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White flickering screen: Illustrator 2019 gltches out video card in Macs with AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB graphics card...

it's an Apple & Adobe conflict with each other regarding the AMD graphic card driver(s) + Mojave OS 10.14. Rolling back to Illustrator 2018 doesn't fix it. I first thought it was a physical hardware problem (dying graphics card) until we experienced the problem on multiple Macs in the same way.

This issue didn't exist prior to updating to Mojave, however, I think Mojave and Adobe were fine together until updating to Adobe CC's 2019 products which had the initial conflict and, in turn, created the same conflict for the prior Adobe CC versions + Mojave.

I 100% believe there is a problem with the 2019 suite on Macs running MacOS 10.14 Mojave AND this particular graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB. I think the drivers for this particular model of graphic card were not updated or accounted for by Adobe when updating their products to the 2019 suite. The problem did not exist when we updated to Mojave and were running the 2018 suite. Everything ran just fine, including having the GPU performance turned on. I would even say that possibly the initial 2019 23.0 version of Illustrator was fine, but one of the incremental updates messed it up. I think I was running 23.0 with no problems as well, but I can't be totally sure. Now, the 2018 version experiences the same issue.

So -- I believe something in an Adobe 2019 update messed its functionality with Macs that have the AMD Radeon R9 M390 graphics card, in turn, passing the problem on to previous versions of Illustrator and possibly InDesign.

The quick fix (it seems for now) is to turn off GPU Performance. This makes using Illustrator very draggy and slow, but the screen flicker has stopped. This needs to be addressed by Adobe and fixed.

More details and discussion on this video card glitch can be found here:
https://forums.adobe.com/message/11159643

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  • Chris commented  ·   ·  Report

    for the last year or two, I've had to switch to CPU usage in illustrator.

    if I don't stuff just disappears. usually on larger files. I don't have rendering issues in PS even when files are GB+

  • Anon commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'm having the same Issue in 2022 with Big Sur

  • Jillian Werb commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have not upgraded to Catalina, but the problem stopped for me a while ago. I don't know why. I still have Microsoft's Office programs installed. *shrug*

  • Craig Rolfe commented  ·   ·  Report

    Our's appears to now be fixed with an update to the latest OS Catalina. It's been 2 weeks now and no issues.

  • Kristine commented  ·   ·  Report

    I too updated to Catalina. It's been about 2 weeks with GPU performance turned back on and I've had no further issues with flickering from both Illustrator and InDesign. Fingers crossed that by typing this, I'm not jinxing it.

  • Jimmy commented  ·   ·  Report

    I've upated to 10.15 macOS Catalina and so far I have not experienced any white flickering. Has anyone else updated and still had this white flickering? I've managed to survive at least a week so far without white flickering. Performance of Illustrator is still sluggish but no flickering so far.

    Just as a side-note your 32-bit apps will no longer be supported when you do upgrade, which may be another Mac issue for some.

  • Rob commented  ·   ·  Report

    Same issue
    -late 2015 iMac 27" 5k 4ghz i7
    -Radeon R9 M395 2GB
    -10.14.6
    -Second display LG Ultranfine
    -Illustrator 23.1.1

    The problem starts with dragging objects in Illustrator. Issue also occurs on second display, though not as bad as on the iMac Retina Display.

    STOP THE FLICKER-
    If I go into the Sys Prefs: Displays: Built-in Retina Display: select "scaled" then chose another option aside from the selected "Default", then swap back to "Default", it seems to fix the problem for a short time. DO NOT make these changes to the external display. I did this and ended up with both displays going black and had to reboot. I have also worked in the scaled mode for extended periods without issue. Not ideal for me, but tolerable. If I return to "Default" and no scaling the issue will eventually resurface.

