Skip to main content
Participant
October 1, 2019
Question

Illustrator CS6 - very slow and not using all the resources

  • October 1, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 443 views

Hi, just wondering if You could help me.

 

I'm working on a project in Illustrator CS6, and it's a quite a heavy one. There is a lot of complex scatter brush strokes which drag the performance down - that is to be expected. The odd thing I noticed is that my computer doesn't seem to use all it's power to make it any better. The maximum CPU usage is about 20%, and the RAM usage is about 40%. Whatever I do it doesn't go any higher. I'm working on Windows 10. I have a quite powerful machine (i7-9700, 32GB of RAM, RTX2060, very fast drives) and it simply annoys me that I cannot get anything more out of it. Scrolling, zooming, even putting new brush strokes is a pain and takes a lot of time.

 

Any ideas?

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Bill Silbert
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 1, 2019

    The fact that you're able to use CS6 on Windows 10 at all is the really odd thing here. CS6 is completely unsupported for Windows 10 and with each automatic update that the OS runs the chances of it continuing to work at all are very unlikely. Any speed issues are most certainly a result of the incompatibility between the version of the program and the operating system. Using the most recent version of the Creative Cloud Illustrator (CC 2019) will most certainly run with the efficiency and power that you're looking for. Yes, I know, you don't want to subscribe when you already own an older version. But the fact is that CS6 is now seven years old and showing its age.

    Lukasz_TAuthor
    Participant
    October 1, 2019

    I actually downloaded a trial version of Illustrator CC and there was no big difference. I dont think this is the solution (although I'll admit CS6 is quite old now). I playd with settings a bit and turning the Pixel Preview on helped a lot.

    carlosgarro
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 1, 2019

    Try to reset your Preferences, turn off the GPU Performances.

    It also helps to move complex objects to their own layer and hide then.