtremePro\7.1 folder (the same folder that has sub-folders called Backups, BitmapEditor, Cache and PCFx).

The data in that file should tell us what is going wrong with the CPU detection.

Gerry

[dpt]

XaraDrawLog.txt:

Processor brand : "AMD Phenom(tm) 9950 Quad-Core Processor"
Multi-threading supported : 1
Logical processors : 4
Is AMD : 0
Cores per processor : 1
APIC_ID32 supported: 0
ID shift : 2
Old affinity mask : 0000000f
APIC_ID : 00
APIC_ID : 01
APIC_ID : 02
APIC_ID : 03
New affinity mask : 00000001
Processor count : 1

I can go into the Task Manager and force the process to have an affinity of <All Processors> but that doesn't seem to make a difference - I can't get Xara to consume more than 25% CPU.

Regards,
Dave