I just upgraded my computer and the benchmarks of the gpu said it, that it should be a performance raise of more then 100%. Also i upgraded my CPU which should be much better then the old one. I can see a bit less load in DSP. But what really makes ardour unusable for me in projects longer then 5 minutes is the extremely slow scrolling and zooming i get with a lot of regions and tracks. I hoped that upgrading to a better gpu would change that. But it did not change it at all.
Does anyone have suggestions what i could try to improve Ardours GUI performance? 
Ardour barely uses your GPU. Our GUI is entirely 2D, drawn with old-school vector drawing APIs, and does not need or benefit from modern GPU technology.
The slow GUI has nothing to do with hardware, and (nearly) everything to do with our poor design, unless you have some particularly special case.
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I thought faster computers could do unefficient work faster⌠
Are there any settings recommended? Or best practices? I noticed that combining regions seems to improve performance.
What helps me most is to make regions as large as possible.
Do you mean as long as possible or changing the track height?
As long as possible
HmâŚ
Not really how i hoped to work around this. 
Maybe in Ardour X folder tracks will help this problem a bit.
I have multi-hour projects with 1000s of regions that do get a bit slow. But a 5 minute project should have no problems.
Do you have lots of effects or VIs in the project?
Which CPU do you have? And how much RAM?
Also, are you on Linux or macOS?
If you are on Linux, what desktop environment are you using? I had atrocious performance after installing Ubuntu Studio on my 2019 think pad.
After switching from KDE Plasma to gnome or xfce, my life got much better.
16GB of RAM and a 5900xt ryzen cpu. Yes i do have lotâs of effects and instruments. But even in Sessions where i bounce almost all the tracks and delete the effects the graphics seem to be the problem. The displayed DSP load rarely goes beyond 20%.
The last project was ~80 Tracks and ~10 Busses. Some tracks have hundreds of regions, some just one.
I am running KDE Plasma. Hm, i could try another OS.
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Just try another windows manager (I use Mate desktop, no issues here).
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Another hint: are you on Wayland?
If so, try enabling the Use intermediate-surface to render canvas parameter option under Preferences â Apperance. If that doesnât help, try another option from the Graphics Acceleration group (note that Ardour must be restared after each change).
You may also want to check whether performance improves under an X11 session.
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Itâs probably the tracks and regions that are causing the slowdown rather than the length of the session. I havenât had projects with lots of tracks, but Ardour does slow down when I have a lot of regions. I usually end up breaking my projects into smaller ones.
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As @djamo said, try another window manager. I was asking for macOS, because, some ages ago, I also encountered very bad ardour graphics performance there. From what I read it is fixed (something with redrawing the entire screen), but I do not have a mac available anymore. Gnome and xfce solved the sluggish graphics for me. I am still struggling with sound issues, but will write another post about this.
That said, I still have two issues left. But I am writing new topics for those. Still gathering information.
When you buy a 4K monitor and use Ardour in full screen, it really slows down compared to 1920 x 1080. I always have at least a couple of hundred regions in the smallest projects I make. They build up quickly when you improvise trying to come up some music. I hope screen drawing gets optimized one day.
Iâm on Xubuntu 24.04 at the moment and have nVidia 1660, AMD 16 core Threadripper and 64 GB Ram, so no shortage of resources here.
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What code changes (I assume far-reaching) could hypothetically/ideally optimize Ardour GUI performance?
In other words, to improve and âsecureâ GUI performance for the future, what path(s) do you prefer? (This can include merely optimizing YTK, for example.)
-Just curious. 
Erojahn,
A computer built for âhigh performanceâ in the general computing world is not the same as a Pro-audio built computer. These are two completely different builds because a high performance workstation or gaming machine benefits from things a pro audio computer doesnât touch. Pro-audio machines are processing audio in real time so FSB throughput and RAM are more important than a high spec GPU.
CPUâs with a high clock speeds AND as much cache as possible (which acts like system memory or a buffer within the CPU) and faster RAM (the speed of the system memory in Mhz) will make far more of a difference than GPU upgrades and like Paul D. saysâŚGraphics performance with a high performance GPU, doesnât make any difference at all because no DAW running audio only even touches the graphic system of a PC. In fact all of the pro-audio computer I built have on-board Intel graphics for this exact reason.
There are far too many buzz words and phrases used in the computer industry when it comes to performance and most of them are based on specific factors or circumstances, not a general rule. One these phrases that get used a lot is âadding more RAM will speed up your computerâ. The truth is IF adding RAM to your somewhat modern computer did actually speed it up-- than you have bigger problems than âslowâ computer. If the computing is running slow and adding RAM helped, the issue is that the OS is utilizing all of the RAM and is now using the hard drive AS part of itâs RAM. On WIndows this is called Page File Memory on Linux and Unix itâs called Swap memory. In THIS specific case, the added RAM helps because now the OS doesnât have to use the hard drive as part of RAM. This is almost always a Windows PC thing, but in this case youâre treating the symptom not the source of the issue. Without getting into the details of this specific scenario, the OS needs helpâŚadding more memory in this case is just a bandage not a cure.
A pro-audio PC benefits from, 1) A motherboard that can support all of the following with high data throughput called Front Side Buss speeds or FSB. Thatâs the most important thing to start with a good foundation, then 2) CPU clock speed, sure but a CPU with lots of cache. 3) Lots of RAM with the highest clock speed (in Mhz) you can afford running in dual channel mode not single channel mode.
I personally think that the desktop environment does make a difference. The simpler the better. Ubuntu MATE using the older Gnome desktop environment seems to work great and can really look great to with some minor adjustments.
So if you had access to a $6000 HP workstation you got from your local CAD/CAM design firmâŚthis machine isnât going to necessarily be good for pro-audio without some mods.
-Soup
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