I quit auto-updating Jetbrains products years ago and it turned out to be a great decision for me. So many updates seemed to just shuffle around UI elements that I had memorized or worsen the performance. Now I only update when there's a specific reason to, and I'm not sure there ever will be a compelling reason to upgrade beyond my current versions; there's a good chance I'll do like the OP and find a more performant editor at that point.

I don't want to sound too negative since I do like their products, but it feels like they've fallen into the same trap as a lot of SAAS companies. They have to constantly make "improvements" to justify regular subscription fees. Their products were pretty great a decade ago. Since then they've made a gazillion changes but I can probably count on one hand the number of them that I found truly useful.

Performance issues haven't been as bad for me as the TFA says, but they certainly use a lot of resources, even after I aggressively removed a bunch of default plugins and disabled features I don't use. Performance improvements would be a nice feature, but those changes rarely make the top of the SAAS priority list.