v27 is out - check this post if you have a laptop.

[Max]

v27 is out and I ran into an issue myself on a new laptop, and it got me thinking about a few things:

1. Most laptops have 2 graphics cards
2. Most people probably set Alibre Design to high performance at some point in the past.
3. New versions of the software have different EXE locations, so setting your laptop card preference in the past won't affect new versions.
4. People may therefore start v27 and say "hey, this feels sluuuugish" - because their card is set incorrectly.

I am curious how many people will experience this after v27. We may investigate if there exists a programmatic solution to this, but in the meantime - watch this and try it and report back please:

 

[JamesMC]

I'm on a WIn 10 laptop, and updating to V27 didn't change the settings from V26.

 

[Max]

If I understand you correctly you are indicating there is no configuration for v27 exe but there remains one for v26.

This is not unexpected in retrospect since that setting is not set by us, at least at this time.

 

[Drutort]

Most laptops that will have an Nvidia or AMD gpu, also Intel. They have there driver software/app where you can manage this same performance settings by adding the app
It takes some digging around, sometimes you can install from the graphics manufacture, other times you have better luck from the laptop manufacturer.

But thank you for this, I have not seen it or used it in the windows 11 area, so learned something new.

 

[Max]

Many of the settings you refer to were once managed by Nvidia control panel, for example. However despite those settings still existing, nVidia control panel indicated the settings are now managed from Windows. It depends on what version of Windows you are using, but the newer ones seem to be taking over the role of dynamic card choice from the vendors.

For example in my laptop I set it in Nvidia control panel to no effect, predictably as a note in the software said it's now managed by Windows. I'm on the latest Windows 11.

My primary concern is not that the settings cannot eventually be found by users, but that the settings are specific to an executable that lives in a specific folder. A user will set the correct settings for the v26 executable living in the v26 install folder, but those do not carry over to the v27 executable living in the v27 folder. My theory is that people need to be messing with this every time they install a new version, but they likely will not because they have "done it before already" and the message to do it has been dismissed permanently in the user profile so they are not notified.

I'm just trying to validate or invalidate that theory.

 

[Ex Machina]

My maintenance ended earlier this year so I don't have v27, but on a laptop without a mux switch for the graphics card, setting Alibre to high performance (RTX3060) resulted in using the low performance (AMD APU) one. If I set it to low performance (AMD APU) it used the high performance one (RTX3060) and the diagnostics showed the appropriate amount of VRAM used on the high performance one too. I have mentioned this one the forum a couple of times but it seems that it wasn't solved or maybe it was something to do with my particular system.

Same behaviour on my wife's laptop ASUS ROG StrixG513IC.

Again, that was the case with v26.

 

[bolsover]

@Max
I was a little concerned on reading this - but everything fine. for info, I'm running v27 release on an 'optimus' laptop.
Optimus is the Nvidia solution that allows switching between the integrated (slow) intel GPU and the discrete (fast) Nvidia GPU.
Optimus is supposed to give better battery life using the integrated GPU for programs that don't need high performance graphics.
I have my system configured to use the Nvidia GPU for everything - unfortunatlely, that does not completely bypass the potential problems.

Full system topology:

OS: Win 11 Pro Version 22H2 (Note this is not sticktly supported by processor but no problems to date.)

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1535M v5 @ 2.90GHz
Ram: 64.0 GB

Integrated GPU: Intel HD Graphics P530

Dedicated GPU: Nvidia Quadro M5000M
Driver version: 528.79
Dedicated video memory: 8192Mb GDDR5
Total Available graphics mamory: 40903Mb

Keep up the excellent work.
David

 

[JamesMC]

If I understand you correctly you are indicating there is no configuration for v27 exe but there remains one for v26.

This is not unexpected in retrospect since that setting is not set by us, at least at this time.

I have my laptop set to use the graphics card exclusively for everything, and V27 didn't change that setting at all.
I'm not sure if Win10 can have configurations for exe's?
If it can I have never done that!

Ps: I should make my signature show Alibre version number and computer specs etc...

 

[Max]

I have my laptop set to use the graphics card exclusively for everything, and V27 didn't change that setting at all.
I'm not sure if Win10 can have configurations for exe's?
If it can I have never done that!

So the issue we are describing has nothing to do with v27 or even Alibre Design at all - it's that generally speaking to set any program to use Performance GPU mode, you have to select a specific EXE, and each Alibre Design release has a new EXE location - meaning generally people will need to be setting this Windows setting every time they install a new version.

Have you tried running the validation steps near the end of the video to make absolutely sure your current settings are in fact using your preferred GPU? It has been my experience that even when telling Windows to "use this GPU for everything" it often will not honor that request - I would be curious if yours is. Would be a good data point.

 

[JamesMC]

So the issue we are describing has nothing to do with v27 or even Alibre Design at all - it's that generally speaking to set any program to use Performance GPU mode, you have to select a specific EXE, and each Alibre Design release has a new EXE location - meaning generally people will need to be setting this Windows setting every time they install a new version.

Have you tried running the validation steps near the end of the video to make absolutely sure your current settings are in fact using your preferred GPU? It has been my experience that even when telling Windows to "use this GPU for everything" it often will not honor that request - I would be curious if yours is. Would be a good data point.

Yes, just checked that, the only one running is GPU0 which is the P3200, and waving things around in Alibre only uses GPU0.
Apparently Win10 has worked this time!
Yay Microsoft...

 

[HaroldL]

@Max , Didn't mean to hijack your message.

So the issue we are describing has nothing to do with v27 or even Alibre Design at all - it's that generally speaking to set any program to use Performance GPU mode, you have to select a specific EXE, and each Alibre Design release has a new EXE location - meaning generally people will need to be setting this Windows setting every time they install a new version.

I had to do the same thing on my desktop Windows 10 to remove v25 and add v27 to the list of Alibre apps running in high performance.
I now have both v26 and v27 set to high performance.



And here's the Knowledge Base article on the subject.

Articles

help.alibre.com

 

[JimCad]

Thanks. I had no idea those settings existed!
Jim

 

[Cator]

Hi, with my laptop I had to both reset the graphics card and open the pre-set extensions with this result you see...
Regards
Francesco

 

[Toybuilder]

Upgraded to v27 today. On my system, it is running on GPU 1 (NVIDIA Quadro P2000) without having any settings changes done this time.

OMG Chain Select in V27 is awesome.