Final word on photoshop GPU acceleration ?

[Deleted member 4644]

I am trying to understand Photoshop CPU acceleration.

From what I can tell, there is a tech called CUDA that is NVIDIA only, and only on certain cards?

And there is Open GL acceleration too?

And Photoshop CS5 is different than CS4 in some regarding related to GPUs?

Can someone explain all this to me?

I am going to build a photoshop machine for a friend and I don't know if I should get him a $60 GPU or a $400 GPU.

He will be using a 30" monitor and CS5 when it arrives.

 

[mfenn]

This link has a good explanation of the background.

Basically, from what I've read, Photoshop CS5 does have some filters that are GPU-accelerated, but the real CUDA benefits are realized in Premiere Pro. So if your friend isn't using Premiere, it might not be worth it. Although, even a cheap GT 240 has some respectable CUDA power. It might be worthwhile putting one of those in (if he's not going to be playing games).

 

[luv2increase]

If your friend is just going to be using Photoshop, I'd recommend a 5750. It has a GB of VRAM and will handle OpenGL GPU acceleration just fine for Photoshop.

If your friend is going to be using Premiere Pro CS5, I'd recommend a newer Nvidia GPU because the new Mercury Playback Engine is coded for CUDA GPU acceleration. In the future, Adobe is going to port their Mercury Playback Engine to OpenCL so it will work on ATI cards too.