Questions regarding hardware acceleration

I'm not sure if this is applicable to you guys, but when my hardware acceleration is off and dynamic is on, whenever i draw a line it goes laggy.

Of course the solution is as simple as turning H.A. on but doesn't that increase battery consumption?

Also, is H.A. on by default or not?

I'm using a corei5 laptop

thanks for any help!

Welcome to CT and congrats on your 1st post!

Just a Q: When you say "dynamic" is that dUCS, or dynamic input ... or both?

Anyhow, an i5 should be "usable" with either HA on or off, if only doing 2D linework you should not need to have HA turned on. But there's more to it than that. The complexity of the drawing, the amount of RAM available, the actual graphics card, and certain settings in windows can all play a factor.

The dynamic input has other settings too, e.g. using standard windows controls or custom drawn by acad. This could be where the HA plays a role. Try some different settings for this. dUCS "shouldn't" have much to do with HA since it's mostly a CPU calc - unless the GPU is used when HA is turned on for figuring out which face the cursor is pointing to (don't rightfully know).

As for battery with HA on: That's a yes and no answer. When HA is turned on the graphics card (GPU) is used to calculate the display inside acad. On most laptops the GPU is detuned to conserve battery life, but automatically uptuned when it's in use (i.e. using much more power and producing heat). Although, it could also make the battery last longer if the CPU is using more power to do the same job. Generally speaking (I'd say) using HA "should" improve battery life if the GPU is a decent mobile type, it should calculate the graphics more efficiently than the CPU through software - that's why it's there.

That being said, most laptops even come with 2 GPU's, one a very simplistic low power unit, the other a high power high performance gaming/cad card. These laptops usually turn of the high power one when not in use (i.e. no OpenGL/Direct3d instructions from the program, or set to not be used for that program). So all I can say (from given info) is that you might find either situation happening (HA could cause poor battery life or better - depending on situation), all you can do to be sure is to test it (time how long it takes for the battery to go flat in either setting).

Remember CAD is considered a high-end computer task. That's why most entry level notebooks won't even be able to do it. It usually needs more RAM, better CPU and better GPU than reading emails - so don't expect battery to last as long as when you only have something like outlook open. And if you manually detune the laptop (some have automatic settings for while on power cable and another set for while on battery) you'll usually find a performance difference between the high performance and low power settings (meaning trying to save battery might mean sluggish working).

irneb gave a thorough reply, I'm going the other direction.... Is you command line docked, or floating?

Thanks for your replies.

@1 Haven't really tried using dUCS yet, seems like it's for 3D modelling. Regardless, I did some tests and it's definitely dynamic input causing lag.

I happened to come across this post (http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-2010-2011-2012-DWG/drawing-lines-quot-lag-quot-with-dynamic-input-turned-on/td-p/3018788) and I tried doing post#3, it did solve the problem. It seems like it turned aero off, to confirm this, I undid the uncheck and I switched to Windows 7 Basic instead. It seems aero was really partly to blame.

I forgot to include this in my first post - with the old settings (aero on, HA off), whenever i draw a point, it causes my graphics card driver to crash. Which is very odd because a point of all things caused the VC to crash. With all of those info, it's definitely the Video card that has a problem. I'm in the process of download a driver update to see if that works.

@2 Not sure if I got you right (I'm using 2012 at the moment btw, for learnign purposes), if you're referring to the difference between the 2012 and 13/14 command line, it seems the lag problem was independent of it because I tried the settings on both 2012 and 14.

Other specs:

Lenovo G470

Windows 7, 64-bit

4Gb RAM

core i5, 4 cores 2.40Ghz

AMD Radeon HD 6370M (1Gb Memory)

Windows index experience:

Processor: 6.9

RAM: 7.1

*Graphics (which happened to be the lowest): 4.5

Gaming graphics: 6.2

Primary hard disk: 5.9

Ahhh ... the Bling Factor! If in doubt ... no always ... turn off MS's fancy pretty shades. They just eat up CPU/GPU/RAM for no other reason than to "look good".

It seems your laptop is set to use the internal i5's Intel Graphics. On my HP Pavilion dv6 (i7 2.2GHz 2670QM, 4 cores Hyper Threaded to 8, 8GB Ram, AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1GB - 2 year old laptop) my XI varies depending on which card I'm manually turning on (Right-click in a blank spot on the desktop & choose "Configure Switch-able Graphics").

My XI with AMD card (High performance GPU):

CPU - 7.5, RAM - 7.6, Graphics 6.3, Gaming 6.3, Primary HD - 5.9.

With Intel (Power saving GPU): Then the Graphics & Gaming also goes down to 4.5 (others the same).

Wonder if the Intel Card (actually it's a portion of the CPU itself) is the issue. I know it's not recommended AT ALL for 3d stuff, perhaps it doesn't like the dyn inputs (i.e. crashing). You might get by with a driver update, but also check on ADesk's site about recommended drivers (sometimes the newest is bug riddled, so go with the latest tested).

BTW, during the XI test the fan went on with the graphics testing when on Radeon, as well as when testing the CPU. But when Intel, the fan only thrust its hot plasma out the side during the CPU test. Don't hold your hand there, it'll blister!