Poor Illustrator Performance on Windows while using effects like Gaussian blur, drop shadow, etc

[Bigfoot Grafix]

I have been experiencing some very poor Illustrator performance that has been affecting the turn around time on my work projects. I have a fairly strong computer - Intel i7 8thGen, NVIDIA Geforce 3070, 64GB of RAM, and plenty of hard drive space for the system drive as well as an additional drive for storage. 

I have been troubleshooting the issue for over a week, but having issues for well over a couple of months. I have gone through many forum articles explaining how to boost the applications performance, so many of the obvious solutions have been attempted already (ensured GPU Performance is checked, switching between GPU and CPU preview, updating GPU drivers, cleared the temp files,  making sure the application is up-to-date) all to no avail. 

The main issue I'm having:

The file I'm working on is fairly small in size, but complex with drop shadow effects, gaussian blur, outer glow, and working with high-resolution files. I scale down the file to make initial drafting designs, but need to scale up prior to print and finalization. When scaling up, the system bogs down to a painful crawl - the 64 GB of RAM is completely capped out, the disk I/OPs are at 100% for the scratch disks, yet the GPU seems to be untouched in processing operations. Is this normal expectancy for loading these effects on a scaled image? 

Any tips or hints would be greatly appreciated. Again, many of the "first answer" resolutions via Google search has done nothing for me, and I'm running out of things to try. Thank you! 

[Anshul_Saini]

Hi @Bigfoot Grafix,

I'm really sorry to hear about the performance issues you're facing with Illustrator, especially when it's affecting your work. With your strong setup, it’s understandable how frustrating this must be.

One thing you might try is optimizing your NVIDIA GPU settings specifically for Illustrator. There's a helpful third-party tutorial that could guide you through this process: https://adobe.ly/4cnFMIB.

Also, could you confirm if you have an SSD installed on your PC and whether Illustrator is running from that? Sometimes, this can make a significant difference. If you’re able to, sharing a small screen recording demonstrating the issue would be really helpful, too. We’re here to assist you in any way we can to get this resolved.

Thanks for your patience!

Best regards,
Anshul Saini

[creative explorer]

@Bigfoot Grafix I work on a MacBook Pro, 2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, a NVIDIA GeForce GT/

Intel Iris Pro graphics card. One of things that slowed my MacBook was using the 'Beta' versions of Adobe Illustrator. Actually, even the Photoshop Beta slowed it down too. Once, I uninstalled all of the 'Beta' versions, and just used the regular version of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop that definitely help speed things up. I thought it was just me, but in a Facebook group called 'Adobe Illustrator Users Help & Support (Unofficial)' also had suggested the same thing too with regards of 'uninstall all Adobe Beta programs'

I would also say anything with AI on my MacBook it does slow it down. Granted, I only have 16gigs of RAM so, I get that. At 64 Gigs, I am kinda surprised actually! Speaking with Apple the other day as I am planning to either buy the new M3 or wait until the M4, the newer Macs will be able to handle the AI much better....but this is besides the point.

But, overall, working with complex designs involving drop shadows, Gaussian blur, outer glow, and high-resolution files can significantly slow down Adobe Illustrator, especially when you scale up a design, the number of pixels and points increases exponentially, demanding more resources from Illustrator.. There is no doubt about that. 

Are you using images as part of your design? If possible, convert the images and effects to outlines or shapes whenever possible. This might improve performance, especially when working with resizing back to a larger files. A part of me thinks there might be images involved. If the file is converted to all to outlines, it would be a vector shape. Which means vectors don't rely on pixels, there's no risk of pixelation or blurriness when enlarging the image. They can be scaled up or down without losing quality. Therefore, scaling up a 1"x1" vector to 30"x30" should produce a clear and sharp print.

You could also link your images first versus embedding the images in the files. This would improving overall responsiveness while working on your files. When the time comes, you could either include the link images with the Illustrator document or embed them when the time comes for final output.