Participant

Question

After Effects Freezing on New High-End PC (RTX 5070Ti, 32GB RAM, Ultra 9 CPU)

Forum|Forum|9 months ago
June 11, 2025
8 replies
4025 views

Hey everyone,

I just got a brand new high-performance PC, but I’m having serious issues running After Effects. The app freezes as soon as I try to play back a composition — the playhead doesn’t move, and I eventually have to force quit.

My setup

Processor: Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores, up to 5.4 GHz, 36MB cache)

RAM: 32GB PCS PRO SODIMM DDR5 4800 MHz (2 x 16GB)

GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 5070Ti – 12GB GDDR7 (DirectX 12.2)

Storage: 2x 1TB PCS SSD PCIe M.2 (3500 MB/s read, 3200 MB/s write)

PC: Windows 11

After Effects version: Latest (Creative Cloud)

What’s happening:

I can launch After Effects, create new compositions, add text, layers, effects — no problem there.But when I try to preview or play the animation, the timeline/playhead doesn’t move at all.The program then becomes unresponsive and I have to force quit it.

No error message, just a freeze.

What I’ve tried:

Restarting the computer

Reinstalling After Effects

Updating GPU drivers (NVIDIA)

Disabling hardware acceleration

Clearing the media cacheRunning the app as administrator

Still stuck with the same issue. Anyone else experiencing this with a similar setup or have any ideas what might be causing it? Would appreciate any help — I bought this machine for creative work, and this is a real blocker.

Thanks in advance!

Ae_bug.zip

A

angular_Mermaid0070

Participant

I just bought a new laptop today with the exact same specs as you

(Processor: Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores, up to 5.4 GHz, 36MB cache)

RAM: 32GB PCS PRO SODIMM DDR5 4800 MHz (2 x 16GB)

GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 5070Ti – 12GB GDDR7 (DirectX 12.2)

After experiencing repeated issues and constant freezing - I eventually downloaded AE version 25.3.0 (Build 71) from April 2025 and it worked flawlessly. I had previously tried most every suggeston you've seen on here, this worked.

C

cicoronado

Participant

I have same situation and symptoms. Turns out that the problem was that my new PC with latest specs was the monitor was incorrectly plugged into the integrated motherboard video port. I moved it to the NVidia port. Problem solved. Dumb mistake.

A

aledife23

Participant

Same issue Here.

Seems like the software is broken, even split a layer on JUST moving one frame foward with pgUP or DOWN take 4 seconds to complete the task.

The problem is that we rely on these software to do real jobs and I don't have time today to learn a new software and delivery the project 😄

I'm talking from a RTX5080 with 128gb of RAM and Intel i9 13900k

C

cicoronado

Participant

New PC with same specs just out of the box on 9/5/2025. Installed AE, plain, no 3rd party app. Same issue. I can add a .jpg but will start crashing after bringing in a .mp4 file. Have uninstalled reboot and reinstalled. Same problem. This same .mp4 file is no problem with my older PC with much lower specs.

nishu_kush

Legend

Can you try installing the Nvidia driver version 573.22 as suggested by Johan.

Let me know how it goes.

Thanks,
Nishu

P

paythisman

Participant

After Effects Performance Issues - RTX 5090 System

System Specifications

GPU: RTX 5090
RAM: 64 GB
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor
OS: Windows 11 Pro
Storage: 2x 1TB SSD

Background

I'm experiencing severe performance issues with After Effects on my high-end PC that are impacting my ability to meet project deadlines. I recently upgraded from a MacBook Pro M1 (64 GB RAM) to this high-end PC specifically to improve my After Effects workflow. However, I'm experiencing severe performance issues that are impacting my ability to meet project deadlines.

Issues Experienced

Performance Problems

After Effects is extremely slow and unresponsive
Application startup is problematic - interface elements don't load simultaneously
Screen flashing and general bugginess
Laggy performance even with simple projects
After is using every bit of the RAM I give it when there is just one video on the timeline

Rendering Failures

When attempting to render a medium-complexity 1.5-minute project, I have a 5090!!!!!! I receive the following error:

After Effects error: After Effects has encountered a failure (code: 19969) 
related to GPU-enabled effects on this frame. This is likely because your 
GPU is out of memory.

Please decrease your rendering resolution, close applications that may be 
using GPU resources, or set this project to render effects using "Mercury 
Software Only" in File > Project Settings > Video Rendering and Effects

Troubleshooting Steps Attempted

Updated GPU drivers to latest version
Tested After Effects Beta version (same issues)
Allocated 40+ GB RAM to After Effects
Reduced RAM allocation to 16 GB (slight improvement but still problematic)

Current Status

The system is barely functional for simple projects and completely fails on more complex work. Given my tight deadlines, I urgently need a solution to make this high-end hardware work properly with After Effects.

jefubbudu

Inspiring

Yeah, like I said, AE just is no longer up to complex stuff. I used to, back in 2015, but since then, performance has gotten worse on existing hardware. I can't imagine how bad it would be now on my 9950x and probably doesn't even recognize my arc A770.

Actually, AE might be trying to use arc integrated graphics from your CPU! That's an A-series card so it's the same as my arc A770!

Like i said, just go into settings, disable hardware acceleration, then go into device manager, disable your intel GPU altogether, and then delete all caches, and try to render again.

AE does NOT play well with GPU rendering. Most of its existence has been CPU rendering only, and even them, it hates small cores, and high core count systems. The entire UI needs to fit on just one.

As well, you might want to check the temps of your machine. Recent intel chips have been real toasty, and that can make systems unresponsive and unstable.

P

paythisman

Participant

Thanks for the advice! You're probably right about the Arc GPU causing issues It's frustrating that windows version of AE has gotten worse. I'll try disabling hardware acceleration and the GPU, then clear caches and test again.

jefubbudu

Inspiring

I would suggest trying gimp and resolve in the meantime. AE has a small team of like probably a dozen or two to update it and it's historically late to the party. Maybe disabling hardware acceleration and manually disabling any E-cores can help. Adobe software is mostly from the 90's and early 2000's so it hates having many small cores to juggle, and GPU is a bit of a hack that only works for a few effects I find.

But adobe software really does NOT scale well with computer specs. Every gig of RAM is like a second of 4k footage in the cache, double CPU transistor count and you'll get 10-25% faster renders. It's sad.

nishu_kush

Legend

Sorry to hear about your issue.

Updating the GPU driver is the first thing that I'd suggest. If that doesn't help, can you check if the beta version works better? Some preview-related issues were fixed and shipped in the beta version. Here's how you can install: https://adobe.ly/4jImKQT

Let me know how it goes. Moving this thread from Bugs to Discussions for troubleshooting.

Thanks,
Nishu

S

sai_ganesh_6393

Participant

Even beta version is crashing.

nishu_kush

Legend

Are there any error messages or crash reports? Is there a specific action/command that triggers the crash?

We're here to help.

Thanks,
Nishu

S

sai_ganesh_6393

Participant

Facing the same issue with 5090, this is happening only in AE but Premier is running without any issues.

After Effects Performance Issues - RTX 5090 System

System Specifications

Background

Issues Experienced

Performance Problems

Rendering Failures

Troubleshooting Steps Attempted

Current Status

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