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BalaamsDonkey
Participant
June 10, 2026
Question

Illustrator is really sluggish on new PC

  • June 10, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 9 views

My PC specs with all new components:

Processor    AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D 12-Core Processor (4.40 GHz)
Installed RAM    64.0 GB (61.6 GB usable)  4800 MHz DDR5
Graphics card    NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 (16 GB)
AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics (2 GB)
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Brand new SSD for my programs with plenty of room for scratch disk.

 

I have messed with deleting preferences, reinstalling, adjusting performance settings in Windows, and looking at anti-virus settings.
I’ve run ccleaner a few times.  This is a brand new machine that gets UFO-level ratings on speed tests. It is working as it should except where Illustrator is concerned, and maybe a little laggy with InDesign at times. Illustrator pauses, especially when loading the plugins (which are all default ones - no added plugins). My computer really ramps up audibly whenever Illustrator is started. I don’t know where the conflict lies, but on my old crappy machine that is like 7 years old, it ran faster than this. It could be something with Windows 11, as that old machine was a Windows 10 build - I don’t know. I can’t find the answer online anywhere. Can anyone please help me out?
 

    1 reply

    Anubhav M
    Community Manager
    Anubhav MCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    June 10, 2026

    Hi @BalaamsDonkey,
     

    Performance issues in the middle of work are genuinely disruptive — let's work through a few targeted steps to narrow this down.

    1. Apply Adobe's performance optimization steps: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/optimize-illustrator-performance.html
    2. Clean reinstall your GPU drivers (Intel / NVIDIA / AMD) and set the Graphics Preference to High-Performance for Illustrator: https://www.amd.com/en/resources/support-articles/faqs/GPU-110.html
    3. Run Illustrator in Safe Mode (Windows) and under a different administrator account (Windows).


    If the problem persists, please share:


    Share what you observe at each step. If any of these resolve the issue, kindly mark the helpful reply as the correct answer so others facing similar performance issues can find the fix.

    Anubhav

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