Brand New DELL XPS 15 7590 - Adobe Suite Extremely Slow

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Hi everyone, I recently bought a DELL XPS 15 mainly to work on projects and 3D modeling. One of the major programs I'll be using are Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, but it seems like I'm having some issues with the suite.

Fans are always very high (especially when I'm plugged) and graphic acceleration doesn't seem to be working properly: InDesign is very slow even moving simple text in the frame, compared to my old iMac (2010) that is still rocking quite well.

What could it be?

The computer has an NVidia GeForce 1650, like every other XPS 15 out there.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

What are the full system specs? Processor? RAM?

As a side note, if you're using the interactive Bing wall paper, turn it off and switch to a static wallpaper.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Dear Bob, thanks for your super quick reply. I was trying to quote you, but apparently it isn't possibile here.

What's the point of listing my specs for a 2019 high-end laptop? I mean, Photoshop and InDesign are working smoothly also on my 10-years old iMac with no issues. I can't see why better hardware could be a problem.

Anyway:

Intel i7-9750H

16GB RAM

NVidia GeForce 1650

Yes, I'm using a dynamic wallpaer (it changes every hour), but what's the problem with that?

Report · Jan 29, 2020

That's a nice machine but I had no way of knowing without asking.

Any comment on the wall paper? I know it sounds crazy but it has been know to mess things up. I suffered with it myself until I stumbled on it accidentally.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Well... they're about 30 4K wallpapers in a single folder.
It's kind of crazy talking about that and not that a 2.000€ machine is only having issues since I booted it up.

In my opinion software optimization beats hardware all the times...

P.S. I've been a Mac user for 15 years, but I had to switch to Windows.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

I'm talking about the actual wallpaper that you see on your desktop.

It's under settings > personalization.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

What do you mean? It's a black wallpaper with a pattern. I don't get it.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

That's what I was trying to find out. Let's move on.

Do you have a third party anti virus running? And third party InDesign plugins?

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Yes, I have an antivirus (BitDefender). I don't have plugin installed.
The computer has been booted up for the first time just yesterday.

All my drivers and updates are fine.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Try disabling the anti virus. FWIW, I've been running Windows 10 since day one and just use the stock Windows Defender.

I have a similar machine, HP Spectre X360 with an i7 and 16GB and InDesign is plenty fast. Also runs great on my desktop so I suspect some kind of conflict somewhere.

BTW, have you updated InDesign 2020 to 15.0.1?

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Sorry, I missed your reply.

This is my version: 15.0.1 x64. I installed it yesterday.

I will try disabling the antivirus, but it's seems very unlikely to me that this is the problem.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

You'd be surprised at what can cause a conflict.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Would you mind being a little bit more specific x)?

Report · Jan 30, 2020

Nothing specific. There's just infinite software / hardware combinations that are possible and you never know when one, even if it shouldn't, affects another (Bing wallpaper is one example).

Did you try disabling the antivirus? If that didn't work, try creating a new user account and launching InDesign there.

Report · Jan 30, 2020

Dear @BobLevine, thanks again for your reply. I really appreciate your help, but I'm scared none of your suggestions may work.

Here's some general opinions:

- I don't think an antivirus can affect graphics performance. The only thing an antivirus can be responsible of would be blocking outgoing connections with the server. Anyway, I've disabled the antivirus but InDesign performance are still very poor.

- Concerning what you call "Bing Wallpaper" (or just basically Windows Shuffle Wallpaper) I don't think it may affect graphic performance that hard. How could a simple background process being so demanding? I mean: we're talking about a powerful machine with a GTX 1650.

- I refuse to create a new account or going through a clean install as: the computer as two days only and InDesign was downloaded just yesterday.

As a former Mac user I hope you can understand how frustrating is being back to Windows.

Apart from that, I've also discovered that InDesign can't run GPU Acceleration (on Mac it's enabled by deafault) which means that I won't be able to use my dedicated graphic card while running the program. Fair enough for me, as I think the integrated Intel HD 630 might work fine as well.
The problem remains: InDesign is still very luggy and definitely worse than on my 10-years old iMac or another low-spec laptop.

Thanks for your support, but this is how thing goes in the Windows/Microsoft realm.

