Slow Logos 4

Like many others, I have been annoyed with the speed (or lack
thereof) at which Logos 4 has run on my computer over the last week.
I'm ok with trying to re-learn how to use the program, but I'm not ok
with just how much slower the program runs. Yes, it is much faster when
doing an entire library search, but in Logos 3, I just didn't do a ton
of entire library searches--and my searches in collections (or Topic
Browser or Reference Browser) weren't that much slower than v4. Anyway,
I am really not meaning to be negative, but am looking for some
guidance. It appears that for some people, Logos 4 runs fine, and
wondered if there is something I can do to speed it up?

My system is an Acer Extensa 5430 laptop, with an AMD Athlon X2 dual
core processor running at 1.9 GHz (both cores together). Windows says I have 2
GB of RAM, though DirectX Diagnostics reports it at 1790 MB (I'm
assuming that means some of the RAM is being used as video memory). The
video card is an integrated Radeon HD3200. I'm running Vista Business
with all updates installed. The hard drive is 102 GB with 35.8 GB free
(5400 RPM, single partition, defragmented after install and indexing
and a couple times since just to make sure). AVG Free is also running,
though I have added the Logos4 folder to the exclusions list. All
resources have been downloaded, indexing is complete, and I have installed the SR's as they come out. Looking at the Task Manager with
Logos 4 running, it appears that Logos is the only thing that is really
using any resources--and that is mostly lots of CPU cycles.

None of the other programs I run are as sluggish as Logos 4. If
there is something within my setup that can be changed to fix the
problem, I'd be happy to do it (outside of upgrading the computer). If it's
something inherent to the program and can be fixed soon, I'll try to
wait it out, otherwise I may just try to get a refund and come back to
the program in a couple years when I'm able to get a faster computer.
Again, I don't mean to complain or be negative--I love my Logos
software (and rely heavily upon it)--but at the moment it is not
responsive enough for me to use all the time. Any help you can offer
would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Comments

TCBlack

It sounds like you've done what you should at this point. A small amount of your slow down could be the harddrive, 5400 is slow, but standard for Laptops.

From the sound of it, everything else should be able to handle L4 fairly well. The only possible concern would be the video card, but with 256MB dedicated, it's probably quite capable of handling the screen draws.

That said, Logos was designed for computers around 2yrs old and newer. Mine is beyond that and in some respects similar to your own. (AMD X2 +3800, 4GB RAM.) The ram on mine is higher and it has made a difference I think.

Still I'm not sure why L4 is sluggish for you. I know I'm not helping with tips and tricks here, just wanted to share my opinion on your hardware, and give you something to compare to. Perhaps someone else will be able to provide something you can use.

Chris Elford

I agree pretty much with Thomas, although I think 2mb of RAM is probably a bit light with shared video. I have 4mb and it runs well almost all the time.

You could also make sure your video drivers are up to date. Regular Windows updates don't do that. They are usually optional, so if you depend on automatic they may not be. Also check the Acer website for drivers.

Did you try shutting off Internet? Some have found that really helps: Downside you have to remember to update manually or turn it on from time to time and run Update Now.

Chris

Jeffrey S Gordon

I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet, but I notice that my notebook (Lenovo, 1.8Ghz duo 4GB XP) is very slow when rendering "real time" menus (such as opening the Library), whereas it's pretty much fine for normal browsing of open books, etc. It's a very pronounced difference, particularly typing characters or moving the mouse (I have to be very accurate to actually move the mouse to hit something). It must be whatever is rendering the "fly-out" menus, little pictures of books, etc. Is that likely to be a graphic card issue?

Jeffrey S Gordon

By the way, I have an 8GB Quad-core I7 notebook on order. Will that be fast enough? Stay tuned...

Mark Smith

My system is an Acer Extensa 5430 laptop, with an AMD Athlon X2 dual
core processor running at 1.9 GHz (both cores together). Windows says I have 2
GB of RAM, though DirectX Diagnostics reports it at 1790 MB (I'm
assuming that means some of the RAM is being used as video memory)

I added 2GB of RAM to my laptop during the beta testing period. I have not struggled with slowness in 4.0 as much since. I don't know if that is because of additional RAM or because of the optimizations Logos did throughout the beta period. Logos did make real improvements in search speed during the beta period for less than whole library searches, which was a concern. My search times dropped ten-fold from early beta to late beta for one Bible only searches. It is still NOT as fast as in 3.0 but it is certainly acceptable.

