CS4 lag. What graphic card will it take?

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

I have:

XP32 SP3
4GB Ram (3.25 are used by XP)
Nvidia 8800 GTS, all up to date drivers
Quad Core Q6850 (3ghz)

And I experience very unpleasant lag in CS4. It feels very sluggish. And I disabled all advanced options in OpenGL. That helped a bit, but it is still laggy. For instance, moving a windowed image has a delay of 1 second before it actually starts moving. Type tool feels sluggish too.

So I'm wondering: would upgrading the video card to something else get rid of the annoying lag? And if so, what will it take?

[Myle...@adobeforums.com]

Changing the graphics card will not do anything most likely. The lag is easily explained as the card reloading the "texture" image (your canvas). It's just unclear why it's doing it, so it's most likely some silly little switch in the graphics card settings that prevents PS to permanently hold the buffer on the card. May also simply be that you are using large screen resolution in combination with large images and run out of memory. What is your screen res? Also: do you use any color profile stuff?

Mylenium

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for your reply.
I have dual screen setup. My main screen is 1600x1200, and the second screen (extended desktop) is 1280x1024. I assume this is pretty much a standard setup by today's standards.

No matter what size of image I work on, I have the lag happening. FOr instance, I did a test earlier between CS3 and CS4. I created a new 900x900px image with only white background. I used the type tool to write a sentence using size 14 arial font. In CS4, I have a small lag when I type, compared to none in CS3. If I try moving my text layer in my image, in CS4 it is very clear that I experience lag (if I could compare it to frame rate, I'd say I have a frame rate of approximately 7fps) compared to CS3 where the same text layer moves very fluently.

This is just one example of the type of lag experienced in CS4. To me, this type of lag is absolutely unacceptable when working in PS. I really hope they can find "the switch" you are referring to. ;-)

What amazes me most is that I'm sure they are aware of this serious problem in PS. The forum is flooded with posts from people experiencing lag in PS CS4. It amazes me from adobe to release the software this way. It looks like the Lightroom 2.0 release... so buggy, it was unusable for many people until they actually released 2.1 (last week, almost two months after its release). Understand I'm not ranting here, really! I am just expressing my surprise. I have come to expect higher quality level from adobe, that's all. I just hope they'll fix the CS4 problems sooner than later.

Peace.

[John Joslin]

extended desktop

What is that?

Your card is not on the list here:

<http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405711&sliceId=1>

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

In my experience screen redraw (without OpenGL) is much slower in CS4 than in CS3 (Vista 32bit/Geforce 8600GT with 512MB video Ram here). Just zoom in or out or move layer with the move tool. You can see CS4 redrawing the picture in tiles.
Same as CS3 of course, but CS3 does it a lot faster.
With OpenGL on, that screen redraw is harder to see, but it still takes place "under the hood".

[Lawrenc...@adobeforums.com]

Looking over the specs for that card on the nVidia website, compared to all the 8800 series, I can hardly see why his card should be so sluggish.

[Stefan...@adobeforums.com]

I guess the sluggishness that many people are experiencing does not come from a slow graphics card or a bad driver because if you turn OFF OpenGL CS4 is still sluggish and has a slow screen redraw compared to CS3.

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

extended desktop... Only means My windows desktop uses the two displays. Monitor 1 is my main desktop, Monitor 2 is just the extended desktop (more room to put things on the desktop).

Hmmmm.... just saw the compatibility page. Indeed, Nvidia 8800 GTS is not in there. I wonder why! All the other 8800 GT are there. I wonder why.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

Hmmm, just a query: How many watts is your power supply?

[John Joslin]

windows desktop uses the two displays

OK, there are some card manufacturers' utilities that mess with display drawing. I just use Windows' own Display Properties panel.

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

Bart: Power Supply has lots of watts... 740 I think, or something like that.

John: I use Windows' display properties for my desktop too. I don't use any of NVIDIA's control panel functions.

