Is your Illustrator crashing or your rendered artwork appears jagged or you receive an error messaging indicating that GPU features are unavailable? Try these solutions.
Do this first: Update your GPU card device drivers.
See this troubleshooting article on updating device drivers: Illustrator GPU Performance | Driver Updates. Most GPU card issues are resolved when device drivers are updated to the latest versions.
Solutions
Solution 1: Start with a clean preferences file
- Close Illustrator, if it is running.
- Depending on which OS you use, navigate to the path:
macOS: /Users/<user>/Library/Preferences/
Windows: Windows +R > input %appdata%>Adobe
- Rename the preferences folder:
macOS: Rename the folder Illustrator <Version> Settings to Illustrator <Version> Settings_old
Windows: Rename the folder Adobe Illustrator <Version> Settings to Adobe Illustrator <Version> Settings_old - Restart Illustrator and check if GPU Performance features are working as expected.
Solution 2: Fix GPU performance issues in a document
Possible causes: Illustrator may encounter an object or artwork in the document that causes the GPU to stop working for the document.
Solution:
- Click View > GPU Preview
- Save the document and then close and reopen it.
Does the error persist? Send us the sample file to investigate further.
Solution 3: Ensure that your on-board GPU card is the default for all display activities
Cause: With laptops that have an on-board graphics card (integrated GPU) and an additional (add-on GPU), users are reporting that Adobe Illustrator does not pick the available add-on GPU. Illustrator defaults to the integrated GPU. When launched, Adobe Illustrator uses the same hardware that drives the laptop’s display. If your add-on GPU is not rendering the laptop’s display, Illustrator will use the integrated GPU.
Possible solutions: When you have an add-on GPU, to use GPU Performance features in Illustrator, ensure that the add-on GPU powers all the display-related functionality on your laptop.
- Using your BIOS settings, ensure that the add-on GPU is used by default. Disable the on-board GPU, if possible.
- In your Operating System settings, ensure that the add-on GPU is used as the default to drive all display functionality. For example, for NVIDIA GPUs, you can use the NVIDIA Control Panel to set a global option that ensures the default GPU used for all display functionality uses the NVIDIA hardware.
- Use hardware device manager software to disable the on-board GPU. This causes the computer to default to the add-on GPU.
Important consideration: Using the add-on GPU device causes power consumption to rise and significantly reduce battery life while operating on battery power. This will reduce the period of time available for the laptop to function before needing to find a power source.
No luck? Help us investigate
Press Cmd/Ctrl + E to switch to working in CPU Preview mode so that you can continue using Illustrator. However, do send an email to Adobe (sharewithai@adobe.com) to troubleshoot further.
