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Iain Robinson
Iain Robinson
Known Participant
October 22, 2025
Question

Do I need to turn on hardware (GPU) acceleration in Acrobat Pro?

  • October 22, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1406 views

Hi

 

Running Acrobat Pro 64bit version 2025.001.20756 on Windows 11. Flicking through a PDF with fairly large images and quite often the page does not load fully if there is a large image - it displays the top 1/2 or 2/3rds of the image and then nothing else shows, not even any vector text underneath the image. If I zoom in or out the page suddenly draws correctly. This happens a lot and is a pain. The PC has a GPU (8GB Nvidia T1000) - how can I be sure Acrobat is using it? There used to be a setting in the Page Display preferences I think but I don't see anything relevant there. Would be interested to hear if anyone else has had this issue, whether it is GPU related or not.

 

NB This was not happening on my old Windows 10 PC running Acrobat Pro X with no GPU. 

 

Thanks,

Iain

3 replies

Intel Calculator
Intel Calculator
Participant
May 14, 2026

I would recommend keeping hardware (GPU) acceleration turned on in Acrobat Pro if your system has a modern or dedicated graphics card. It can help improve PDF performance, especially for smoother scrolling, zooming, and rendering large or graphics-heavy files. However, if you notice screen glitches, lag, or crashes, try disabling it to see if performance improves, as results can vary depending on your hardware and drivers.

Tednology
Tednology
Participant
May 12, 2026

Hi Tariq,

 

Were you able to find a resolution for the ‘progressive rendering’ issue? I’m also having the same issue. My PC have Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700, 16GB RAM, and a dedicated Nvidia T400 graphic card which should be enough resources to render. 

 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

T
Community Manager
Tariq Ahmad DarCommunity Manager
Community Manager
May 14, 2026

Hi ​@Tednology, 
 

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the troubled experience. 
The issue, sadly, isn't reproducible in-house. Also, as you may have read, Iain’s latest comment was that they were also not able to reproduce this consistently. 

Could you provide a few sample files and a short video showing the issue? 
Also, please share the Operating system name and version, and the Acrobat app version.
 

If you don’t want to share the file publicly, upload files to any cloud drive and share the link via private message.

To send a Private Message - Click on Profile Avatar and on the profile page, you will see a button “Send message.”

~Tariq

T
Tariq Dar
Legend
October 22, 2025

Hi lain, 

 

Thanks for sharing the details. Let me clarify a few things about GPU usage in Acrobat Pro:

 

1. Acrobat and GPU acceleration

  • Currently, Acrobat does not use GPU acceleration for rendering PDFs. Page rendering, including images and vector content, is done primarily via the CPU.

  • The older versions like Acrobat X also did not rely on GPU for page display.

 

2. Why you might see partial rendering

  • Acrobat sometimes displays pages in “progressive rendering”: it first draws the top portion of the page, then finishes the rest.

  • For large images or complex pages, this can make the page look incomplete until you zoom or scroll, which forces a repaint of the page.

  • This behavior can be influenced by page content size, memory usage, or system resources, not the GPU.

 

3. Settings to check

  • Page Display Preferences → Rendering

     

    • You may try “Smooth Images” and “Enhance Thin Lines” options to see if the display improves.

     

4. Other tips to improve performance

  • Reduce display resolution for images in PDFs if possible.

  • Ensure you are on the latest Acrobat update.

 

Let us know how it works. Would you be willing to share a couple of files with us? 

If yes, and you can't share the file publicly, upload files to any cloud drive and share the link via private message. To send a private message, click on the envelope icon in the top right corner.  



Best regards,
Tariq | Adobe Community Team

Iain Robinson
Iain RobinsonAuthor
Known Participant
October 22, 2025

Thanks for your reply Tariq. That is interesting. “Smooth Images” and “Enhance Thin Lines” are on. We are checking customer's file so we cannot necessarily reduce the image resolution. 

 

I can't reproduce it consistently but I will look at system resources when I next see it.

 

Thanks,

Iain 

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