GPU Options / Performance InDesign

[EXECdesign]

Hi everyone,

I'm from Germany and thus have the German CC version.
Have massive performance problems on all our PC/Win devices with InDesign.

Of course I've already searched for a solution by myself and have already done the standard tasks - without any positive effect. That's why I write here, fervently hoping for a good and sensible answer instead of just standard copy & paste answers...

1st I started with the preferences - and found nothing. The official Adobe post says:
https://helpx.adobe.com/de/indesign/using/gpu_performance.html
^^But although it's title is general it's written Mac specific. I actually have NO "GPU Performance" entry in the preferences list in InDesign (while in Illustrator and Photoshop I have that for years).

I also have NO animated zoom as described in the article and it's all dead slow, so I'm sure I'm in CPU mode. Why does GPU work in the complete graphics and video apps but NOT in InDesign?

Have a NVIDIA RTX Studio certified notebook with a RTX 3050 Mobile and a Win10 workstation with an RTX460 Ti 16 GB (which is quite fast in all my used apps from CC and others). Already deinstalled and reinstalled InD completely on both system and also tested a 3rd system, a RTX Studio notebook with an RTX 3060 Mobile 6 GB. Same here.

As the above article is from May 2023 it should work since some months now already.
I' automatic update notifications on and according to my CC Desktop app my InDesign is latest version. But it's still 19.01 instead of 19.1 which already should be out for a month now:
https://helpx.adobe.com/de/indesign/system-requirements.html
https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-19-1-improved-core-features-and-workflo...

So plese don't share https://helpx.adobe.com/de/indesign/kb/slow-performance-indesign.html with me but please help me out here! Thank you very much in advance!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What do you mean by "performance problems"?

First of all - how big  / old are your INDD files?

How often are you doing Save As - with a new name - or only Save?

There sometimes could be a problem with metadata imported with linked files.

@rob day's solution:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/is-there-a-script-to-clear-indesign-metadata-red...

@Loic.Aigon's solution:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/edit-idml-remove-metadata-save-again-open-in-ind...

[EXECdesign]

Thank you for your answer but that's not part of the solution.

I'm aware of the Save/Save As behaviour and 'save my files small' regulary.

And as I work with InDesign 19.01 I also have new 19.01 files. They're often not really big and I clearly described my problem: "NO GPU suppoprt in InDesign - it's running in software mode" - that's my problem. And that's why I posted "So plese don't share https://helpx.adobe.com/de/indesign/kb/slow-performance-indesign.html with me" 😉

My core question again: "I actually have NO "GPU Performance" entry in the preferences list in InDesign (while in Illustrator and Photoshop I have that for years).

I also have NO animated zoom as described in the article and it's all dead slow, so I'm sure I'm in CPU mode. Why does GPU work in the complete graphics and video apps but NOT in InDesign?"

So: How do I achieve GPU mode in InDesign 19.x PC Win10/11?

[EXECdesign]

Just found: https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/gpu-performance-animated-zoom-for-pc/td-p/922209...
Is that still the case for the PC version??

[BobLevine]

Still yes.

[EXECdesign]

I am absolutely stunned!
In fact, in 2024 there will be no GPU acceleration - and not even multithreading (single processor only)! So just use a Mac for InDesign? Come on Adobe, don't be serious...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/31872184-gp...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/32235082-su...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39239977-gp...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39747559-gp...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/36462010-no...

[BobLevine]

Nothin' with nothin' but if you're that stunned you haven't been paying attention. I gave up on seeing this on Windows a long time ago.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Oh, right - I also don't have this option - had no idea that it's missing - but I don't feel that InDesign is slow - and my laptop isn't a speed demon:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz, 2601 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

16GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M

Any chance you can share your sample doc - on priv?

So the question still remains - What do you mean by "performance problems"?

2024 / v 19.x is very sensitive to the network "lag" - specialy if you have files that have links to missing locations...

[EXECdesign]

"Performance" is relative 😉

It's absolutely like here: https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/mpv6gs/why_does_indesign_perform_better_on_my_old_mac_vs/

"Why does InDesign perform better on my old Mac vs my new Windows ???"

[BobLevine]

A reddit post is hardly any kind of scientific study. On my self-built Win 11 machine (11th gen i7 with 64GB RAM) I have no complaints about performance.

[EXECdesign]

I am absolutely stunned!
In fact, in 2024 there will be no GPU acceleration - and not even multithreading (single processor only)! So just use a Mac for InDesign? Come on Adobe, don't be serious...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/31872184-gp...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/32235082-su...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39239977-gp...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/39747559-gp...

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/36462010-no...

[EXECdesign]

And here a technical explanation right from NVIDIA:
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/adobe-indesign-cc-gpu-support-on-windows-x64-machine-by-nvidia...

Quote:

"InDesign has built-in GPU acceleration based on MacOS Metal and OpenGL. That acceleration does specific tasks directly on the GPU. This implementation is not part of the Windows version of InDesign.

The NVIDIA control panel settings only control an app’s rendered output. That means IFF the app uses things like MSAA (which InDesign does not), you could control how that is used. But InDesign is rendering simply through the Windows Display Manager and any app specific changes in the Control Panel will not affect the actual InDesign render behavior."

That's why there's no trick or hack to get a solution here - even when some Indian guys posted YT videos how to configure that 😉

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Indesign never supported multithreading... 

Again - can you share a sample document? 

Or... I could finally prepare "benchmark task" for my tool - you are on a PC so you could use it - but we would have to agree on what things should be tested and how ...

[JoeMurti]

Same issue here. Running a Windows 11 PC with an AMD 5900X CPU, an RTX 3080 GPU and 64GB of RAM, yet I have to run InDesign on my old Mac from 2011 to get it to run smoothly. There are no performance features at all in the Windows version of InDesign. No animated zoom, nothing.

