is it possible to have Nexus run smoother and be more responsive during high CPU load, such as rendering? I like the dock and it's options but when rendering on my work machine (render runs on low priority) it appears that most apps can run almost the same speed (as they are normal priority) but Nexus struggles and responds very slow (like 10 sec to magnify dock...)... the PC is quite strong with 64 Gb ram, modern fast AMD cpu and 3060 12Gb display... I've tried setting the prefs of Nexus to be best as possible but to no avail ... any help ? thanks

First time I hear about anything related to this.

For instance, I just tried running Prime95 which runs in NORMAL priority and uses all 8 P-Cores + 8 E-Cores of my 12900K for 100% CPU usage and, even though Nexus does become a bit more sluggish than usual (normal given the circumstances) it is still responding pretty quickly to screen edge activation and remains more than usable.

Given this, are you sure that Nexus hasn't been set to run at lower priority on your system? Check it out during rendering with Task Manager. Also, what happens if, while rendering, you set it to run at High Priority (again, via the Details tab in the Windows Task Manager)?

ok I'll try that.
I've noticed that it can sometimes happen not during rendering but during opening a scene (I use Maya + Maxwell render) when windows itself is not responding as if all the PC is waiting for something.
Rendering bumps CPU load to 100% and many times I do some test renders while loading another scene for work... could this be the issue?

Something (like a hardware call) might be blocking the whole PC until the operation completes - but it can be anything, even a hardware error.

Are you running a SSD or a hard disk? Also, are you using the same disk for both the OS and the data?

hmmm drive c is ssd
drive d for data is 7200 rpm
so perhaps it's not actually Nexus related but sort of windows related ?

If Windows is also blocking, I would guess so, yes.

think I got it: during rendering and denoising, GPU is used - sometimes a lot. could it be the reason ? render process takes the GPU so all other apps "stand in line" to refresh display ?

I think you might have nailed it. The Windows DWM (Desktop Windows Manager) uses the GPU to render and compose the Windows desktop and everything in it, and since Nexus animations need to be rendered at a high refresh rate, Nexus itself might be impacted.

I also heard Nexus is apparently 'slower' on AMD APUs because the system uses normal system RAM instead of dedicated VRAM.