[Ray_...@adobeforums.com]

I am not experiencing the lag myself

Vista Ultimate SP1 32bit
4GB Ram
Nvidia 8500 GT 512, all up to date drivers (Also not listed but fully supported)
Quad Core Q6600 (2.40ghz)
24" Flat screen monitor with 1920 X 1200 screen resolution

I duplicated your example in both CS3 and CS4 and see no real difference.

Under Edit/Preferences/Performance
I am showing:
Available Ram 1643 MB
Let Photoshop Use 1150 MB (70%)
I have my scratch disk set to a 500GB internal drive with 341GB free.

Hope this helps.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

Martin: I was just asking because 450 really isn't enough, I'm running a 750 and not having a problem, so I know that isn't an issue for you. Sometimes it appears that some posters have a minimal PSU and it does create problems.

[Lawrenc...@adobeforums.com]

The power supply will crash the box if overloaded. It would really be weird if it slowed down a particular process only.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

echo what lawrence said.
rem
rem
rem
@echo off

[Koo...@adobeforums.com]

" For instance, moving a windowed image has a delay of 1 second before it actually starts moving. Type tool feels sluggish too"

yes just another reason why floating document mode in CS4 is shit.. I too notice this delayed laggy shit movement.

8800gtx 512mb latest drivers.. 1900x1200 24" (very good powersupply, btw do you think the problem could be Adobe and the lame Photoshop release and perhaps not someones powersupply jeesh ffs)

doesn't even matter what size the image is.. could be a megapixel photo.. or a web graphic.. the delay in floating doc mode is there..

[John Joslin]

Not here matey!

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

I'm seeing the delay and a lot of flickering in images, regardless of what mode I'm using (floating window, tabbed, etc.) My GPU is the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, 512MB RAM, latest drivers. I realize it's not on the list of tested cards, but it does support OpenGL and Shader technology. I'm somewhat limited on which cards I can use, as my mobo is AGP.

[chris_...@adobeforums.com]

I think there could be other factors involved that are outside of the influence of the gpu. Like O/S type, how much RAM and it's speed / FSB speed / processor type / hard drive speed and No. of drives ( separate disks for scratch file and page file etc ). Everything works together on a system and to purely focus on a gpu may not realistically solve the problem.

Now, I have resolved my initial problems, CS4 is really fast...Get as much ram as you can afford or your motherboard supports and get vista x64. Don't bother with XP - why limit yourself to <2 gb available RAM.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Anthony, I'm on XP Pro, 4GB RAM, scratch on it's own partition of a Raptor drive. I just tried raising the cache to 8, and it didn't make a difference in the hesitation when dragging windows around. It's not terrible, just not as smooth as with CS3.

But (and this is a BIG BUT), I just checked with ATI and they've posted yet another new driver for the card. I upgraded my driver about a week ago when I installed CS4, and they apparently released the newer driver the day after I upgraded. The newest driver has caused the flickering to go away when dragging images, and got rid of "junk pixels" that were left here and there.

Moral of the story: Even if you recently upgraded your driver, check again.

I've also sent an email to ATI support, asking them for optimum settings in the Catalyst Control Center for using the card with CS4. I did some tweaking of settings in Catalyst Control earlier this morning, but have since reset them to factory defaults. My problem is that some of the control names mean nothing to me, and I need to know which controls might relate directly to what CS4 needs.

[Anthon...@adobeforums.com]

Nick, The version of the drivers I am running is 8.10 with a date on them of 15th October which seem to be the latest ones.

If you get any info from ATI perhaps you would post it so that we can see if there is anything to be done...

Anthony.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Anthony, the only response I got from ATI was something to the effect that I had probably not installed the drivers correctly. I tried un-installing and re-installing them, by the letter, according to their instructions, and am still seeing the hesitation problem.

They completely ignored my question, which had to do with explaining what the various controls in Catalyst Control really applied to, as regards Photoshop. As usual, ATI (like most high-end vid card manufacturers) cares most about gamers.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

As usual, ATI (like most high-end vid card manufacturers) cares most about
gamers.

not if they keep getting bug reports. and not if they hear nvidia's doing something about their bugs...

