# Solved: Lightroom sluggishness with Nvidia drivers



## borez (May 25, 2008)

Hi all,

Thought I might want to post this for future reference:

I was previously using a ATI X16'' card on LR 1.41, and everything worked beautifully. 

I upgraded my card to a Nvidia 96''GT yesterday, (running Forceware 175.16) and realised that LR was running sluggishly with loading and refreshing images. As I did not install nView, that wasn't the case.

However, I realised that there was a setting that caused the issue (might need to show advanced settings):

3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings > Multi-display/mixed GPU Acceleration

By default it should be multiple display performance mode. Change this to a single display performance mode (I only have 1 screen anyway). 

This worked for me beautifully.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 25, 2008)

Great to hear Borez - thanks for posting back for other people who might have the same problem!


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## Macsen (May 25, 2008)

Wow!, it worked for me pretty well.. Now I seem to be able to move sliders to my heart content really faster.. nice catch borez. Thank you very much. Now I think I know why my laptop moved a lot faster than my desktop


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## godfatherrules (May 27, 2008)

*Nice catch!*

This worked excellently for me as well thanks so much. This will greatly speed up the workflow.


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## dhlewis (Jun 14, 2008)

thanks so much for this, I have struggled for 6 months  trying to understand what was causing the performance of my Dell 62' to degrade every time  I  started Lightroom.



borez said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Thought I might want to post this for future reference:
> 
> ...


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## Guy Scharf (Aug 8, 2008)

Thanks so much!  I just tried setting that option for my 76''GT and LR2 may be working better.   I'll find out for sure when I start doing some larger operations that would cause LR2 to hang.  Maybe it was just a video options problem; that would sure be nice!


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## ronnie948 (Aug 8, 2008)

It helps in CS3, DXO,Nikon capture and also all of my NIK programs., Sliders are much smoother and very easy to use now. I have GS84'' card and one monitor. Thank You for a great tip. You also need to post this on other forums. I would do it but I do not want to hijack your tip.
                                       Ronnie


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## KeithR (Aug 20, 2008)

borez said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Thought I might want to post this for future reference:
> 
> ...


 
Ok. The heat got to me today! Can't think straight! What was the path you took to get to the:
3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings > Multi-display/mixed GPU Acceleration


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## Guy Scharf (Aug 20, 2008)

KeithR;2''42 said:
			
		

> Ok. The heat got to me today! Can't think straight! What was the path you took to get to the:
> 3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings > Multi-display/mixed GPU Acceleration


Desktop > Properties > Settings > Advanced > GeForce xxxx tab > Start the NVidia Control Panel.

Whew!


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## Brad Snyder (Aug 20, 2008)

You get to that from the nVidia Control Panel.

One route: right click desktop > Properties > Settings > Advanced > (the tab with your adapter's name on it mine is 'GeForce FX ....') > Start nVidia Control Panel


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## KeithR (Aug 21, 2008)

Thank you Guy and Brad!
I reset it. Now all I need to do is find the time to install my copy of LR2(which finally came!)


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## borez (Sep 28, 2008)

Wow, I didn't know that so many people had the same problem!

Anyway, I've upgraded to the latest drivers, and everything runs even smooth-er now, all at stock settings. So I guess the old drivers were buggy in some sense.

Now just to hope that the next release of LR can utilize GPU acceleration like CS4..


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## DaHen (Sep 28, 2008)

Thanks borez,

Changing the Display Scheme to "Default Single Display" on my basic Radeon 96'' did make a difference with the performance of the sliders.
They are more responsive.


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## ernie (Sep 28, 2008)

But let me see if I am correct. If you do have two monitors, you don't want to change that setting---correct?


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## Brad Snyder (Sep 28, 2008)

Actually Ernie, I'm running three monitors on two cards, and I have the 

Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration:   set to 'Single display performance mode'

Can't hurt to try it, easy enough to change it back. As far as I can tell, you don't even have to reboot between changes.


