Known Participant

Question

No GPU support in Windows?

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
March 6, 2025
4 replies
1603 views

I don't understand why Adobe, which provides GPU support for Photoshop, doesn't do it in InDesign on Windows. Why? At least allow computers with integrated cards, e.g. Intel Arc and dedicated NVIDIA RTX 1000 Ada, to choose the dedicated one. Since there is no way to do it through Windows settings or Nvidia panel, it doesn't switch to the dedicated card, despite these settings, InDesign stays on the integrated one. Why? We also don't have the option in the computer BIOS to use only one card or set priority. Please improve this. My hardware configuration far exceeds the requirements of this program, and yet InDesign runs very slowly.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and feedback here! Just to clarify for all, GPU Performance in Adobe InDesign has been introduced starting with version 20.4, and it's now available on Windows too.

You can find more details about this feature and how it works in this article: https://adobe.ly/4lqVFDp

Please make sure you're on the latest version and let us know if enabling GPU Performance helps improve your experience.

Looking forward to hearing your updates!

Abhishek

А

Антон30348185b6tp

New Participant

simply disable the built-in video card in the Win11 device Manager and Indesign will see the discrete video card as the main one. I have the same problem, I decided to try to do it this way and it worked for me. But I didn't notice any global difference in the running process between the integrated graphics core and the rtx 4070ti.

BobLevine

Community Expert

When this post was started, there was no GPU support in Windows for InDesign. What you are proposing shouldn't be necessary for it to work.

Since this is now very outdated, I'm locking the discussion.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

InDesign’s GPU acceleration is currently exclusive to macOS, a key requirement is having a Retina (or HiDPI) display. On a Mac, Adobe built the feature using Metal (and OpenGL), which takes advantage of the extra pixel density and graphics capabilities found on Retina screens. Essentially, if your Mac isn’t sporting a Retina display (or isn’t connected to a HiDPI monitor), InDesign won’t activate GPU performance features.

On Windows, even if you have a powerful GPU, Adobe hasn’t implemented GPU acceleration for InDesign probably due to lack of Retina displays, and has only rolled out on macOS. Other Adobe apps on Windows. like Photoshop and Illustrator, do use GPU acceleration, but InDesign remains a CPU-centric beast.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

@Eugene Tyson You forgot to mention, too, how many times Mac users are told to turn OFF GPU acceleration because it screws up the display....

Peter Spier

Community Expert

InDesign's video demands are pretty small compared to a program like Photoshop, so I doubt your speed problems are caused by the internal video card. I'm a Windows 10 user running on a laptop with NVIDIA graphics and no notiecable speed problems.

Do you see the same slowdowns if you run in Safe Mode as a test?

M

miros?aw_7467Author

Known Participant

It probably depends on how complicated your layout is. We work with different printed magazines. Magazine spreads are different, but usually each one has a lot of text frames, titles, content, subhead. Styles are complicated from GREP and most are based on Next. A photo for each text frame, a few always cut out in PSD, a few in circles with a shadow, on each photo a caption to the photo always with a shadow under the text. All this is connected not to InCopy, but to WWS (cloud). The more complex the page, the slower it is. There is no fluidity. Turning off transparency helps quite a bit, but without it you can't see shadows under captions etc. If you zoom out the spread to see the whole thing, it works faster, but when you zoom in on a fragment to fix something, the drama begins. This is what our daily life looks like, despite working on a Dell Precision computer with a powerful RTX1000Ada card, which InDesign does not deign to use.

M

miros?aw_7467Author

Known Participant

That's partly true. On a Mac with a Retina display, GPU acceleration kicks in to handle things like smooth zooming, scrolling, and rendering high-res images, offloading those tasks from the CPU.

However, not every single operation is GPU-accelerated; many background processes and layout tasks still rely on the CPU. So, while the GPU eases the burden for display-intensive tasks on Retina Macs, the CPU still handles the rest, just like it does on Windows.

Essentially, a Mac with Retina benefits from GPU acceleration in areas where it's most needed, reducing the overall load on the processor compared to a non-Retina setup, specifically in scenarios where Retina’s higher resolution requires extra power.

Ironically, Adobe had to step in and optimise InDesign for Retina displays, when in theory, Apple could have built in better hardware-side optimisation to avoid putting that responsibility on third-party developers for their niche screens.

Exactly, and that's what I mean about smooth zooming, scaling, etc. Only I'd also like it for Windows :)))) Maybe it's about the so-called vertical synchronization. So that the GPU synchronizes with the monitor refresh. But I don't know, I'm not an expert in such deep technicalities.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded