Participating Frequently

Question

Processor recommendation

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
October 9, 2020
3 replies
5056 views

I use illustrator for very complicated gis generated maps with huge numbers of vertices and I am looking for the best processor to use with adobe illustrator. I understand that performance with vector graphics is achieved with a very fast single threaded cpu. I currently have a i9-10940 but it's not fast enough. I've been onto intel to ask them but they are no use, they have suggested an i9-10900 which does appear a little quicker on the popular benchmarking sites but I want the very fastest processor possible to work with adobe illustrator and complicated 2d documents. Please can anyone suggest something? For instance what do Adobe use on their test machines or development machines, they probably don't hang around?

Thanks.

p.s. I have M.2's, SSD's, Liquid Cooling, 64gb fast ram, lots of power and all the rest, I just need to know what processor to get.

Performance

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Ben Ten

Participant

Answer for your Question is now luckily very clear ! Just buy a M4 Pro/ Max Macbook. They are now the fastest single core in Computer world ! Yoy could buy M4 Max, but their single core performance is just a bit faster.

R

roberts_7985

Participant

But what if you need a PC for printing extremly large files (think "the Mona Lisa", vectorized and duplicated within the document 100 times). I can barely do it with an intel i9-14900F, 128 gb ram, 12 GB graphics card and 4.55 TB SSD hard drive.

Are we just pushing the limits of technology too far?

Ashutosh_Mishra

Inspiring

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. As per Illustrator system requirements, any multicore Intel processor (with 64-bit support) or AMD Athlon 64 processor should be good enough to run the app.

Please find more details on this help article. Hope it helps.

Regards,

Ashutosh

G

GBMaps.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi Ashutosh, Thanks for repsponding. I was rather hoping for a more specific answer. I'm sure you'll be aware that although illustrator uses multiple cores for some of it's tasks, the main job of processing vector graphics is only done using a single thread. It is this reason that I want to know what the very best processor is to get for processing huge, complicated gis documents. The list you sent me is a list of the 'minimum' requirements illustrator needs. This is not what I asked for. I don't want a list of the recommended requirements either, I want the name of a processor or two or three that are the very best, fastest(specifically for illustrator!) that its possible to get. I can easily go on a cpu benchmarking site but I want to know from someone who actually knows. I doubt the Mercedes F1 team or SpaceX use a budget processor in their vector wind-tunnel analysis software... So please can I get an answer from someone that knows? Thanks in advance.

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Bowlando

Inspiring

Honestly, it's irrelevant. The Illustrator code is now so old that it cannot take advantage of any modern CPU. You'll see no performance difference between a mid-range CPU and a high-spec CPU. The software is outdated. It will run slow and laggy no matter what your hardware spec is.

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GBMaps.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

That's a great answer thank you. I think I will go out and purchase an old 486dx2 and save myself a ton of money. You should become a moderator with answers like that.

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Bowlando

Inspiring

Thanks again but I don't know how I can be phrasing my question so badly. Surely when the Adobe testing team are busy testing adobe illustrator functionality, they don’t want to be waiting around all day for things to happen. They MUST be using the fastest processor they can buy in their testing machines. My simple question is what IS that fastest processor?
P.s. What you are saying doesn’t make sense about the agency. If an agency has 20 staff working 8 hours a day on vector graphics and because they are not using the best processor they are having to wait for things to happen for only 5 seconds in every minute processing complicated graphics, that works out at 66 hours of labour per 5 day week they are losing. This is the equivalent of losing 1.5 members of staff per week just because of a slow processor. They should be using the fastest processor possible and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have a techie specifically tasked with finding such things. I’m just hoping that techie can come along and say “Ahh.. yes.. you need the XYZ123 cpu.. that’s the one!” Thanks.

@GBMaps.comI do think you're giving Adobe and their engineers too much credit here. They're not testing the software on anything other than standard generic computers, they're not using the latest state-of-the-art CPUs. A fast M.2 SSD is really the only thing which will increase performance in Illustrator, and even that is limited. I'm standing by what I said originally - Illustrator suffers from code bloat, it's OLD. In a work environment, you'll see no performance difference between a mid-range CPU with a mid-range GPU, against a top-range CPU with a top-range GPU. I've tried it myself, comparing laptop performance with an incredibly fast desktop. Performance was identical. Load times, render times, all identical.

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