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

I'm bugged by this, and here's why.

Adobe decided to go with this high-falutin' OpenGL, Shader stuff. OK, fine. I like the continuous zoom and sharpness at all percentages, but it opens up a whole new can-o-worms. Who has the right vid cards? Do those vid cards have the right drivers?

I've been with PS since version 4. Seen a lot of complaints, and always upgraded my system according to what I thought was reasonably necessary. Yelled at Chris Cox a few times, but I hope he still doesn't hate me.

This upgrade is a bit more tricky, IMO. I have a mobo that only supports AGP, so I'm somewhat limited. Also, I won't upgrade to Vista until I'm sure that it's (uh, hello, Windows users) stable and reliable.

OK, end of rant. I hope y'all know that I love PS. It makes my living for me, I'm just a bit flustrated.

Nick

[Russell...@adobeforums.com]

I won't upgrade to Vista until I'm sure that it's (uh, hello, Windows
users) stable and reliable.

Nick,

I think Vista is very stable and reliable. XP folks (like me) didn't rush out to embrace it because Vista mostly added a lot of resource hogging eye candy (a la Mac) that took time and learning to turn off and it didn't offer enough really compelling 'gotta-have' features that would have folks switch from what already works very well (if it ain't broke..). Had Vista come out instead of XP 'way back when' then I'm sure folks would all be happily using it. Vista64 runs very well and Adobe's now given us a very good reason to use it. IMO Vista too often gets an undeserved bad rap.

Russell :-)

[Larry...@adobeforums.com]

I'm having the same problems with extreme lag.

I have an nVidia Quadro FX 1500, with 256 MB RAM and the latest driver. I note that it is listed as having been tested with CS4, and the nVidia site also says it works with OpenGL acceleration in CS4.

I have only one monitor, set at 1920x1200.

Whether Open GL is enabled or not enabled, I experience extreme lag when using any drawing tools. Even after a fresh reboot, with no other apps running, I open a new file, draw a single line with the pencil tool, and the lag is at least half a second behind. When using a brush with soft edges, the lag is so bad I have time to pick up a cup of coffee and take a sip before the line finishes appearing on the screen.

I have tried every combination of settings in the GPU Advanced Settings. When I disable everything except Advanced Drawing, I notice a very slight improvement.

In the nVidia control panel, I have set everything to default. I tried various settings there, but nothing made a difference.

I never experienced any lag at all in Photoshop CS3 on this same system. I do not experience lag in Flash, Illustrator or other Adobe CS4 apps.

As an artist, Photoshop CS4 is totally unusable for me. Help!

If anyone has advice on using my specific card, finding the magic setting that I need to turn on or off, I will appreciate it.

System specs:

Windows XP SP3

2 GB RAM

Intel Core Duo 6600 2.40GHz

Available RAM (reported in Photoshop): 1677 MB

Photoshop uses: 1006 MB

Scratch discs: 132 GB available

nVidia Quadro FX 1500 256 MB

nVidia driver: 178.26 (released 15 October 2008)

NEC 2490WUXi monitor

[Anthon...@adobeforums.com]

[..]

They completely ignored my question, which had to do with explaining what the various controls in Catalyst Control really applied to, as regards Photoshop.

[..]

Nick, Sorry to hear this. Thanks for getting back to us.

By the way, I would endorse the positive comments about Vista. My only caveat all along has been that it should be a fresh install: I loaded up on day one on a new machine. To try and install it over another OS is the sure path to madness.

Anthony.

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

I have experienced the same problems regarding lag. I got in touch with Adobe and part of their response said, "Photoshop CS4 relies heavily on video cards, and we have noticed some
issues with some of these features."

