How does Photoshop work?

[FIPhoto]

This is my first thread with Anandtech. Great site. Keep up the good work.

I am a photographer that uses Photoshop CS4 and I have been beta testing Lightroom 3.0.

I'm building a new system: i5 750, 8gig ram with an Intel ssd. Money is tight and I would buy a better video card if needed. I do not think the above components will bottleneck my workload.

What level of video card should I buy? Sorry, I do not game at all :.(
Something small like a Radeon HD 5450, middle size or would full boat HD 4890 (that is my top $ limit).

Would two 512 meg cards work better than on 1 gig card? I'm ok with SLI or crossfire.

Thanks

 

[LittleNemoNES]

IMO A weak card but with lots of ram is ideal for a 'chop only build.

 

[elconejito]

You 100% do NOT need a high-end video card for either Photoshop or lightroom. Any recent video card that supports OpenGL will do. Which is basically any card not made by Intel. If you buy a better video card and you're not gaming it's just a waste of money.

A good choice is the ATI 4350 which can be had for about $30-$50. I'm not sure if there is a 5XXX series equivalent to that card.

And DEFINITELY, only ONE card. CS4 does NOT support multi-card SLI or XFire setups.

 

[lavaheadache]

just to clarify things for the op. When you crossfire or sli, you don't add the ram together as it is a shared frame buffer.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I do believe Photoshop works by sending machine code to your processor which then processes it.

 

[blanketyblank]

I read there is a patch where you can use the processing power of some nvidia cards to increase the speed significantly in photoshop. I think it was only on their quadro cards though, but I think you can mod certain cards to do it.

http://gizmodo.com/5064946/nvidia-quadro-cx-accelerates-adobe-cs4-up-to-11

quadros are definitely not in your budget range though. However maybe something like this would work:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t37552.html

Others might have more experience doing this though.

 

[CurseTheSky]

A better / second graphics card isn't going to help you. You already have 8GB of memory and a SSD, so you should be golden. If it's STILL unbearably slow, you might get some better performance with more memory (12GB? 16GB?) - but that will get expensive fast - or by overclocking the processor - but I wouldn't recommend that for a work computer.

 

[Tsavo]

I read there is a patch where you can use the processing power of some nvidia cards to increase the speed significantly in photoshop. I think it was only on their quadro cards though, but I think you can mod certain cards to do it.

http://gizmodo.com/5064946/nvidia-quadro-cx-accelerates-adobe-cs4-up-to-11

quadros are definitely not in your budget range though. However maybe something like this would work:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t37552.html

Others might have more experience doing this though.

Wrong. Photoshop CS4 supports a lot of cards.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html

 

[Tsavo]

You 100% do NOT need a high-end video card for either Photoshop or lightroom. Any recent video card that supports OpenGL will do. Which is basically any card not made by Intel. If you buy a better video card and you're not gaming it's just a waste of money.

A good choice is the ATI 4350 which can be had for about $30-$50. I'm not sure if there is a 5XXX series equivalent to that card.

And DEFINITELY, only ONE card. CS4 does NOT support multi-card SLI or XFire setups.

Spot on. I run Photoshop CS4 on ATI 3850 and 4850 and there's no difference in speed.

 

[elconejito]

I've been posting these links for over a year now...

GPU and OpenGL Features and Limitations in Photoshop CS4
List of tested graphics display cards for Photoshop CS4

Note that the features that use GPU acceleration aren't related to processing. Just for display and user interface (like panning & zooming). Don't buy a Quadro card, that post above is oooooollllllllddddddd and outdated. They were going to have a ton of stuff GPU accelerated, but then when CS4 launched it was only a handful of features that have acceleration. For full details, check the link and it lists exactly what is accelerated by the GPU.

Don't buy a ton of RAM if you don't need it. Check your Photoshop scratch sizes and see how much you are using before you break the bank on buying new memory (If you don't know how to check, post back here). Honestly, if you don't know for SURE that you need that much RAM, odds are you don't.

Really, the best way to improve Photoshop CS4 speed is with a faster CPU. RAM is only a factor if you don't have enough. And a hard drive (SSD or otherwise) is only a factor for doing large batches of files (think thousands of files), or HUGE files that won't fit in RAM (think multi-GB panoramas).

Important notes directly from the FAQ in the first link:
Q. My display card isn't on the list of supported cards, but it's in the same series of a supported card. Will my display card work?
A. Most likely it will work. It's impossible to test every combination of cards on the market, so we focused on the most popular cards. Cards from the same series should work without a problem.

Q. How much RAM do I need on my display card to run faster in Photoshop CS4?
A. For basic OpenGL functionality, you should have at least 128 MB of RAM on your display card. If you're running Windows XP in general, OpenGL will work best if you have 256 MB RAM on your display card. Most Photoshop work will run faster with between 256 - 512 MB of display RAM. If you do a lot of 3D work, you use Panoramas or large images, or you need to have multiple applications open at the same time that use the GPU, you might benefit by having 512 MB or more RAM on the display card.

Q. Does Photoshop take advantage of dual-GPU display cards?
A. Not at this time.

Q. Is Photoshop Camera Raw GPU accelerated?
A. No.

Q. Is Photoshop Lightroom GPU accelerated?
A. No.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

And DEFINITELY, only ONE card. CS4 does NOT support multi-card SLI or XFire setups.

SLI may not work, but I use multi monitor in PS4 exclusively. All my panels go on one monitor, and the image I am working on is in the other one.

 

[elconejito]

Yes, multi-monitor is supported (and fabulous) but you don't need multiple cards for that since one card will drive two monitors. I usually keep PS and Illustrator on one monitor (which is calibrated), and the other monitor I fill with stuff that isn't color sensitive like InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc. Then I have some windows like firefox/outlook that I drag wherever it's not in my way.

Although i don't know how it would work with something like eyefinity. I suspect that you spread out your layout, but GPU acceleration would only work on the primary monitor. Might be an interesting experiment.

 

[taltamir]

photoshop can use nvidia cards to "accelerate" its work...
which is utterly pointless unless you are doing massive commercial batch work that is time sensitive...
for almost everyone it is better to use CPU only. that means just get any basic card with DX10 support from nvidia or AMD