I have noticed that I seem to routinely be using between 2.4 and 2.7 GB of physical RAM according to the Vista Performance Monitor with Logos 4 open. If I had only 2 GB of RAM or less then Vista would be using space on my HD for virtual memory which would slow down my system.

You might consider adding at least 1 GB of RAM to your computer. I can't guarantee it would help, but I wouldn't be surprised if you are using virtual memory on the same HD that Logos 4 is on for many operations, thereby slowing things down.

TCBlack

By the way, I have an 8GB Quad-core I7 notebook on order. Will that be fast enough? Stay tuned...

I can't wait to hear the comparison. And not to beat a dead horse - but you'll find Win7 much more responsive than Vista.

Jon

By the way, I have an 8GB Quad-core I7 notebook on order. Will that be fast enough? Stay tuned...

Definitely, so long as you stay plugged into a wall [:D]

Rev. D.

Rick, thanks for asking the question. I have a new desktop with 4 gb of RAM and a 640 GB hard drive. Unfortunately, Logos 4 runs really slow almost to the point that I, too, thought I'd made a mistake in the setup. While I understand all of the comments posted throughout the various blogs concerning this issue, hardware cannot be the only explaination. None of my other programs run as slow as Logos 4. I do hope that Logos is reading the various user concerns and is pro-active in finding a solution. From what I've seen thus far, I truly do believe this is the case. I'm hoping for future updates quickly. Have a blessed day!

Christina

Robert Pavich

Rev,

that sounds like it should be fine...see the specs in my sig...mine runs like a champ...

When you say "slow to the point of made a mistake" what operations are you performing that are like that?

be specific?

John Duffy

I too find that Logos 4 is really slow. I've saved a few layouts, for different Bible passages that I'm working on, and with no searches or lookups being displayed by default on each layout (i.e. no passage being looked up for commentaries, cross-references, biblical people etc.), it takes one layout 5-8 seconds to change and another 15-20 seconds to change. This is sloooow, quite apart from lookup or search speed. But switching to the home page is virtually instant in comparison, taking about 1s to scroll up or down. And 3s or more to switch to reading mode (F11) is slow too, but is longer at 4-5s if I have Logos 4 maximised while it re-sizes up and down etc.

I'm using a less than two year old Dell Vostro 1710 laptop with Intel dual core T5870 @ 2.00 GHz, with 3Gb RAM, integrated Intel 965 graphics, 5400rpm 160GB HD with 40% free, recently defraged, and nothing else above a few percent in task manager when it is changing layouts, while Logos 4 stays up at 50% for the duration while it's changing layout. Shame it doesn't use both cores. I've also shutdown PC Tools' Spyware Doctor which has made no difference. And it stopped indexing several days ago. Regardless of the specs, Logos 3 was faster to use, apart from searching the whole library. Logos 4 is really great, but it tends to take a bit of the enthusiasm out of Bible study for me, and I have to be in a pretty laid back mood to not get a little frustrated with it sometimes. I also use some fast free software at the same time, for looking up passages.

Lynden O. Williams

I've also shutdown PC Tools' Spyware Doctor which has made no difference. And it stopped indexing several days ago. Regardless of the specs, Logos 3 was faster to use, apart from searching the whole library. Logos 4 is really great, but it tends to take a bit of the enthusiasm out of Bible study for me, and I have to be in a pretty laid back mood to not get a little frustrated with it sometimes. I also use some fast free software at the same time, for looking up passages.

"Free software"? Which ones. Right away I raise a red flag. Are you certain it is not killing your bandwidth and as a result your CPU sending and receiving info based on what you are doing?

It took my machine about 15-20 seconds to pull up this layout. Sounds like an average amount of time to me. If you need it to go faster, then invest in a digital harddrive. If you do, remeber to put on your seat belt, before turning on the computer.

