Hi:
When you are creating the default graphic output, EG and SAS and SAS/GRAPH only have to create 1 image file and the HTML code that will point to the image file.
But, when you create a PDF or RTF file, 2 steps happen
1) the image is created
2) -THEN- the image is embedded in the PDF or RTF file using the "internal" graph description format used for PDF and/or RTF.
This second step is adding some overhead because of the conversion needed for embedding. Sort of like drawing a picture and then taking extra time to manually recopy the picture to another sheet of paper (in an office where you don't have a copy machine).
By itself, the embedding process is adding overhead...but then the PDF file creation is also impacted by the COMPRESS level that's being used for the step....so now, you're not just recopying the picture to another piece of paper, you're squishing it as part of the copy process. More overhead.
This may be a relevant Tech Support note:
http://support.sas.com/kb/8/362.html
Since you are running in EG, changing the COMPRESS option might not be easy for you to alter, since you would have to specify
COMPRESS=1 or COMPRESS=4 on the ODS PDF statement that EG generates for you. I can't remember whether there is an option to specify only part of the ODS PDF statement. The default COMPRESS level is set to 6... you could try experimenting with ODS PDF and setting COMPRESS to 0 and then ratcheting up to 6. Although you can go from 0 to 9, you probably don't want to go beyond 6, since that's too slow for you now.
You might also want to work with Tech Support on this question, too, as there are other issues that might be arising...such as the ones mentioned in these notes:
http://support.sas.com/kb/11/507.html
http://support.sas.com/kb/11/921.html
http://support.sas.com/kb/4/285.html
http://support.sas.com/kb/16/071.html
Tech Support can help you figure out the best approach.
cynthia