  • Chris commented  ·   ·  Report

    Similar issues here

    Mojave 10.14.6
    iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
    4 GHz Intel Core i7
    32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
    AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB
    with secondary monitor (flickering only happens on iMac

    illustrator 23.0.6

  • Mary Read commented  ·   ·  Report

    So far I've had two flash and flicker-free days since updating to Catalina, which has thrilled me to no end. Thank you to the engineers who took care of this! However, there are other Adobe issues so I have brand new problems to research. Thus was it ever so.

    Photoshop masks are not working at all and there are glitches when saving as, plus I keep getting notifications that Acrobat Pro is malign and will damage my system if I don't put it in the trash, so I am off to other forums. This is exactly how I want to spend my day!

  • Chris B commented  ·   ·  Report

    Catalina seems to have fixed the problem for us. Keeping our eye on it though!

  • Jimmy commented  ·   ·  Report

    White flickering frequency has increased over the last month. I do not use any standard Office applications. I do have Windows Remote Desktop installed, but use Thunderbird for emails and LibreOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office. I'm not so convinced the two are related as I don't have Outlook, Excel or Word installed. Performance in general has not improved with each version of Illustrator and 2019 is noticeably worse than 2018, and there are other forum posts regarding the laggy performance issues. The white flickering issue still occurs on Illustrator 2018 as I have previously reported in other support tickets.

    I'd also like to know if any other posters who have installed Catalina are experiencing white flickering.

    My Setup:
    iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
    4 GHz Intel Core i7
    Memory 16 GB
    AMD Radeon R9 M395 2GB

    Resolution: 5120 x 2880
    Mac OS 10.14.6

  • Chris B commented  ·   ·  Report

    I've also updated to Catalina this morning. I've re-enabled GPU Performance in InDesign and so far no problems, but it usually starts happening in the afternoon for me. Will report back...

  • Marc Swarbrick commented  ·   ·  Report

    I've updated to Catalina, I'll report back if the problem persists.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    Anyone updated to Catalina yet? (it got released yesterday, but maybe some of you have ran it in beta?)

    Does that get rid of this issue?

  • Shannendoah Gallagher commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have Microsoft Suite installed, but I was not using any of the programs when my monitor started flickering.

    My system is iMac Retina 5k 27-inch
    3.2 GHz Intel Core i5
    AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB

    I’m badly in need of consistent use of Illustrator for this project. The current workaround suggestion of turning off GPU is not an option I can use for this size project.

  • Lorena commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have the same issue, and it only happens when I'm working with Illustrator.
    I have some Office Applications installed; Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneDrive.

    I don't have exactly the same graphic card, but my iMac is also from 2015:
    Retina 5K, 27-inch, Mid 2015
    3.3 GHz Intel Core i5
    16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
    AMD Radeon R9 M290 2 GB

    This problem is so annoying, please help us.

  • Grace Reid commented  ·   ·  Report

    I just updated to Illustrator 23.1.1 (Sept. 27, 2019), which promised fixes to something like 47 user submitted bugs. This issue clearly didn't make that cut, since my screen just started flashing wildly at me after about an hour of work. What is it going to take to get this fixed? Are there not enough of us complaining?

    It may be a late 2015 build, but I bought my machine in December 2016 -- this issue made it practically unusable for work after approximately 30 months, when I updated to Mojave. As a self-employed designer dependent on CS to make a living, it is not feasible to have to buy a new iMac so soon just to get CS to work properly. This whole situation is deeply stressful. What recourse do people like me have but to throw ourselves on the mercy of the software engineers at Adobe? I'm on my knees, dearest Adobe staff,. Please, please, please help!

  • Chris Aveni commented  ·   ·  Report

    I work with a 30 plus 2015 iMacs all running the AMD Radeon R9 M390 2GB GPU. Our entire office only uses the web apps for Microsoft office. The only Microsoft application that a handful of people may download is Microsoft Teams. I currently have 4 Macs that will experience this issues. We have replaced the Macs with the same 2015 model after having the Apple Store take a look and we get the same result. Does anyone have steps to reproduce handy?

    all of the Macs in our office have the following specs
    iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
    4 GHz Intel Core i7
    32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
    AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB

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