iMac 5k 2019 i9 Vega Pro 48 poor performance - disappointed :(

[TomekMomeu]

Hi guys,

I'm really disappointed, I've bought two days ago an iMac 5k 2019 i9 with Pro Vega 48 GPU and this was my update from Mac Pro Tower from 2010 (6 cores, RX 580). I'm a graphic designer and I'm living from it and my family. I was searching for the right machine to buy and read a lot of articles, reviews, specs compare on you tube videos and all that stuff (Mac performance guide and guys which provide tests on you tube). I was thinking about iMac Pro but this iMac for the price was a better choice for work what I'm creating. And I have simple question Apple or Adobe because I don't know where is the problem. Why this iMac is so freaking slow... slower than my 2nd machine for gaming on Ryzen 2600 with GTX 1070... Working on a Photoshop or Illustrator is a nightmare... so slow, not smooth and have a some kind of delay. The applications are not responsive like on windows machine and like it Was years before. My Mac Pro was quicker... I;m really disappointed this is my 5th machine from apple & I'm really frustrated and thinking to give it back to the store...

Here is the video comparing the performance of Illustrator vs Ryzen 2600 Machine on Windows 10 Pro. (Sorry for my English but I'm really angry, this supposed to be my dream machine for work for another couple of years like Mac Pro and I've made for myself a present on Christmas)

 

[spiderpumpkin]

Looks like you are running Catalina. Maybe try installing Mojave and see if it runs better?

 

[TomekMomeu]

Looks like you are running Catalina. Maybe try installing Mojave and see if it runs better?

On MacOs Mojave performance of Illustrator & Photoshop is the same. The same choppy, lag and delay.
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I have tested the affinity designer and work like a charm smooth, responsive and with no delay when transforming object... I wish Illustrator will work like that...

 

[3SQ Machine]

When I got my 2019 iMac (base) it was running BELOW its supposed geekbench 5.0 specs. Now it's running ABOVE those specs, but it's taken both time + tweaks.

You have 16GB Ram? For your workflow that may be too low. Having upgraded from 8gb to 24GB my lowly 3.0 is now giving me multicore performance just shy of the 3.7 i5 (along with other tweaks).

Apple runs way too many background apps these days, which it may not have on your mac pro tower, especially when you start a new machine. It's using AI on your photos, your files, etc. This can take days. Apple "defaults" many services to ON that are gobbling up precious resources. I've been busy disabling them the last few weeks.

Also, are you using the 2TB fusion drive or all internal SSD? This could be another bottleneck.

Finally, thermals in the iMac are a known issue and i9 does run hot (although still powerful). Do some searching on some thermal solutions others have used.

If you bought this during the holiday season you may have extra time before returning to see if you can make it work. While I'm relatively pleased, honestly besides the 5K screen the upgrade from my 2013 iMac has not been that dramatic.

 

[TomekMomeu]

I have made new video comparing performance of photoshop, illustrator and affinity designer/photo:

 

[Ethosik]

Try disabling GPU rendering in Illustrator. Even if you need it, just disable it to see what happens.

 

[chscag]

You still haven't answered the question above.... does your new iMac have a fusion drive or pure SSD? If it has a fusion drive, that may be the cause of the slowness when using Illustrator. You also might want to consider switching to the Affinity apps.

 

[Serge Berezkin]

Same **** on adobe after effects

 

[Sam Marks]

I had exactly the same problems and CPU throtling with an iMac i9 Vega 48, 40gb ram and 512gb ssd. I had problems with the thermals also. These problems finally caused a fatal failure of the machine. It died in less than 15 days of starting using it. It started to randomly reboot until it did not turn on anymore. I returned the faulty iMac i9 obtaining a full money refund.

After much thinking I decided to try another totally different approach and I bought a Clevo modular laptop with an i7 9700 desktop CPU, 17.3 inch 144hz IPS FHD panel, nvidia 1660 ti, 64gb Samsung 2666 RAM and 1tb ssd (€1,400).

My initial idea was installing mac os Catalina on this laptop. But my experience with Windows 10 Pro is so good that I will postpone for the moment this idea. The machine flies, the CPU benchmarks are similar to the new Mac Pro base model 8 core (above 7600 multicore Geekbench 5 score) and higher than any mac computer single core (over 1340). And the GPU performance is similar to the Amd Radeon 5700XT or 1080ti in the standard benchmarks and in real life usage. The machine is also dead silent and it has a very good cooling system.