Rich DeRuiter

I'm using a less than two year old Dell Vostro 1710 laptop with Intel dual core T5870 @ 2.00 GHz, with 3Gb RAM, integrated Intel 965 graphics,

Just making an observation: as I have been reading various posts about Logos4 being slow, it's either because they are running Logos for windows on a Mac, or because the user has a system with integrated video. While some systems with integrated video seem to work well, it seems like the ones having problems with speed in L4 have integrated video.

Is anyone having problems with Logos speed who is not running L4 on a Mac, nor with integrated video?

Integrated video puts video chips on the motherboard and lets the CPU and onboard RAM process video calls. Video cards (AKA 'dedicated video') with their own video processors and their own RAM seem to do much better with Logos4.

Anyway, I'm just testing a theory here.

Bob Pritchett

We are trying to read all the forum posts -- there's just so many it's hard to keep up while also trying to do the things we're inspired to do after reading the earlier forum posts. :-)

I'm sorry Logos 4 is slow for many of you.

There's some small hope in optimization, which we continue to work on. Sometimes we find a big win. (Merging indexes will take almost half the time in an upcoming release!)

We've also gotten some reports of interference from third-party applications, which we'll continue to observe and hopefully identify.

We made a conscious choice to design for the future, not the past. We know that not everyone is computing in the future yet, :-), but we expect you all will eventually. My 1986 Bible search software, written for MS-DOS, still runs. And it's blazing fast. But it doesn't generate a Passage Guide, or do other cool things.

Everyone has a different opinion about where to make the trade-off; if it runs slow for you, we jumped ahead too soon. If it runs fast for you, then what were we waiting for?

The big decision we made that's hard to undo is choosing .NET with WPF. This is Microsoft's brand new platform for the future, and it basically involves loading a system within a system on your computer. The program is compiled to a special assembly language that's then re-compiled to your chip at runtime, there is a whole set of system-level libraries running on top of Windows, and there's a whole display system running on top of the Win32 framework on your system. It's all a bit bulky, but it's the future. And it has lots of side benefits, ranging from easier porting of code to Mac, the web, etc. to easier coding of complicated features. The big negative is memory use -- you're essentially loading a second operating system/platform into memory.

We chose this four years ago, and it's a decision we can't go back on. The good news is, Microsoft's not going back on it either: they're using it in more and more of their own core systems. And the core platform even has buy-in from the open source community, with things like the Mono Project.

I know that not everyone can afford to stay on the latest-and-greatest hardware. That's why we made a conscious choice to keep Logos 3.0 running side-by-side. But we decided long ago that there are plenty of Bible software applications that stick with old code and run great on old machines; we're going to keep blazing the trail to the future.

In 1995 we had a lot of complaints about our decision to release on CD-ROM's, when many people still had only floppy drives. We took a lot of complaints about Libroinx DLS performance in 2001 when it first shipped. (It was worse, for more people, than Logos 4.) But those complaints went away as people upgraded, and then they seemed pretty happy about the functionality we were able to deliver.

Computers are cheaper than ever, and even at $400 you can find more than enough power for Logos 4. (More memory can be a huge help, too, and it costs even less.) I know everyone can't afford to upgrade now, and I'm sensitive to that. But our holding Logos 4 another six months wouldn't make it any faster. If you continue to use Logos 3, and then switch to Logos 4 when you next upgrade your system, you won't have any worse an experience. And I think you'll appreciate then all the cool functionality in Logos 4 -- most of which can only be delivered because we made the choices we did.

-- Bob

spitzerpl

most of which can only be delivered because we made the choices we did.

And I sincerely thank you for making those decisions.

We are trying to read all the forum posts -- there's just so many it's hard to keep up while also trying to do the things we're inspired to do after reading the earlier forum posts. :-)

Speaking seriously, are our off topic, joking posts slowing down or hampering your ability to get to genuine posts? I do not want to hamper your ability to read/address the genuine concerns of your customers.

