Terminal: Extremely sluggish behavior when in full screen on a 4K monitor

[basavyr]

Environment

Windows build number:
Platform      Version               VersionString
Win32NT     10.0.18362.0        Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.18362.0
Windows Terminal version: Version: 0.6.2951.0

Steps to reproduce

Make the Windows Terminal go full-screen on a 4K monitor.

Expected behavior

Fast and responsive (like it performs in non-full screen mode).

Actual behavior

Super slow and sluggish behavior. There is at least a 2s delay for typing and using ls for example will result in a slow animation for listing the content in a directory. The Terminal is pretty much unusable if I go full-screen

I have a laptop with a 1080p display and I also have an external monitor connected via mini-display port. Monitor is 4K native 60 Hz, and it works without any issues. My laptop has also a dedicated GPU (nVidia GTX850m with the latest drivers). All other apps (i.e. Spotify, Microsoft Edge, Word etc) perform just fine when in full-screen on this 4K display. However, the Windows Terminal performs super slow when I go full screen on the monitor.
Terminal performs fine when I put it in full-screen on the laptop's main display.

[skyline75489]

Oh 4K display. That's probably where #778 come in handy. I've never tried Windows Terminal on 4K display yet.

[basavyr]

Thank you for responding to this :)
Regarding the #778 issue, I have some trouble understanding what do I have to change. I've only tried turning off acrylic, but that didn't help at all.

[miniksa]

Do you know how to get a WPR trace of it? @skyline75489 might be able to help you get one. It would be interesting to see if it's something we're doing or outside our control (and we can get it into the right team's hands.)

[basavyr]

@miniksa I got one WPR trace. Never tried it before, but I checked the documentation on Microsoft's website and I think I've managed to record the performance of this app. I hope it helps: I only had Windows Terminal as the running app on my desktop. I did put it in full screen mode and I start to type a bit inside the terminal, after that I just stopped the performance analyzer.

Trace file can be found here:
Firefox Send link
Please let me know if everything is ok!
Cheers :)

Btw, Firefox Send keeps the file available to download only for 7 days, so let me know if you can't access the file.

[ashao]

Just to an interesting symptom to this conversation as someone who's also using a 4K monitor hooked up to a laptop:
If I split the panes, the response noticeably improves. Splitting into 4 equal panes gives me the same (fast) response as being on my native laptop display.

[Jewsh-S]

I wanted to put a confirmation on this and I believe it is tied to 778. This isn't just 4k, but general size of the app window. If I make the app very very small, I get some what decent performance, but the bigger I make the app, the the worse the performance gets. At 4k full screen, I get about 1.5 second of lag after I press a key until it actually outputs to the app window. My first thought was that this might be my PC, because I normally force my laptop to disable the high performance GPU. However, i force enabled my high performance GPU and the performance stayed the exact same. This is definitely a drawing issue that makes the app almost unusable as the number of pixels that the terminal is using increases.

[florianheinemann]

This isn't just 4k, but general size of the app window. If I make the app very very small, I get some what decent performance, but the bigger I make the app, the the worse the performance gets. At 4k full screen, I get about 1.5 second of lag after I press a key until it actually outputs to the app window.

I have the exact same observation. Performance gets exponentially worse with every bit I increase the size of the window. On 4k it is basically unusable

[miniksa]

@DHowett-MSFT, this is another one we're not going to be able to land.

[AH-Merii]

I still have the exact same issue after updating to the latest version 0.11.1121.0 .

When running the terminal in full-screen on a 4k monitor, typing becomes sluggish. Sluggishness is directly proportional to window size, as window size increases so does the sluggishness.

Toggling acrylic off seems to improve the performance but not by much. Note: this is not an issue on when using the legacy cmd/powershell terminal.

[DHowett-MSFT]

Thanks for the corroborating report. This should be resolved when #5345 is in a released build.

[basavyr]

Awesome! Great job!

[msftbot[bot]]

:tada:This issue was addressed in #5345, which has now been successfully released as Windows Terminal Release Candidate v0.11.1251.0 (1.0rc1).:tada:

Handy links:

• Release Notes
• Store Download

[AH-Merii]

Thanks for the corroborating report. This should be resolved when #5345 is in a released build.

Hey, I just downloaded the new version, which was supposed to address this issue, I just wanted to report that I am still encountering the same problem regarding the sluggish typing experience. Unfortunately, all the same observations that I mentioned in my above comment still apply.

[DHowett-MSFT]

Reopening this one, but moving out of the 1.0 milestone. Sorry about that!

[DHowett-MSFT]

@basavyr does it work better for you?

[basavyr]

Hey there @DHowett-MSFT. Thank you for still continuing to work on this issue which I've encountered a while back.
Unfortunately, I can't provide any feedback, as for the last couple of months, I've switched entirely to _macOS_. As a result, I have no more Windows devices, so I am not able to test that.
I hope others can give feedback on this issue.

Best regards!

[skyline75489]

So I've finally got a 4K moniter and I still can not reproduce this. I've tried 100% and 200% scale. The performance is not very so bad to me. I don't feel there's significant difference in performance between 4K and 1080p. I wonder if there's something that's missing. Is it the graphic card of something? I'm using RX570 + Dell P2715Q.

[AH-Merii]

So I've finally got a 4K moniter and I still can not reproduce this. I've tried 100% and 200% scale. The performance is not very so bad to me. I don't feel there's significant difference in performance between 4K and 1080p. I wonder if there's something that's missing. Is it the graphic card of something? I'm using RX570 + Dell P2715Q.

I have noticed a significant improvement after the update. However, the problem persists when activating acrylic mode. I don't think it's a problem with the graphics card because when I use powershell with decreased opacity it's performance remains the same.

TLDR:

• Performance has significantly improved however it can still be improved further to be on par with CMD/Powershell.
• Problem still persists when using Acrylic mode.

[DHowett]

Those of you who _are_ still seeing this problem WITH ACRYLIC OFF

What software are you using inside Terminal? Tmux? Screen? WSL? PowerShell? Anything?

[AH-Merii]

Sorry for not being specific enough but it's really odd. I tried using it with WSL, CMD, & Powershell, all their performance is comparable with each other, their performance is acceptable and much better than before.However, I am sure that performance slows down as I use it, I will try and test it extensively over the weekend, with acrylic off, so that I can reliably reproduce the issue.

[ashao]

The performance on my machine is great after the update to v1.0.1401.0. Both the native Powershell and Powershell within Windows Terminal (with and without Acrylic.) have the same responsiveness

This is on a Dell Precision M5510 with a Quadro M1000M.

[BaconTentacles]

Those of you who _are_ still seeing this problem WITH ACRYLIC OFF

What software are you using inside Terminal? Tmux? Screen? WSL? PowerShell? Anything?

Anything and everything. PowerShell 5, PowerShell 7, Git Bash, cmd.exe, you name it. Version 1.0.1401.0

Lenovo Legion Y740-15IRHg - nVidia GeForce RTX 2060 - 1080p laptop monitor. Window is very slow to come up, and typing is absolutely painful. It's basically unusable in this state, which is a shame, because I love it on my work PC (Dell Precision 5530).

EDIT - I take that back. PC was exhibiting some strange behavior all around, so I rebooted. Now it's running along fine. Weeeeeird. The RTX does do some strange things with certain apps (can't use Snagit, because it tries to use max 4k resolution and then scale down do 1080p, which works for Skyrim, but not so much for Snagit).

So...false alarm.