As a matter of interest I have now installed CS4 on a machine with an old graphics card which is not recognised by CS4, and so GPU acceleration is totally disabled. Guess what? No lag whatsoever, and I have not noticed any loss of feature other than the rotate tool.

Makes you wonder why use the video card at all.

[John Joslin]

Below is a list of the Photoshop CS4 and Bridge CS4 features that are accelerated by a GPU. To read more about these features, see "GPU accelerated features in Photoshop and Bridge CS4" (TechNote kb405745).

OpenGL/GPU features in Adobe Photoshop CS4 are:

* Smooth Display at ALL Zoom Levels
* Animated Zoom Tool
* Animated Transitions when doing a One Stop Zoom
* Hand Toss Image
* Birdseye View
* Rotate Canvas
* Smooth Display of Non Square Pixel Images
* Pixel Grid
* Move Color Matching to the GPU
* Draw Brush Tip Editing Feedback via GPU
* 3D GPU features include:
o 3D Acceleration
o 3D Axis
o 3D Lights Widget
o Accelerated 3D Interaction via Direct To Screen

GPU features in Bridge CS4 are:

* Preview Panel
* Full-screen preview
* Carousel-style View

[Lawrenc...@adobeforums.com]

Golly! How can I live without all those features!

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Rotate canvas could come in handy when making complex masks. But I never had a problem sharpening at 100 or 200%.

Instant response to everything here. NVidia 8500 GT with 178.24 released oct. 15 (Vista 64). Dual monitors at 1680 x 1050.

[Larry...@adobeforums.com]

Anyone experiencing problems should file an official bug report:

<http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform>

I reported my problem to Adobe and got requests for more details from two Adobe engineers with 12 hours. If more people report the problem, with their system specs, maybe Adobe engineers will be able to isolate the problem, fix it, and issue a patch ASAP.

I also wrote to nVidia and got this reply:

"We have investigated and found that Adobe added a file open/close call around every draw operation and we await a fix from Adobe. When we receive a fix from Adobe we will investigate if performance still needs to be improved in our driver. Sorry for the extreme inconvenience this causes you. You may want to periodically check if Adobe has an update that fixes this issue."

By the way, like someone else reported above, I tried Photoshop CS4 on my son's 4-year-old computer with a much older graphics card - though that card's driver does support OpenGL - and guess what? No lag at all, with OpenGL enabled. Maybe I need to go on eBay and find an ancient graphics card, since Photoshop doesn't work well with my new-ish one.

[xrd...@adobeforums.com]

I'm considering taking out my new nVidia card and putting back my Matrox Parhelia :o(

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Someone at NVidia is several weeks behind.... We'll try to follow up on that.

And maybe you can suggest to NVidia that they sell their older cards as a performance optimization. (sorry, still laughing about that part)

[Larry...@adobeforums.com]

Chris,

I truly hope you will follow up with nVidia. I'm not sure who's passing the buck to whom on this issue. nVidia's response to me makes it clear they consider it is entirely Adobe's problem (and I tend to agree, since no other app I have, including graphics-intensive animation applications, has any issues like this). But your comment about "several weeks behind" makes it sound like Adobe's perspective is that nVidia is lagging (pun intended) on fixing their driver.

Meanwhile, it's very real to me, and is severely affecting my work flow. I don't really want to reinstall CS3 just to have a working copy of Photoshop, but will likely do so. Though I'll feel I wasted money on the upgrade until this issue is fixed once and for all.

[Mar...@adobeforums.com]

I thought I would post about the following test I did yesterday. I have in my studio a dated machine (by today's standards) and thought I would test PS CS4 on it.

AMD 3500+ (this is one core only)
2GB RAM (clocked at 333)
VISTA 64
1x 400GB hard disk (main system drive)
ATI Radeon 1600

I installed PS CS4 and did a few tests with it.

OpenGL is ON by default in CS4 on that machine. I unchecked the advanced options under OpenGL.

So far, the tests show very little to no lag. I did some typing in a 900x900px white image. I typed a few texts, and text character lag is almost not noticeable. Also, I tried moving the text layer around, and it is quite responsive. I added a glow effect on the text, and it moved the same way as without the effect.

Zooming in and out is very responsive, a LOT more than my quad core machine with my Nvidia 8800 GTS. In fact, there is no lag at all with the zooming, as opposed to my high performance machine where I always experience at least a 1 second lag before the zoom in/out.

I haven't tried larger images yet due to lack of time. But the tests mentioned above proved to be laggy on my big machine, which is:

XP32 SP3
4GB Ram (clocked at 800, 3.25 are used by XP)
Nvidia 8800 GTS, all up to date drivers
Quad Core Q6850 (3ghz)

Strange isn't it?

[Rick Moore]

I can confirm with the machine below that CS4 with OpenGL turned off is
laggier than CS2. With OpenGL turned on it's even slower.

XP32 SP3
4GB Ram
Nvidia 8800 GTS, 178.24
Core 2 DuoE8500 (3ghz)

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

My experience so far;

I just installed the CS4 Design Premium upgrade this morning.

System:
GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard
Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz
CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
Nvidia Quadro FX3700 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX 620W
Two: Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10000 RPM Drives
One: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM
NEC MultiSync LCD2490WUXi at 1920 x 1200
XP sp3 with all the latest drivers

The only other applications on the system at present are Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint from Office XP.

When I make a major upgrade like this, I delete my partitions off my first physical drive and do a complete reinstall so I need to add back my Solidworks and Corel Painter. I think I'll wait on the Wacom drivers. I installed from a hard drive and the installation seemed to be smooth and in preliminary tests, everything seems to be working. I'm not really noticing any lags in Photoshop, however, when I exit out of the preferences dialog, the menu bar is always minus a row of pixels and the bar overlaps the restore-exit buttons so that you have to go to file - exit if you want to close the app. Once you click inside the document window, the bar refreshes and looks fine. It's no big deal, but it looks a bit sloppy.

I'm not seeing any real difference with Open GL turned on or off and for me, some of the features listed for using the Open GL seem a bit gimmicky so at this point, I'm questioning benefits versus some of the problems others are seeing. I'm sure others may feel differently, but I rarely work on files any larger than 100 meg.
I have only used CS3 briefly so for the most part I'm coming from CS2 and the new interface is going to take some getting used to.

I hope this isn't going to turn into another CS2 "it's your video card - no it's your application" argument, which finally got fixed in the last update after a long period of denial.

Paul

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

Same problem on the following system:
XP Pro SP3
Pentium D930
3 GB RAM
MSI GeForce 8800 GT
Only 1 HDD
Latest Nvidia driver
GPU acceleration on/off doesn't make any difference

I have CS3 installed already which runs perfectly. CS4 produces all the issues mentioned so far i.e. laggy as h... in every regard. I am unable to draw a simple circle using the brush due to lag - it just produces a straight line if I am lucky.

I will be calling Adobe tomorrow to get information on how to ship the product back and get a refund. I don't want to bother with this.

As a side note, my brother has the exact same PC as I with the sole exception that I upgraded my GFX to the 8800 GT (they are both Dell Dimension 9150 PCs) and his version runs perfectly.

[d_c...@adobeforums.com]

Works perfectly for me with an ATI Gigabyte 4850 (Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GH GeForce ATI Radeon HD 4850 1GB ATX DVI-I Graphics Card)

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

After more testing, I do see a lag when dragging text around, it's not big, but it's definitely not locked onto the move tool like CS2 was. Also in Open GL mode, every time I move the document window, and let go of the mouse, the document window blips, like it's doing a quick refresh so I'm turning off Open GL (I don't think it's ready for prime time) So far, I wouldn't say what I'm seeing makes this unusable, but it sure feels clumsy. I hope we get a fix soon.

See specs above in post #38

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

Has anyone else noticed that the problem is sporadic and seems to vary from day to day? Yesterday I found that the lag was so bad it wasn't worth using, today it has almost disappeared. There are no programs running or not running which would explain the difference.

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

It seemed as though it has trouble moving pixels. Paths moved OK. A large filled circle would only move in sections before it caught up. Images from my Canon 5D brought in through camera raw could hardly be move around the screen. There was a huge lag and you see two documents for a second and then the final image starts to redraw. When moving smaller images in Open GL mode, upon release of the mouse buttom, you see a flash as though the image is doing a refresh.

Paul

[Adam_J...@adobeforums.com]

Paul,

Please email me directly. I have a potential fix that I'd like you to test.

My (non-adobe) email: travlin_adam at yahoo dot com

Thanks,
-Adam (PS QE)

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Adam, nice to see that you guys are on this. I've sent you an email as well.

Nick

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

I forgot to mention that I also did several other tests with older drivers and with uninstalling the nvidia driver altogether and the results were always the same, so I'm a bit hazy on how you can blame a driver if using no driver (other than the generic windows driver) still exhibits the same problem? In other words, if I turn open GL off so that I'm not using anything exotic, why shouldn't it perform like previous versions of Photoshop.

Paul

[Adam_J...@adobeforums.com]

Here's the link to the optional GPU registry keys for CS4:

<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4056&fileID=3769>

What's worked for some people experiencing the CS4 performance lag (especially those running XP SP3) is to try using the AllowOldGPUS_ON.reg key. To use it, download the zip archive from the above link and double click on that specific registry key - DO NOT use the other registry keys unless you feel confident that you can get things back to default settings. Using the AllowOldGPUS_ON.reg key will not disable anything in the application.

Once you've enabled the registry, quit and re-launch CS4.

Still having performance issues? Try disabling the options in the Advanced Settings... dialog of the GPU options (be sure to quit and re-launch the app after changing these settings).

If this helps, please post here as I'm trying to determine what's the best workaround for this problem.

Thanks for everyone's help with this,
-Adam

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

I'll give this a go when I get back from work tonight. I have alerted Nvidia about the issue, even though I am not at all sure that the drivers are to blame.

Adam: If I de-crypted the complex reg-key name correctly, the key enables some features for older graphics card as well as the officially supported ones? Why should this have an effect on newer cards like the 8800-series several of us have issues with?

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

I had already tried this to no effect.

[Michael...@adobeforums.com]

Adam Jerugim, thanks for that tip. It has improved things a little bit more for me.

I have 4gig of ram, Windows Vista Sp1 32 bit, 2.4 Ghz Quad core Pentium, Nvidia 8800 GTX 768 meg, with the latest driver.
2 hard drives, the lager 700gig plus one (secondary) set as the main scratch disk. Resolution is 1900x1200 on the primary monitor and 1600x1200 on my secondary (Wacom)

I had heavy lag on drawing lines with my Cintiq 21 UX, (secondary monitor) I was able to get that right down by upping the Cache levels to 8. It pretty much disappeared altogether when I turned off the Open GL features in the CS preferences window, but moving windows was sill a jerky process because it redrew slowly.
--------------

Right now after using your registry key solution, I've re-enabled the Open GL features and the lag is much better. It's still not 100% perfect (there is a slight initial delay), but it's much better.

I tried turning the cache levels down from 8. But performance decreased again then.

With this setup I've tried CS1, CS2, and CS3 as well. Out of them all only the old CS1 had any lag with my Ciniq, similar to CS4.

[Michael...@adobeforums.com]

The lag that I do have still makes it an annoying experience to draw with in CS4.

[Bengt_Ögren@adobeforums.com]

I've just tried the Allow old GPUs registry change and it made an enormous differnce on my system. I'm running XP32 SP2 with 4GB of RAM
and an NVIDIA 6600 graphics card. I've never had any problems with CS3 but CS4 was totally unusable. Screen redraw in big chunks with the checkerboard showing through, painting a curve with a brush would result in a couple of straight lines and so on. I've upgraded to the latest driver from NVIDIA but that didn't help. Turning off Open GL made little or no difference.

