Hello,
I have been testing CorelDraw 2020 on my 2019 MacBook Pro 16" and noticed the performance is just abysmal compared to Illustrator/Photoshop. The option of using GPU acceleration is either broken or for some reason uses the integrated gpu. If that's the case then this is just ridiculous - basically this makes the software unusable for any serious work!
While testing I found that if I turn off the auto switching of GPU in my macOS preferences and basically force my machine to always use the Radeon Pro then there is a significant performance boost and both Draw and Photo Paint start to work as expected. My conclusion is that the option inside Draw/PhotoPaint to use GPU is either broken or not using the correct GPU at hand.
Considering this finding I want to know if there is any plan this issue to be addressed within version 2020 or not? If there is no such plan then I might start looking elsewhere for Adobe alternative.
Thanks!
Does your MacBookmuse AMD technology?
Yes sure, Apple uses AMD in all their laptops and desktops for discrete graphics.
Like I already mentioned - if I turn off the automatic switching of GPU and force MacOS to only use the AMD then both Draw and Photo Paint are super fast. This can only mean the use GPU option inside The Corel apps is not working or falsely is using the integrated Intel GPU.
Can you disable the integrated Intel on your mainboard?
Yes I can and that’s exactly my point - if I disable it and force the OS to use the AMD GPU then Corel apps fly.
But by doing this it only proves that Corel apps’ option to use GPU is not working.
i don’t want to force my system to always use the AMD GPU because it’s not meant this way and my battery will drain quick, more heat etc.
Also this means every time I open Corel I will also have to go manually and disable the integrated GPU.
bottom line is this is a Corel problem/bug and it should be fixed rather than forcing people to do workarounds.
I do not disagree with you, I only ask because we saw this issue in the X7 or X8 version on PC systems with on board and AMD installed video cards. Clearly Corel does not care about this issue as it's been known for several versions.
I'm from a different place, I constantly have CorelDRAW files that are hundreds of megabytes and even up to 1.8 gigabytes in memory. I run these on Intel PC desktops that cost well under $2,000 US so laptops and Mac systems of any kind are non starters for me.
Thanks for the clarification, and yes it seems like a known issue that's been around for a while. Not sure why Corel won't fix it since AMD is the only discrete GPU option on any Apple machine. Not to mention that Apple have dropped support in recent OS for nVidia eGPUs which means they are alienating their own Mac users.
First off Corel from version 12 through 2018 had no Mac users. Version 11 had a Mac version and like 2019 it was embarrassing.
I have no idea why they didn't research the AMD issues on the PC fixing them before developing a Mac version.
Just awful.
Agreed! Why bother get back to Mac only to release a broken software that only makes them look bad. As a long time fan and user of Corel I am sad to see them self inflict such damages especially since Adobe has pissed off so many users and instead of taking advantage they are just showing that Corel on Mac is not for serious pros. Very sad....