Excruciating slow performance in ArcGIS Pro

[RemoteSenses]

I have been trying to transition to Pro for over a year now but keep finding myself going back to ArcMap because of excruciatingly slow performance in Pro. I believe the problem lies with my graphics drivers but I have been unable to actually get any support on this. 

I have dual monitors at my desk and whenever I run Pro on these monitors, performance goes to almost ZERO. Everything hangs. Opening attribute table. Opening symbology. Selecting features. Geoprocessing tasks take minutes instead of seconds. 

• Windows 10
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.21 GHz
• 64 GB RAM

I believe this has something to do with my graphics setup, but I just have no idea how to handle this. 

• Display 1: Intel UHD Graphics (Internal)
• Display 2: Intel UHD Graphics (Internal)
• Display 3: Quadro P3200 (Integrated)

I think my external monitors are using the internal graphics card which is obviously much worse than the Quadro P3200. The monitors are connected to a Dell WD19DCS docking station ($400 docking station) and then to my laptop via dual thunderbolt connection. I keep the laptop lid closed and work from the dual monitors. Drivers are all up to date for all graphics cards and CPU.

If I disconnect from my external monitors and docking station and work from the laptop screen only, performance goes right back to normal with no issues at all.

Does anyone have any ideas? 

[BillFox]

Hi RemoteSenses,

There are lots of potential factors here, for starters, do you have a second comparable workstation you can try doing the same chores?

[HannesZiegler]

Not my area of expertise, but I happen to have a WD19TBS docking station. It appears the WD19DCS that you are using does not use Thunderbolt, and it is not capable of direct GPU output? Does it use DisplayLink (check you system tray and/or programs) as an intermediary? If so that'd be my primary suspect.

https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Mobile-Workstations/Precision-7510-not-utilizing-NVIDIA-GPU...

[RemoteSenses]

This dock was recommended to me - I even researched it and could've sworn it was using Thunderbolt. Maybe I mixed that up with the USB-C connection or something because I do see it says DisplayLink in the link you sent me.

Would you recommend the TBS over the DCS? I believe I went w/ the DCS because my laptop required 210W for power. 

[HannesZiegler]

Yea it's possible you got confused because Thunderbolt and USB-C share the same connector style, and I don't think the distinction is explained well enough in most places.

I haven't had many issues with the TBS, here's two I've had:

- Sometimes it annoyingly refuses to pick up my displays if I've put my laptop to sleep for a while - until I cut power to the TBS and start it up again after waiting 15 seconds

- If I plug it into my desktop after desktop has already booted I will have to reboot for TBS to pick up the displays.. I have to always make sure the thunderbolt cable is plugged into the desktop before I turn it on. Kind of annoying.

Other than that TBS seems like a good choice, I haven't noticed any performance issues or compression. If you can return the CBS, the TBS oddly seems to be the exact same price. You will need to make sure your laptop (and anything else you might dock to it) supports Thunderbolt first though, otherwise TBS won't be appropriate for it.

[jcarlson]

This topic comes up pretty regularly. If you haven't seen it already, you can check this article, which covers all the usual suspects for slow performance.

Troubleshooting Performance Issues in ArcGIS Pro - Esri Community

For your case, however, I would agree that this sounds like an issue with your display / graphics settings.

Are you, by any chance, having elements from Pro on all your displays? Like a floating panel on Display 1, a map panel on Display 3, something like that? This isn't a Pro issue, but having a single application span separate display cards can make your machine work a lot harder to coordinate things across video cards.

Open up your Task Manager. Do you see Windows Display Manager in there, eating up a bunch of CPU?

[RhettZufelt]

Not sure about that model of dock station, but I have seen Dell dock stations that throttle the CPU down to 5% when connected as it doesn't detect external power through the dock.

It DOES charge it, so external power is there, but doesn't "recognize" it in the BIOS or somewhere.

You can test this by connecting to the dock station, BUT, plug the power supply directly into the laptop itself.

If this is the cause, you will see the performance increase.

R_

[RemoteSenses]

Plan to probably try a new docking station. 

In the meantime I went into BIOS and disabled integrated graphics switching so the NVIDIA card is being used at all times. There is some compression issues but I can deal w/ it as performance has really improved a ton. 

[JeremyWright]

Docking stations are fun.

From my experience, sometimes only certain USB-C ports on laptops will successfully use thunderbolt to display, so trying a different USB-C port might help in this case.

additionally, some laptops will only use integrated GPU when connected to docking station if the laptop is closed, which is another fun discovery.

SEMI-PROTIP: using the GPU activity in the Performance tab of Task Manager will help you figure out which GPU is being used when you have low performance.