[shaun-lee]

I just switched from a 2019 Mac to a new PC with the RTX 4090 (because I also do 3D and video work)  I'm so disapointed with Indesign's performance when exporting PDFS.

[Eugene Tyson]

I don't have that experience - my laptop is Windows 10 (can't upgrade to Win11) 
RAM is a bit lower than I would like - I could upgrade it easily - but just haven't bothered - it's so cheap I don't why know I'm holding out - but I am .

I run InDesign 2024 on this machine and it's fine, it's slow to load up - but once loaded it runs smoothly with no issues.

I think having a top end grpahics card is essential for 3D and Video Work.
But it will never improve performance of InDesign. 

InDesign needs processor power, it needs RAM.

But any decent amount of RAM or decent processor will run it fine. 

I think someone mentioned that Indesign doesn't support multithreading.
I think it does on Windows and not on Mac.

I'm pretty sure that I've tried exporting multiple PDFs from InDesign in the background process 
And on a Mac it goes 1 by 1 through the PDF generation.
On a PC it can generate multiple PDFs simultaneously in the background process, you see the PDFs generating in the Background Process window in InDesign.

Anyway - if InDesign is running slow or slower than you want and you have a half decent setup it's likely something else slowing it down.

I'd start by getting updates to the OS, and hitting the Drivers download pages and running system analysis from the brands own Drivers update page. 

I use Dell and have for years, and they have a great service for Driver downloads, I'm sure others would too. 

With Windows you have to do a bit more maintenance with your Hardware/Firmware and keep the drivers and other things updated, or roll them back - which is great I believe to have control on these things. 

With Macs the updates come and you have very little control over what to keep or roll back. 

For instance an OS update on the Mac M3 completey broke Acrobat filtering comments, I had to wait for a OS dot update and now Acrobat filter comments works. 

Bizzare for such an amazing OS and expensive piece of crap from Apple that their OS can break software. It's crazy.

It's never happened for me on Windows - but then I can be selective on what to update and when to update hardware/firmware - update the BIOS, update drivers, and have a lot more  control. 

I don't feel in control on a Mac - that expensive piece of crap M3 processor causes me more issues than my 6 or 7 year old Dell that I have.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Eugene Tyson

I have 7559 - you should DEFINITELY upgrade to 16GB. Makes a huge difference. And it cost peanuts.

[Eugene Tyson]

Yeh I'll do it some day 😁 

[EXECdesign]

Got 32 GB RAM - it's still horrible on PC (with RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB GPU). Finally it's all about RAM (from 16 GB on) and CPU because they absolutely DON'T support GPU acceleration on WIN PCs. It could run fast like heck if they did. But somehow there seems to be no reason to. Too much MAC percentage maybe? Adobe: it's just a SHAME, nothing more. And why do you do that? Because you CAN - and that's a shame, too.

[Eugene Tyson]

Performance has nothing to do with the graphics card.

Did you update drivers?

I'd run in safe mode and see if it's still slow.

If it's not it's a third party app. 

[BobLevine]

The feature sets on Win and Mac are almost identical. I've never gotten an explanation for this one but I will tell you this, given the number of times we've had to advise users to turn it off on Mac leaves me thinking I'm not missing anything.

[Jean42]

I have exactly the same problem! It's incredible to see in the task manager: GPU 0%, CPU 1.7 - 2.5%, memory 429 MB.
I have a Asus Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz 32GB Ram NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060... and everything stacks.

In my older machine it was working perfectly, super quick I never had any problem.
I made every changes you can imagine, reinstalled, configured Nvidia, resetted preferences, tried to bild other files, and read everything what Google offers, in English, Spanish and German.
All Adobe products work perfectly, but Indesign stacks...

[Eugene Tyson]

It sounds incredibly frustrating to deal with this, especially given the specs of your machine! Here are some steps that might help isolate or resolve the issue:

Safe Mode Test
Start Windows in Safe Mode (try both options: with and without internet).
Run InDesign as the only application (besides the necessary system processes).

Observe: If InDesign runs fine in Safe Mode, the issue is likely caused by a conflicting background process, driver, or software.
If it works fine:

Reboot into normal mode and start disabling unnecessary startup apps or services one by one to pinpoint the conflict.

------------
Troubleshooting Steps - Maybe potential causes

GPU and Performance Settings
NVIDIA Control Panel:
Ensure InDesign is set to use the high-performance GPU (GeForce RTX 2060).
Go to Manage 3D settings > Program Settings > Add InDesign.

Set Preferred graphics processor to High-performance NVIDIA processor.

Update your NVIDIA drivers to the latest version (preferably from the NVIDIA website, not Windows Update).

--------------

Preferences and Cache
Reset InDesign preferences:

Hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) immediately after starting InDesign.
When prompted, confirm resetting preferences.
Delete the cache:

Navigate to %AppData%\Adobe\InDesign\Version XX.X\ (replace XX.X with your version).
Delete the Cache and SavedData folders.

System and Software
Windows Updates: Make sure your system is fully updated.

Antivrus/VPN

Check if there’s a conflict with antivirus or firewall software (temporarily disable them to test).

Run as Admin
Run InDesign as an administrator: Right-click the shortcut > Run as administrator.

Document-Specific Issues
Try opening InDesign without loading any file. Does it still lag?
If it’s related to a specific document, try exporting it as an IDML file and reopening it.

Hardware Diagnostics
Given your specs, the hardware shouldn’t be a bottleneck, but it’s worth ruling out issues:

Use Task Manager or Resource Monitor to check if any processes are unexpectedly spiking CPU, GPU, or memory usage while InDesign is open.

-----------------

Reinstalling rarely fixes everything - you can do a complete reinstall using the
Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html