VERY disappointing Illustrator CS2 performance on a G5 Quad

[QuadG5]

I just spent a ridiculous amount of money to upgrade to Creative Suite 2 and to a Quad G5 and noticed that Illustrator CS2 uses only maximum 25% of my computer's processing power.

Using activity monitor I can see that Illustrator never goes beyond 100%, whereas Photoshop goes all the way to 400% usage when needed.

Saving/opening complex graphics still takes way too long, as also using 300ppi effects like outer glow. It's so frustrating to know that 3/4 of the processing power is just idle no matter how long the beachball spins on my screen.

And Adobe says Illustrator CS2 is a professional app with multiple processor support?!

Editing complex drawings is still painfully slow even if I have a Quad G5 with 4.5GB RAM... I'm so mad at Adobe right now...

Any suggestions what I should do?


Edit: Adobe should remove the following lie from their website:

Because Illustrator manipulates large quantities of data and performs many calculations, its speed is limited by the speed of the computer processor: The faster the processor, the faster Illustrator performs.

 

[iGary]

I switched back to CS1 after using CS2 on my dual 2.7 for a month.

I'm a much happier camper.

 

[QuadG5]

I switched back to CS1 after using CS2 on my dual 2.7 for a month. I'm a much happier camper.

Do you mean CS1 has better a multiprocessor support?

I just noticed it's the same thing with Distiller and postscript printing also.

I still have to wait way too long for Distiller to finish distilling (can take up to 10 minutes.) It could take only 2.5 min. if Adobe software didn't suck so badly.

 

[iGary]

No, it just doesn't crash and isn't as clunky, IMO.

CS2 supposedly has better dual processor support, but yeah, meh.

 

[dops7107]

Any suggestions what I should do?

I would get right on to Adobe and complain like crazy. See what their techies can do - if they even have a Quad G5 to play with

 

[QuadG5]

I would get right on to Adobe and complain like crazy. See what their techies can do - if they even have a Quad G5 to play with

I just called Adobe technical support about this and in short, their response was a big **** off:

" There is nothing that we or you can do to solve this, we're sorry "
" Maybe in the future there will be a better support for multiple processors / multiple cores but we can't give you any details "
" Use the feature request form on our website "

High-end Macs have had dual processors for five years, so it's not a new thing for Adobe or anybody else.

An application either supports multiple processors or not, at least to my understanding there's no difference if there are two or four processors.

On dual G4's and G5's, most of Adobe software has used max. 50% of the processing power, but with the Quad that changes to 25% because of the four cores.

Adobe should focus on making their apps more multiprocessor-aware than adding stupid unneeded, bloating "features" to their apps.

 

[Blue Velvet]

It doesn't surprise me in the least. Illustrator has had a weird upgrade path -- trading stability for new features, while some features remained untouched (e.g. graphing).

Out of all the CS1 apps I run at work it's the buggiest and frankly, most substandard of the 4.

Adobe are getting extremely complacent. We saw it happen with Quark -- they thought they were the industry standard and should set the pace. Now they've swallowed up Macromedia, I expect to see Freehand disappear.

Of course, there's always CorelDraw... oh, that was killed too.

 

[ATD]

I have a quad on order so that's not good news. I run Illustrator 10, CS1 and CS2, hopefully one of them works well. I have heard some great things about other programs on the quad, I'll know soon.

 

[Dark]

Geez, my heart goes out to you. I run CS1 on my Imac G5, that only has 1.5 gigs of ram, and so far ive only had it crash once and thats because i was running a slew of apps at the same time. I guess the multiple cores/processors really are the problem.

 

[iMeowbot]

Edit: Adobe should remove the following lie from their website:

Because Illustrator manipulates large quantities of data and performs many calculations, its speed is limited by the speed of the computer processor: The faster the processor, the faster Illustrator performs.

Well, they did use "processor" in the singular

They do need to do something about that, complex drawings get tiresome fast.

 

[Mike Teezie]

I'm really considering going back to Illustrator CS1.

If nothing else, just to get some speed back. The CS2 version is painfully slow on my Dual 2.0 G5 PM.

 

[Coheebuzz]

Thats why i've always used Freehand! Much faster than illustrator in every area since the beginning. I designed a 40 page magazine once in Freehand when Quark refused to work and although it was painfully slow it got the job done - that was on a G4 under OS9. And if i am correct illustrator still doesn't have multi-page support?

I would tell you to get the demo and try it out but since Adobe$ bought it its future looks dim!. I hope they learn a couple of things now thet they have the source code to look at.

 

[Lacero]

I've always thought of Illustrator as a dog in Adobe's software line-up. This only confirms it.

While I use Illustrator CS2, I don't use it frequently, but it was always the least favorite Adobe app I use.

Here's to the Crazy Ones ​

 

[mnkeybsness]

Are you guys kidding me? Illustrator CS2 works incredibly well for me on a 733MHz G4, I can't see it being that horrible on a quad-G5.

