It doesn't use my GPU in 3D and materials

[ismithan]

I have a 3090, and when I enable 3D in changing the real-time preview, the CPU usage goes up to 100% while the GPU usage remains at 0%. I don't understand what's happening.

I have the Nvidia Studio drivers installed and everything.

[Bobby Henderson]

In the Preferences dialog box, under the Performance tab, is your RTX 3090 listed as being used there? It should say "Compatible GPU Available." The "GPU Performance" listing would be checked active and probably Animated Zoom too. This dialog box would indicate if a discrete graphics accelerator board like the 3090 was being used or if the system was defaulting to an integrated graphics chip or even just the CPU.

NVidia pushed out a new driver update this week. Have you installed it?

[ismithan]

Yes, everything seems fine, and I have the latest Studio update installed, including animated zoom and everything. But the 3D function isn't utilizing the GPU.

[Bobby Henderson]

Do you happen to have Real-Time Drawing and Editing turned on? The setting is under Preferences at the bottom of the Performance tab.

When Real-Time Drawing and Editing is enabled it limits the quality of 3D rendering previews (particularly ray-tracing). The CPU is doing far more of the work than the GPU. Real-Time Drawing and Editing has to be disabled to get high quality, ray-traced renders on 3D objects in Illustrator. The GPU ends up being utilized.

I have some criticisms of both Adobe Illustrator and the NVidia drivers.

In my own computer system it looks like Illustrator is using both GPUs that are installed. There is an Intel integrated graphics chip as well as the more powerful NVidia RTX graphics board. When I'm using 3D features in Illustrator (with Real-Time Drawing disabled) I'm seeing both GPUs being used in the Performance tab of Windows Task Manager. I think I'd like it more if I could tell Illustrator to just use the NVidia RTX board for 3D rendering duties.

Regarding the NVidia driver, the only Adobe application installed in my computer that shows up on the Home screen of the GeForce Experience dialog box is Adobe Dimension. Illustrator and Photoshop have 3D features, but they don't show up automatically when I scan for apps. I have some other non-Adobe graphics applications installed in my computer. CorelDRAW of all things is listed as a supported app in the GeForce Experience dialog box. Really? CorelDRAW? There isn't a lot of real 3D stuff going on under the hood there. It's pretty strange how the GeForce Experience app behaves. There are hacks people can do to force the NVidia driver to list apps like Illustrator. But we really shouldn't have to do that sort of thing in the first place.