Fancy Zones BIG Stuttering & Delays

[snakemoore]

Microsoft PowerToys version

All recent versions including v0.66.0

Installation method

PowerToys auto-update

Running as admin

Yes

Area(s) with issue?

FancyZones

Steps to reproduce

I have an Asus Zenbook Pro Duo UX582LR Spec:

• Core i9-10980HK CPU 8 x physical cores @ 2.4/3.1 Ghz
• 32GB RAM
• 1TB SSD
• Intel GPU for internal displays
• Intel driver version = 30.0.101.1218
• Nvidia Gforce RTX 3070 GPU for external HDMI port
• Nvidia driver version = 30.0.14.7186
• Monitor Setup A (Home) = Laptop displays + 1 x 43 inch 4K (HDMI via Nvidia GPU) + 1 x 24 inch 1080P (USBc Dock & displayport via Intel GPU)
• Monitor Setup B (Office) = Laptop Displays + Dual 43 inch 4K external displays 1 via Nvidia HDMI + 1 via USBc dock Intel GPU

Due to my large displays I have configured Fancyzones to have an 8x8 grid on each of my monitors.

✔️ Expected Behavior

Fancyzones grid displays quickly, smoothly and remains high performance at all times irrespective of monitor configuration.

❌ Actual Behavior

Very laggy. When I drag a window without using shift to invoke Fancy Zones... no issues. When I invoke Fancy Zones, the GPU usage (according to Task Manager) jumps to 100% on my intel GPU with my Nvidia GPU jumping also to perhaps 40%. Even if I hold the mouse still and dont drag the window, just the act of having the grid on screen forces 100% CPU and major stuttering.

Testing performed:

• reduce the size of the grids from 8x8 to say 3x1 - Zero change, remains slow and laggy @ 100% GPU Usage
• Disconnect all external displays - Zero change, remains slow and laggy @ 100% GPU usage
• Disconnect all displays on the Intel GPU ald leave only 1 x external 4K display vis Nvidia GPU - HUGE Improvement, not laggy. Nvidia GPU jumps up to between 10% & 30% usage while the grids are on screen.

I have used many other gridding tools in the past and not experienced any kind of GPU jump... I wonder if there is something which could be disabled in Fancyzones to force it to have much less demand on the GPU?

Other Software

No response

[snakemoore]

poking around further. It seems that if I turn off the feature within fancy zones called "Show zones on all monitors while dragging a window" intel GPU usage seems to peak at around 90% which means that its tolerable.... but even 90% seems super high to me.

[bergamin]

It's really slow now and sometimes it even doesn't snap in place even if the zone borders show up. I have to wait a few seconds for being able to drop. Beforehand, I could drop even before the layout rendered on screen and it would snap immediately.

At first, I blamed Windows because I updated it (I was on 1903, preventing me from updating PowerToys). Some other Windows functionalities became slow like even PrintScreen takes over a second to trigger (almost unusable), but then I've seen more people with this issue around here...

[monologconnor]

Agree. Also the activation of fancyzone's configuration panel is not responsive enough.

I always need to wait over 1-2s until the UI shows up, which is should be faster but currently pretty annoying if I want to change a layout

[salim97]

+1

[blowsie]

related #2692

[wardler-ah]

I notice this issue is prevalent in my vmware workstation environment, but works fine on desktop. I suspect that has something to do with the vm's gpu capabilities.

My vm is also win10 while desktop is win11.

[TheJoeFin]

Is this issue still relevant in v0.78? /needinfo

[harikrishnan606]

Issue is still there in v0.84.1

[jedcooper]

same issue with 0.86.0