As for performance in CS2 vs. CS1, hands-down, CS2 beats CS1, not to mention that CS2 has much better stability, usability and features.

 

[Nspace]

As much as that sucks, I don't ever remember seeing Illustrator CS2 advertising multiprocessor support, I have mainly heard of only photoshop supporting it, so if thats true, then there is no one else to blame.

I use the entire creative suite 2 on my dual core pc, and it works great, never had a speed issue with illustrator. I am not quite sure what you are trying to do that is making it go so slow, I would do any of your non vector work Photoshop obviously and render any effects there as opposed to doing it in illustrator.

Freehand has some alright features but I have never really been a fan. If you want multi page support, thats what indesign is for, and it does an outstanding job.

 

[thirdkind]

Adobe are getting extremely complacent. We saw it happen with Quark -- they thought they were the industry standard and should set the pace. Now they've swallowed up Macromedia, I expect to see Freehand disappear.

I bought a Power Mac in September, having used Windows all my life. I owned both Studio MX and CS1 for Windows, and both Adobe and Macromedia offered me upgrade pricing on Mac licenses for Studio 8 and CS2. Imagine my surprise when I found Freehand was dropped from Studio 8. They still sell Freehand MX, but it only runs in Classic mode.

I like Freehand. I picked up on it a lot faster than Illustrator, which I still find too difficult to bother with (I do mostly web stuff anyway).

 

[bousozoku]

As much as that sucks, I don't ever remember seeing Illustrator CS2 advertising multiprocessor support, I have mainly heard of only photoshop supporting it, so if thats true, then there is no one else to blame.

I use the entire creative suite 2 on my dual core pc, and it works great, never had a speed issue with illustrator. I am not quite sure what you are trying to do that is making it go so slow, I would do any of your non vector work Photoshop obviously and render any effects there as opposed to doing it in illustrator.

Freehand has some alright features but I have never really been a fan. If you want multi page support, thats what indesign is for, and it does an outstanding job.

Photoshop had multiple processor support in Mac OS 8 and 9, due to an extension in Mac OS and a plug-in for Photoshop.

Any application on Mac OS X that is programmed with proper threading (Adobe? Ha!) will allow multiple processor support implicitly.

All of the Adobe applications have been getting slower but that's what happens when you don't do at least a simple re-design for Mac OS X. The stinking System 6 method of handling events does not work well on Mac OS X and the Mac OS X Carbon events don't work well on Mac OS 9.

If Adobe took the time to do such a thing instead of spending all of their effort on superficial upgrades, we'd all be amazed how quick even the slow G4s really are.

 

[iGav]

They still sell Freehand MX, but it only runs in Classic mode..

Nope, it works just dandy natively in OS X Freehand was the first Macromedia app to be ported to OS X back in '01.

If Adobe took the time to do such a thing instead of spending all of their effort on superficial upgrades, we'd all be amazed how quick even the slow G4s really are.

Ain't that the truth... though they were still better than Macromedia.

I wonder if Adobe will do a ground up rebuild for the Intel Macs???

 

[thirdkind]

Nope, it works just dandy natively in OS X Freehand was the first Macromedia app to be ported to OS X back in '01.

I was confused. I was looking at a page on Macromedia's site talking about Freehand 10. Freehand 11 runs natively in OS X.

 

[bousozoku]

Nope, it works just dandy natively in OS X Freehand was the first Macromedia app to be ported to OS X back in '01.

Ain't that the truth... though they were still better than Macromedia.

I wonder if Adobe will do a ground up rebuild for the Intel Macs???

Yes, Freehand was quite a while ahead of Illustrator but then Corel came out with a whole suite of applications that were native to Mac OS X. They weren't any better but they worked.

I'd be sad to see Freehand go away since it's a superior product, in my opinion.

Macromedia has had a lot of issues. For many of their applications, they went with Metrowerks PowerPlant application *cough* framework. When Metrowerks took forever converting PowerPlant to Mac OS X properly, Macromedia (and many others) were stuck with terribly slow applications.

 

[Coheebuzz]

I wonder if Adobe will do a ground up rebuild for the Intel Macs???

I wouldn't bet on it, i remember in an interview Bruce Chizen said that Windoze and OS X versions of their apps are based on the same code so this won't let them take advantage of technologies that are already included in OSX and they will always have to come up with their own.
And if you think about it they have fallen behind Apple tech-wise just like Microsoft did. Motion has almost killed AfterEffects on the Mac platform, and Premiere doesn't even come close to FinalCut.
Don't you think the same would happen if Apple came up with its own graphics software? The specs would do all the selling - Photoshop still doesn't even use 1% of the GPU

 

[ATD]

I have not noticed any problems with the apps I'm running on the Quad but do any of you Quad owners notice that you get pauses in the simple things like the finder windows? I have talked to a few other people that say the same thing.