Lightroom 13 and newer is slow because it no longer supports full graphic card acceleration

[Charles_Sng]

I updated Lightroom to version 13 and started encountering slow downs and display problems. I searched the forum and noticed many are facing these issues too. Then, I noticed that the version 13 has deactivated full graphic card acceleration by default and there is no way to reactivate it because the check boxes are blanked-out (only limited acceleration available). Updating my Nvidia driver does not help. Activating acceleration via Geforce Experience does nothing too. Please fix this bug ASAP! If you are facing the same issue, please share your experience too. 

[moved from bugs to discussions according to the community rules - Mod.]

[AxelMatt]

Is your system up-to-date? Do you have installed all recent updates and patches for the operating system and the device drivers, especially the graphic driver. Please make also sure that you have installed the Studio version and not the Game Ready version of your NVidia driver.

If you have buldin a CPU with an internal grpahic processor, try to disabling the processor internal graphic card. Or you're using more than one graphics card in Windows, your high-end card might not be set as the primary card. To disable the lesser of the two cards, use the Device Manager on Windows. In the Device Manager, right-click the card's name and choose Disable.

Please provide a copy of your 'System Info'. This can be get from the LrC Help > System Info menu item. There's a copy button in the System Info dialog. Press this button and paste the info into your next forum post.

[Charles_Sng]

Thanks for your advice. My system is up to date with all latest patches of Windows 10 and other system drivers. I only use Studio Drivers. No internal graphics card. I have been using Lightroom Classic 12.5 and below with full graphic acceleration on with no issue at all. The trouble only arrived when it is updated to 13 onward. Now, I have to content with occasional crashes during loading of app, occasional display glitches and slow performance in the Develop Module. I never had such issues before updating to version 13.

[Keith Reeder]

You need to tell us what GPU you're using...

As Axel has already asked you to do, go to:

LightRoom > Help > System info

and post the contents.

[Charles_Sng]

Hi, here are my PC specs: 

Intel i7-8700K - 32GB RAM - NVidia Geforce GTX 1060 6Gb - Windows 10 Home - LR-Classic 13.1 (recently downgraded to 13.0 but problem persists) - Photoshop 25.3.1

As mentioned, I update my system and Studio drivers regularly. This system works perfectly well in previous versions of Lightroom (12.5 and earlier) and problems only started after 13 - this update looks like a BIG downgrade to me. It is slowing down my work to a crawl: every click of the mouse takes longer; it crashes 50% of the time I started the app (I have to end the crashed app and start again); the exporting duration takes 3 times longer because it is no longer using my GPU to export (that check box is blanked out, Geforce Experience app claimed everything is optimised but Lightroom said limited acceleration only). It is really bad now.....

[AxelMatt]

Hi, here are my PC specs: 

By @Charles_Sng

Your PC specs are the one thing. what we need is the system info from Lightroom. 

Goto the menu item Help > System Info in Lightroom and paste all information from the dialog into your next forum post. There are a lot more infos about your environment available.

Hi, here are my PC specs: 

Intel i7-8700K - 32GB RAM - NVidia Geforce GTX 1060 6Gb - Windows 10 Home - LR-Classic 13.1 (recently downgraded to 13.0 but problem persists) - Photoshop 25.3.1

...

By @Charles_Sng

My system specs are similar to yours, exept the graphic card and the memory. I have 64Gb and a Geforce GTX 1050Ti (4GB). I don't have any problems. Lightroom is working smoothly.

What you can try do to is to reset the preferences of Lightroom Classic:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html

It's recommended to backup your preferences before you reset the preferences to the default settings: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/preference-file-and-other-file-locations.html

If this doesn't help I would suggest a complete and clean reinstallation.

Please follow the steps below:

• Backup all personal data, like templates, presets, catalog(s) etc.
• Uninstall everything cc including preferences,  https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/uninstall-remove-app.html
• Then uninstall the cc desktop app,  https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/help/uninstall-creative-cloud-desktop-app.html
• Clean your computer of cc files per http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html
• Restart your computer (don't skip this)
• Reinstall the cc desktop app,  https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/desktop-app.html
• Use the desktop app to install your cc programs/trials
• Restore your personal data.

If you're unable to install the cc desktop app at this stage, use an administrator account (solution 4 here,  https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/creative-cloud-missing-damaged.html)

[Charles_Sng · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

Just to update you all of what happened after my last post:

I downgraded LR 13.1 to 13.00 and was able to work with it for some time. It was slow and laggy sometimes and full video acceleration could not be activated, but at least it seldom crashes and I can still get my work done (slowly). About a month later, Nvidia latest studio driver was released and after updating that, almost everything goes back to normal - I was able to activate Full video acceleration once again! I took a gamble and updated LR to 13.1...... and it is working much better than before - Full video accleration is still working, and the app no longer crashes! It still lags from time to time especially after prolong usage of over 2 hours, but at least things are back to normal and I can resume my normal workflow!

I had just updated LR to 13.2 yesterday, and it seems that things are getting a little better - the app seems less laggy than 13.1, and so far there is no crash.

I deduced that something went wrong with LR or Nvidia video driver, and somehow the engineers managed to fix that it their latest releases. 

Thank you all for your help and advice here! 🙂