I am very happy with this new laptop as a valid replacement for my dead and returned iMac i9. And it is fully modular, as I can upgrade the CPU, the GPU, the storage (I currently have 3TB 3500 MB/s NVMe ssd storage), the screen, etc.

I also have a mid 2010 i7 MBP that is working like the first day (a perfectly functional machine used everyday without a glitch). My recent experience with the faulty iMac marked my view on my computer needs and options. This is just my own experience, of course.

 

[TomekMomeu]

You still haven't answered the question above.... does your new iMac have a fusion drive or pure SSD? If it has a fusion drive, that may be the cause of the slowness when using Illustrator. You also might want to consider switching to the Affinity apps.

1tb ssd nvme from Apple

GPU turned off make illustrator totally unusable at all and 50 times slower and laggy.

 

[nihil0]

to me it seems that the fault is on Adobe side and their poor optimization

 

[Sam Marks]

Adobe apps fly on Windows 10 Pro in a proper system. And also apps like Ableton Live 10, Pro Tools and Cubase run smoothly on Windows 10. I have been using OSX during the last 10 years. I started using Windows 10 in the last weeks and I am very satisfied with it.

 

[JimmyG]

To the OP, have you looked into, or tried out, Adobe's own recommendations on how to improve performance?

Improve Illustrator performance on macOS:

Improve Illustrator performance

Learn how to make Illustrator run quickly and efficiently on Windows and macOS.

helpx.adobe.com

 

[TomekMomeu]

To the OP, have you looked into, or tried out, Adobe's own recommendations on how to improve performance?

Improve Illustrator performance on macOS:

Improve Illustrator performance

Learn how to make Illustrator run quickly and efficiently on Windows and macOS.

helpx.adobe.com

Yes of course, nothing helped

 

[3SQ Machine]

How much RAM do you have?

 

[Ethosik]

So in your video, you were just moving the canvas around and what just looked like low FPS movement. Is that the only issue you are having?

 

[TomekMomeu]

So in your video, you were just moving the canvas around and what just looked like low FPS movement. Is that the only issue you are having?

1st: Moving the empty canvas cause the low FPS movement in Illustrator and Photoshop as well.
2nd: ILLUSTRATOR - the latency when resizing vector objects in this example I was resizing the rectangle. When you move your mouse by hand and of courseby the cursor to transform object the line of it is far behind like I was some kind of lag/delay.

On the video which I had recorded machine with ryzen 2600 with the same amount of ram 16GB Is dealing with it 30x time better and super smooth.

 

[JimmyG]

Yes of course, nothing helped

Thant's not encouraging to read. I asked as I am currently outfitting an i9 iMac and will be in need of a DTP soultion along the way (previous Quark user from back in the mid-90s/mid-00s and then CS5.5 until mid-10s as I began to wean myself off the Adobe ecosystem...not a fan of rentware). Troubleshooting software/hardware incompatabilities has never been enjoyable on my end and it's looking like you're up for a not-so-healthy-serving of such based on a quick search of Adobe's Help and forums...

Slow performance on Illustrator while the file is ... - Adobe Support Community - 10499094:

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everytime i start illustrator, it takes a very long time to open (sometimes 10 minutes), with the status "not responding" i noticed that this is related to a lot of big iCloud file download - when the Icloud Download is finished, Illustrator starts working. After i close Illustrator and start it...

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Solved: Illustrator CC 2018 extremely slow saving - Adobe Support Community - 9599892:

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my set-up iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) 3.3 GHz Intel Core i5 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 AMD Radeon R9 M395 2 GB 2.12 TB Fusion Drive 1.64TB Available Running the latest OS and the latest version of illustrator cc2018 and Illustrator saves (and opens) extremely slow. All other applications run...