Then I tried this registry change and wow! Everything works just fine. Zooming and drawing is a bit slower than in CS3 but now CS4 is definitely usable.

Thanks a lot Adam. You made my day!

Regards
Bengt

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

Adam,

The registry key change doesn't seem to have any real effect.

Paul

[Rick Moore]

The registry change had no effect on my system

XP32 SP3
4GB Ram
Nvidia 8800 GTS, 178.24
Core 2 DuoE8500 (3ghz)

My home machine also is affected by the zoom lag and text lag

Vista64 SP1
8GB Ram
Nvidia 8800 GTS, 178.24
Core 2 DuoE8400 (3ghz)

The video cards are identical NX8800GTS 512M retail

[John-Pier...@adobeforums.com]

I hope someone can guide me. I downloaded the .zip file mentioned above and unzipped it. However, when I double-click the AllowOld GPU.reg file, it opens in Notepad. I know my antivirus changed the .reg file association to prevent potential viruses. I also know I need to reassassociate .reg files with the appropriate program and that is my problem. What program should be used to run .reg files? I tried associating it to regedit.exe but all that does is give me error messages and does not work. I guess I could edit the registry by hand but am not too comfortable doing this.

By the way, the card I am trying to enable for Open GL is an ATI X850 Radeon (AGP).

Does anyone know which file should be used to execute a .reg file?

Thanks!

Jake

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

I had no change in speed when installing the reg-file.

@Jake:
You have to change the file association for the .reg files manually then. Open e.g. your "My documents" folder and choose the Folder Settings from one of the top menus (my XP is Danish, so I don't really know what the menu is called in English - the direct translation would be "Functions").

You should then get a tab that says "File types". In there navigate to the .reg file type and choose "Advanced". Highlight the "Open" command and press "Edit". Navigate to the windows folder and find the Registry Editor and press "OK". You should now have re-assigned Registry Editor to the .reg files.

[Bengt_Ögren@adobeforums.com]

On my XP system the .reg entry is associated to regedit.exe
but not on Open but on Merge! Try that.
For Merge I have regedit.exe "%1"

Bengt

[Biz_...@adobeforums.com]

I had a terrible lag like others with the 3d turned on.

I applied the reg fix and now things are MUCH faster.

XP SP3. NVIDIA 8500 GT with 512mb DDR

[chris_...@adobeforums.com]

right click?

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

I have just had this message from Nvidia - "From our research, it looks like Adobe is aware of the performance problem using with some of our GPUs. They are in process of looking at a possible fix in the future. Please check their web site for driver updates."

[John_C...@adobeforums.com]

I have an XP Pro SP3 system w/ no performance issues using the new Open GL features. The system is Intel 8400 based, 4G ram, Nvidia 8600GT w/ 256M & latest drivers. I'm using Design Premium CS4 w/ Open GL turned on in the PS preferences panel. All of the new features (tossing, smooth zooming, rotate canvas, etc.) work instantly and smoothly. I wish I could be of more help, but I did nothing special to get this performance. One caveat in my system is that I am unable to uninstall CS3 - Adobe tech support was of no help other than suggesting that I manually uninstall everything Abobe and then reinstall CS4 - WRONG!

[Anthon...@adobeforums.com]

[..] One caveat in my system is that I am unable to uninstall CS3 - Adobe tech support was of no help other than suggesting that I manually uninstall everything Abobe and then reinstall CS4 - WRONG!

Blindman: Check out this thread. I had the same/similar problem and was given the solution by Mylenium.

<http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b6d7e2/1>

Anthony.

[John_H...@adobeforums.com]

I couldn't even get PS CS4 to display images unless they were very small (otherwise checkerboard and prone to closing with errors) until I turned off 'Use for Image Display' in OpenGL Advanced Drawing (tried lots of other combinations to determine that this was the only item that made any difference). Images now display and CS4 doesn't close with errors any more, but response is laggy, as many others have reported. PS CS3 is much more responsive and usable for me. With OpenGL off altogether in CS4, image redraw is very slow, much slower than with CS3, so completely unusable.