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## rconn (Nov 27, 2008)

Many thanks for this bit of advice - twin screens and now LR2 is MUCH more responsive with this NVidia tweak.

Rod


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## Jerry Fenner (Jan 14, 2009)

borez said:


> Wow, I didn't know that so many people had the same problem!
> 
> Anyway, I've upgraded to the latest drivers, and everything runs even smooth-er now, all at stock settings. So I guess the old drivers were buggy in some sense.
> 
> Now just to hope that the next release of LR can utilize GPU acceleration like CS4..


 
Thank you - this post prompted me to look at the driver installed for my graphics card - it was a Windows default driver - I've installed the correct one from the manufacturer and suddenly when I move a slider in LR in Develop, the effects are seen instantly - a major issue I was having was a time lag before the effect of the slider was seen - so then I moved it a little more ... and then a little more ... and suddenly I'd changed things beyond all intent! Wasted so much time! Now the changes are shown in real time, immediately, no lag at all - brilliant! Still got an issue with the "loading" message but this is one thing sorted!

Jerry


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 15, 2009)

Jerry, that's brilliant news!


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## boy_lah (May 14, 2009)

*It worked for me too!*

Thanks to the chap who provided the tweak!  Worked for me brilliantly!!! :cheesy:

The jerkiness of LR2 has been driving me crazy for sometime now - esp since i love using the local adjustments with auto mask on.  As others had experienced, I would be making slide adjustments but the 'effect' would only show 2-3 secs AFTER i've already moved on to doing something else.  It was frustrating. :evil:

Originally i thought it was my slow 3 year old PC (Dell 915' Core Duo 3Ghz 2Gig Mem with Nvidia 79''GS card) and I was thinking of upgrading to a new PC.  But before I did I thought I'll try rebuilding my PC first and although it sped up other things, LR was still slow which was what got me searching around the net - and found this thread!

Anyways - many thanks - you've saved me from needing to upgrade and LR2 is much more responsive now!  I may even go add 2 more gigs of mem now...


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## Denis Pagé (May 14, 2009)

Nice to hear boy_lah!

But Windows 32 bits won't use more than 3GB of RAM. Windows 64 bits yes. So you know...


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## boy_lah (May 14, 2009)

Thanks - but since my old type DDR2 4''Mhz mem is so 'dated' it's cheap, no point getting 1gig.  Might as well get 2gig and go 'all the way'! ; ))  Only £25 for 2x1gig!!


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## Rastus (Sep 24, 2009)

Thanks for this post. It worked.
My nVidia 88''GT was/is a huge disappointment.

Even though I'm late, I'll add that if you want to apply these settings to _only_ Lr you can go to...
3D Settings &gt; Manage 3D Settings &gt; _Program Settings_ &gt; Add &gt; Navigate to & select your Lightroom.exe file &gt; Multi-display/mixed GPU Acceleration ~ Single display performance mode.

Thanks again,
Rastus


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## MarkNicholas (Sep 25, 2009)

[quote author=borez link=topic=2137.msg23851#msg23851 date=1222592862]
Wow, I didn't know that so many people had the same problem!

Anyway, I've upgraded to the latest drivers, and everything runs even smooth-er now, all at stock settings. So I guess the old drivers were buggy in some sense.

Now just to hope that the next release of LR can utilize GPU acceleration like CS4..
[/quote]

I am sure that many on the forum would want to ask you what steps you took to upgrade the to the latest drivers, but are shy to ask for fear of revealing their ignorance. Of course I am not one of them


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## MarkNicholas (Sep 26, 2009)

Ok I have done a little research on drivers for my Nvidia graphics card and the be frank it is a mess out there. The Nvidia site is less than useless and the HP site (which has my Nvidia card installed) is also less than helpful.

My NVidia card is GeForce 76'' GO (not the GT)
 and my lap top is HP Pavilion dv9''5tx Notebook PC. The latest driver on the HP site is dated 2''6 !!

If anyone can offer any help on latest drivers for my card It would be much appreciated.


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