Mark Smith

Bob,

There is no doubt that Logos 4 is running much faster on my computer than it did in even the middle stages of the Beta. You and the software team have done a good job trying to address the concerns. I can use Logos 4 right now without feeling like I've turned a Ferrari in for a VW Beetle. I'm sure greater optimization will occur. I do have 3.0 to fall back on when I feel I am going to need it.

I have more interest in features being added than speed at this point.

Thank you for the very complete explanation.

Rick Goettsche

Bob, thanks for taking the time to respond. I'll admit that I don't fully understand the intricacies of the architecture you described, but I understood was that it is complex, power intensive, but very powerful and flexible. I understand your desire to plan for the future--it makes good business sense (particularly if you hope to have long product cycles as you have in the past). My concern is in the fact that several of us have computers that, on paper, seem to meet the specs, yet we have found the performance of Logos 4 to be sluggish. Maybe our expectations are set too high (e.g. expecting a modern program to run as fast as a decade-old program). It doesn't sound like we'll see great gains in optimization, but maybe there is a conflict with other programs running on our computers which will unlock some speed. Either way, I'll give it a couple more weeks.

Related to this, will we continue to be able to get new resources for Logos 3 for a while? Since the church replaced my computer last year, I would expect that it will be another 3+ years before I get another one. If my computer is never able to run v4 at a decent speed, I just wondered if v3 will still actually be usable for me. If not, I suppose I'll have money to put towards other things.

Pastor Mick

Rick,

I have a Gateway laptop that is 2.0 Dual Core with 2GB of memory. After I upgraded to Logos 4 I was not happy with performance either. It is slower at office where network and Internet access is slower but at home it is faster when booting up and making that Internet conncetion. It has been four days now since upgrade and ecerything is faster now than after initial upgrade. I am not sure if the software is using cache in any special way that has enabled it to speed up but it has for me.

This isn't much help to your situation but just wanted to add info about my experience.

Thanks Mick

David Looney

Don't spend any money on hardware, it's Logos that's slow. I'm having the same kinds of frustrations you are and I have a top of the line $4500, 6 month old desktop. (i'm not kidding when i say it's top of the line, I've included a description at the bottom)

Like you Logos 4 is running very slow. When i have dozens of linked resources and searches up at once doesn't put a dent on my system resources and still it's slow. Even with just a bible and two commentaries. With Logos 3 i use to link my exegetical guides to about a dozen other resources and it was still faster than Logos 4 with a few linked resources. I really love the direction of Logos 4, and i remain amazed by this new version, but its performance needs to be addressed.

Bottom line... I really doubt it's hardware, don't spend your money. I would love to hear and test out other suggestions though.

*My Desktop: I have two 1.5tb drives (7200rpm) running at Raid 0, 12 gigs of DDR3 1600 ram, 3 GeForce 9600 512mb ddr3 video cards (not great, but much more than necessary for Logos) and a new Intel i7 all on a EVGA x58 Classified board running Win7 Ultimate 64.

Steve Sando

Hi Dave,

Yeah I'm having the same issue. Here's a question for you:

Do you have "System Protection" turn on for the drive that holds the Logos datafiles?

(On the start menu, right click on "Computer". Select properties. In the left menu click on "System Protection".)

Just a thought. I turned it off in the registry for just Logos and got a bit of an improvement.

This isn't a fix, it just helps until they get the issue fixed.

Steve

Scott Jacobsen

Just a simple suggestion for speed, especially for laptops, is to never, ever, leave a disk in the cd/dvd drive when you're not using it. It's easy to forget one in there, and it will slow your system down considerable even when it is not loading on auto-run.

Scott

Monty Bower

I'm running an i7-720QM, 4 GB ram, 500 GB 7200 HD, NVidia GT 230M 1 MB. I noticed the last update caused a few seconds slowdown in assembling the commentaries within the Passage Guide; it was almost instantaneous before the update.

The main difference I noticed in moving from my Dual-Core Pentium, 2 GB ram, 120GB 5400 HD was the time for indexing. I have the Platinum version and the first index took well over six hours. The last index took less than 2 hours to complete.

Needless to say, I believe you will be pleased with the speed of your new acquisition.

Peace,

Monty