Sorry for the rant, but I think that products should help people and not forcing them to find alternative solutions.

I've also tried contacting Adobe Support on the phone, but didn't get any reply.

Sorry for my poor English. I'm Italian.

Report · Jan 30, 2020

Your English is fine. I had no idea it was a second language for you.

GPU performance in InDesign, on Mac, has actually been quite troublesome for many users but that's not a factor here.

I didn't mean to do a clean install of anything. Just a new user account on the computer.

As for the wallpaper, it does make a difference. The Bing wallpaper I was referring to totally killed the performance of InDesign and Google Chrome on my i7, 32GB desktop with a 2GB video card. I was about ready to fully format the harddrive and start from scratch when I stumbled upon that issue.

Never eliminate anything out of hand when it comes to computers.

Back to basic troubleshooting, have you tried to simply uninstall / reinstall InDesign? Did you reset your preferences?

Report · Jan 30, 2020

This is what I've set under the NVidia GeForce Control Panel:

As you can see, I'm forcing the app to use the "integrated GPU" instead of the GeForce 1650 (as it looks not to be supported, right)? I can easily tell that the dedicated GPU isn't working by looking at Task Manager on my computer. Everytime I open InDesign it stays at 0% usage, while using Photoshop or Illustrator it goes up to 10%-15%.

Anyway, I don't really care what the computer is using. I'm just looking for a setup that will let me work without loosing too much time.

- My InDesign preferences are fine as I never changed them.

- I don't know if uninstalling could solve my performance issues, as I just installed it yesterday and everything went smoothly during the process. I'm not a fan of installing/uninstalling stuff as I know this may cause further issues.

One more thing.

I was experiences more issues with a specific file that reported 2 red errors on the bottom bar. Is this usually a cause of bad performance?

Report · Jan 30, 2020

I've given you the best advice I can. Try those first and stop messing around with the NVIDIA Control Panel. It's not going to be of much help here, especially since you're looking at 3D settings.

Do the following:

If you're using a font manager with autoactivation, turn it off.
Turn off live preflight in InDesign
Turn off page thumbnails in InDesign's pages panel.
Set screen redraw to delayed if it's at immediate (InDesign preferences).

Report · Jan 30, 2020

I'm sorry, but I'm not finding any of the suggested sections.

How do I find if I'm using a font manager (I don't think I'm using one, as the computer was setup just 2 days ago).

I've followed all of the other suggested steps.

Report · Jan 30, 2020

Dear Bob, here I am again.

This video may summarize pretty well some of the issues I'm experiencing with the suite:

https://streamable.com/vhlgy

Turn off the audio. Just check how slowly responsive the system is.

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about your experience. I have checked your earlier post on Photoshop community as well (https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/brand-new-dell-xps-15-7590-adobe-suite-extremely-slow-windo...). I'd recommend contacting Adobe live support using http://helpx.adobe.com/support.html

Look for the chat icon at the bottom right corner on the page.
You may also contact by phone. Find contact details on https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/phone.html

Regards,

Ashutosh

Report · Jan 29, 2020

Dear Ashutosh, how can I get in touch with them?

What advice can you give me concerning my issues?

Report · Jan 30, 2020

Up?

Report · Apr 07, 2020

Hi Bacchinif,

I guess my reply is too late for you, but maybe helpful to others. I had a similar problem with my "brand new DELL XPS 15" which was working much worse than my 7 years old Sony Vaio. I think that the problem is not in Adobe Software but in your computer. The XPS 15 model is known for its countless amount of hardware problems and buggy preinstalled software. I went through an endless series of calls and emails with their customer service, replaced all the parts and even a whole unit, before to get a normally functioning machine, which I can use in my professional work without problems. And even a proper working machine requires some tune and in my case undervolting (I own i9 version). "Fans are always very high" is not normal. My current machine is cool and quiet even in a high performance mode when I use it for animation or rendering. Good luck!

Report · Apr 07, 2020

Thanks mate, I really appreciated your response and I also think that you're totally right. Unfortunately the whole Windows it's a mess, including errors popping out everyday and systematically hardware failures.

I managed to partially solve my issues by repasting both CPU and GPU and also undervolting my i7-9750H. Despite that, the PC is still very hot and with fans on high 70% of the time.