Prime 3.0 beta sluggish?

MikeMcDermott · ‎Mar 18, 2013

Here is the first worksheet I've tried in Prime. Actually, it's only part of a conversion from MC14. I find Prime too slow to do anything. I have XP64 w/ quad core processors and 8G of RAM. I'm using Prime 32 bit, because I had a problem with the 64bit install, but I did install the 2 microsoft things that were in the instructions.

Is this slow for anyone else?

Ninetrees · ‎Mar 18, 2013

Oh, way slow.

Windows 7 Pro x64 Quad-core Intel i7-2620M @ 2.7/3.4 GHz, 8 GB

I converted a 9-page worksheet from M15 M010...

1. I wondered what was "happening"...the conversion dialog said "Processing", but there was no other note of activity, and it took long enough that I thought that it was stalled...some progress indication might be useful.

2. When the conversion finished, I tried to run the converted worksheet. That took a long...long while (didn't think to clock it). After a while, say, 30 s or so, I clicked on M'. Got the "Not responding" message, and tried to close M'. Wouldn't close. One thing led to another, and by the time I was done making up my mind to activate the Task Manager to kill M', it came back with the worksheet visible.

3. Apparently, after running the converter once, I could not run it again until I restarted M'.

3a. After closing M', I found the converter dialog running in the background, so I guess that it is a different process, and the reason that I could not "rerun" it is because it was already running, though wouldn't pop to the front so that I'd know that.

4. Restarted M'. Tried to open converted worksheet. After 10 s (0:10), the page display changed to a fine grid. After 2:00, the worksheet displayed, but M' would not interact. @ 2:10, I could click on the page and get an edit cursor. On the last load, after a fresh start of MP3, it was 2:17 before I could get the cursor in a text field. In M15, it is about 0:01!!

5. <snip>

6. The black box (image supplied to PTC)...just appeared, and stayed on top of everything else until some time had passed and MP3 was stable again. I now have seen them several times, and they seem to appear when an intermediate M' menu is attempting to display, but M' is too busy to complete the process.

Ninetrees · ‎Mar 20, 2013

Has anyone compared the speed of a new doc with the speed of a converted doc? I have been just trying to convert M15 docs because that is easier than typing in a large amount of material, but I wonder if that is contributing to the sluggishness of M'3. Also, Though it takes over 2 minutes to load a 14 page doc in M'3 (about 1 s in M15), once the doc is loaded and ready, it seems that I can move through it at a reasonable pace, and I don't see much of a hesitation when I modify data. I have not compared its speed of calculation with M15.

~R~

jkucan · ‎Mar 20, 2013

We have seen that Math Formatting impact the performance. All converted documents have Math Formatting set (since Mathcad 15.0 uses Times New Roman as default). Resetting the Math Formatting to default (click in the worksheet, select Math Formatting, Clear Formatting) should help. Let us know whether this works. We are working on fixing the problem.

MikeMcDermott · ‎Mar 20, 2013

I opened the document that I created the other day, and found that math formatting was already grayed out. For some reason, it seems to be faster today. So then I tried to open a converted document. I was able to type this in the time that it took to open. I also got a popup saying "this action cannot be completed because..." oops the message dissipeared before I could type any more.

I also opened a converted document, and the "clear format" box is grayed out on this one too. It also seems to be a lot faster than yesterday. I don't know what the differerce is.

M' Prime 3 seems to take a long time to invoke, and it is also very slow at opening documents, but my experience today is that the speed is reasonable after the document is finally open.

MikeMcDermott · ‎Mar 20, 2013

I tried agian. It's a server busy message that says Mathcad Prime3.0 is not responding.... Choose "switch to" and (the rest of the message is covered up by the buttons at the bottom of the pop-up gui.)

MikeMcDermott · ‎Mar 20, 2013

I had Prime open for some time (2 simple documents open with symbolic calculations), and when I went to shut it down at the end of the day, it's back to being too sluggish to be useful again.

Ninetrees · ‎Mar 22, 2013

There are two (2) reset format buttons: One, next to the paint bucket while the Math Formatting tab is active, resets math equation formatting. The other looks like a chalk board eraser? and reset /results/ formatting.

I reset all the math, and it really sped up opening the file. A file that opens in M15 in 1 second (0:01), and used to open in MP3A in 2 minutes 10 seconds (2:10), now opens in 1:50.

~R~

Ninetrees · ‎Mar 21, 2013

I opened the document that I created the other day, and found that math formatting was already grayed out.I nonetheless changed all the math regions to default and all reset all text to the default. The results were worse, though I can't say without further testing that they are repeatable.

14 page mixed text, plots, calcs from M15.

Prior stats: Fine grid displayed @ 00:10, doc displayed @ ~02:00, cursor @ ~02:10

New stats: Fine grid displayed @ 00:10, doc displayed @ ~01:30, cursor @ ~01:57

The server busy and "not responding" messages were reported in detail in V2. If M' is left to its own devices until it completes, it is apparently OK.

During this test run, coincidentally? one of my intranet WiFi devices was interrupted in its chatting with the computer loading the M' doc.

~R~

edit 2013.03.23: Corrected new stats times reported above. Wondered if clearing post-conversion annotations would speed things up, Not.

New stats: Fine grid displayed @ 00:10, doc displayed @ ~01:37, cursor @ ~01:47

I note that repeated runs like this can show quite a variation in times, so I don't consider 1:47 to be much different from 1:57.

~R~

MikeMcDermott · ‎Apr 02, 2013

I converted a document we typically create in V14. It takes 8 seconds to load in V14, and in Prime 3.0, after removing formatting, it takes 90 seconds, so I think it's appropriate to expect that Prime will become 10x faster at loading documents than it is now. It took prime about 50 seconds to close the drop down GUI that showed the file I clicked on to open.

I'm also finding that the sheet doesn't calculate, so I have to start digging into why that is.