Illustrator 25.3.1 - Lag while using on Windows

[AWOL420]

Being a heavy user of high-end 3D CAD software, my greatest pain is having to deal with 2D Illustrator. Lately, I have a 4mb file open, and the lag is unreal. Just typing a few letters takes 2-3 seconds. Hitting Enter, another 2-3 seconds. Space bar, another 2-3 seconds. 

Why is this program so inefficient in using system resources? What can I do to make it get out of first gear and fly? I have 16Gb Ram on a 64 bit workstation laptop. I close down all my other high-ram apps when using Illustrator. 

Help. 

[Monika Gause]

16 GB of RAM is not a lot when you want to do 3D in Illustrator.

[AWOL420]

Oh I would never do 3D in Illustrator, I have Alias Studio, Keyshot, Solidworks, etc. All of which run perfectly smoothly when handing enormously dense 3D models like aircraft, cars, etc. But Illustrator lags when just doing a simple 4Mb 2D graphic layout of just a few pieces of text and colored rectangles? Seems to be sloppy programming not my system specs. But if anyone has some magic menu button that speeds things up, I'd like to know about it. 

[Bobby Henderson]

Even for straight 2D work 16GB of system RAM is not a lot for doing work with Illustrator (or the current versions of other Adobe applications). The computer's operating system alone will eat a big chunk of that 16GB. What kind of CPU and GPU is in your computer? Is the GPU driver up to date?

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @AWOL420,

I hope the suggestions shared by the experts were helpful so far. To add further, could you please confirm which version of Illustrator you're currently using? Also, does the slowness occur with just one file or across all files? And where is the file saved, locally on your system drive, an external drive, a remote server, or the cloud?

It would also be helpful if you could test Illustrator in safe mode and under a new local admin user account to rule out any system or user-specific issues. You can refer to these guides to do that:
Safe Mode: https://adobe.ly/3Tdq6jZ
New User Account: https://adobe.ly/3HLmh30

If the issue still persists in either of those environments, please check if GPU Performance is enabled under Preferences > Performance. If it is, try turning it off and restarting Illustrator to see if there's any improvement. Also, under Edit > Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard, try unchecking 'Save in background' and 'Export in background.' These steps can help reduce UI lag.

Let me know how it goes.

Looking forward to hearing back from you. 

Abhishek 

[AWOL420]

Yours has been the first helpful suggestion. I am on Illustrator 25.3.1 (64-bit) . It doesn't seem to be on all files, if I open a new file then it works smoothly. I'll try your suggestions thanks