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Solved: Illustrator is slow and keeps "not responding" - Adobe Support Community - 9659758:

Illustrator is slow and keeps "not responding"

Whenever I use Adobe Illustrator, tasks that should take 5 seconds end up taking 60 because after every single action I do, Illustrator "stops responding". I've tried resetting my Illustrator settings (which requires me to submit a ticket with IT and have them enter the admin password on my...

community.adobe.com

Improve Illustrator performance on Windows:

Improve Illustrator performance

Learn how to make Illustrator run quickly and efficiently on Windows and macOS.

helpx.adobe.com

...equal portions of pain for both Mac and Win users, it seems (shudder). Wish I had better news. Anyhoo, time for me to take a look at alternatives, keep us posted as to how you make out.

 

[TomekMomeu]

Thant's not encouraging to read. I asked as I am currently outfitting an i9 iMac and will be in need of a DTP soultion along the way (previous Quark user from back in the mid-90s/mid-00s and then CS5.5 until mid-10s as I began to wean myself off the Adobe ecosystem...not a fan of rentware). Troubleshooting software/hardware incompatabilities has never been enjoyable on my end and it's looking like you're up for a not-so-healthy-serving of such based on a quick search of Adobe's Help and forums...

Slow performance on Illustrator while the file is ... - Adobe Support Community - 10499094:

Slow performance on Illustrator while the file is syncing from i-cloud on MAC

everytime i start illustrator, it takes a very long time to open (sometimes 10 minutes), with the status "not responding" i noticed that this is related to a lot of big iCloud file download - when the Icloud Download is finished, Illustrator starts working. After i close Illustrator and start it...

community.adobe.com

Solved: Illustrator unusably slow and laggy - Adobe Support Community - 9937916:

Illustrator unusably slow and laggy on macOS

Some time in the last year, Illustrator (which previously worked just fine) has become unusably slow and laggy on my 2011 iMac. Anyone out there have solutions or work-arounds?

community.adobe.com

Adobe illustrator running slow /lagging - Spiceworks:

Adobe illustrator running slow /lagging

We have 2 marketing employees that use Adobe cc and the main use they have is illustrator and now slowly over the last couple of months ... | Adobe

community.spiceworks.com

Solved: Illustrator CC 2018 extremely slow saving - Adobe Support Community - 9599892:

Illustrator CC 2018 extremely slow saving

my set-up iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) 3.3 GHz Intel Core i5 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 AMD Radeon R9 M395 2 GB 2.12 TB Fusion Drive 1.64TB Available Running the latest OS and the latest version of illustrator cc2018 and Illustrator saves (and opens) extremely slow. All other applications run...

community.adobe.com

Pasting artwork is slow or file includes unused data:

Fix slowness with pasting artwork

Find out what to do if pasting artwork becomes slow or if you find unexpected data in your Illustrator files.

helpx.adobe.com

Solved: Illustrator is slow and keeps "not responding" - Adobe Support Community - 9659758:

Illustrator is slow and keeps "not responding"

Whenever I use Adobe Illustrator, tasks that should take 5 seconds end up taking 60 because after every single action I do, Illustrator "stops responding". I've tried resetting my Illustrator settings (which requires me to submit a ticket with IT and have them enter the admin password on my...

community.adobe.com

Improve Illustrator performance on Windows:

Improve Illustrator performance

Learn how to make Illustrator run quickly and efficiently on Windows and macOS.

helpx.adobe.com

...equal portions of pain for both Mac and Win users, it seems (shudder). Wish I had better news. Anyhoo, time for me to take a look at alternatives, keep us posted as to how you make out.

Thank you for adding this urls here but before I type a new thread I was also searching & digging webs to resolve this problem and I had read all of stuff and of course which sounds reasonable I tried out to test these suggestions.

Adnotation 1st - iCloud
I've tested on Mojave and on Catalina with disable iCloud and with no Apple ID configured. Just clean OS. Still the same poor performance. So for disabling the iCloud is not a case.
Also I unplugged all the USB peripherals and disks(which for ma opinion is stupid because all connection is thru TB or USB on iMac) but I have tested it and nothing helped.
And of course I don't work thru iCloud sync only from local fast storage like external Thunderbolt SSD or USB SSD.

Adnotation 2nd - Dictation
Dictation is by default turned off by I went even further and completely disabled it (the keyboard shortcut and in the settings)

Rest of the articles admitting to the windows machine or problem which I don't have right now. On windows machine I get great performance (Ryzen 2600, GTX 1070, 16 gb of ram, 500gb nvme (I wish my iMac will work the same fast and smooth like this cheap PC machine...)