Vista 64 fully updated, 6GB RAM, both 32 and 64 bit versions of PS CS4.
ASUS EN9600GT, latest driver 178.24 ()
Two monitors, main selected as primary.

I was on the verge of uninstalling PS CS4 until I discovered that turning off 'Use for Image Display' at least got me closer to CS4 working than with that item on. I'm still hoping that Adobe and/or NVidia come up with a fix (or fixes) that work for me before too long.

[Tom...@adobeforums.com]

This completely got rid of my panning, zooming and brush lag:

Disable "Flick Panning" in the Preferences-General Tab.

Now PS CS4 is panning and zooming just as fast as CS2 for me. Hope it works for you guys.

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

Did nothing for me :(

I have found that one day it is OK, the next it is a problem again, so let me know if your fix continues

[Tom...@adobeforums.com]

I also installed the newest geforce driver just before. But they didnt do anything, until I switched the "Flick Panning" to off.

But I guess everyone has the newest drivers, thats the first thing to check of course.

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Robert,

I have found that one day it is OK, the next it is a problem again...

I'm seeing that, too, and it's perplexing. The various problems seem to rotate in and out every few days.

[John-Pier...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Torben for the advice. I was able to associate the file with regedit this time and was able to update the registry.

Unfortunately, at least with my ATI Radeon X850 with 256MB, and with OpenGL advanced options enabled or not, images display poorly with huge squares and a totally unusable image. I guess my card is just too old ...

Jake

[Larry...@adobeforums.com]

I've been working with Adam Jerugin through e-mail and I want to acknowledge his effort and sincerity in trying to isolate and fix this problem over the past week. He deserves everyone's thanks.

I tried the fix of Allow old GPUs On, and turning off all advanced features in the OpenGL settings. It made a huge improvement in the brush drawing. But I tend to be hypersensitive about lag, since I draw fast. I'd say the performance has an infintely small, but still noticeable lag, compared to CS3. Also, the issue someone else reported, of dragging free-floating windows, and a 1-second delay before they actually move...I have this problem, and it is not fixed by the workaround.

In contrast, my Bridge CS4, which also uses the GPU, is very noticeably faster than Bridge CS3 in producing thumbnails and refreshing and zooming images. Maybe the Bridge developers should help the Photoshop developers in fixing Photoshop.

I'm a bit worried now by the silence from Adam and others from Adobe. I hope they're quietly working in the background to fix this, rather than being ordered by management to start working on CS5 development instead.

[Michael...@adobeforums.com]

I see no lag at all when I turn off all the Open GL settings -after upping my cache levels to 8. It runs nice and fast with my Cintiq secondary monitor. But with Open GL on there is that slight lag, and any noticeable lag is unworkable when you're using an interactive display.

And while all the enhanced features worked fine and without any lag with the Open GL turned on, lag in drawing is just not tolerable, so I'm doing without the bells and whistles.

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

Torben, do you also have a delay in typing text?

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

With GPU acceleration enabled I have:
- Used different versions of the Nvidia GeForce driver
- Tried seeting the display cache to both 4, 6 or 8
- Tried every compbination of GPU acceleration settings on/off
- Turned off the Flick Panning
- Used the OldGPU reg-file
- Moved my swap file to a different harddrive than CS4
- Yelled at my computer
- Called my digitizer horrible names

I am sorry to say that the two latter moves were just as succesful as all of the rest.

I have about 1/2 second lag when using a soft brush. If I switch to a hard brush I get +1 second of lag - sometimes I just get a straight line between my start and my finish point, even if I am drawing a circle.

Zooming is not as painful, but this greatly vary from time to time. Sometimes I have a smooth transition and other times nothing happens when I try to zoom.

Bridge, on the other hand, is smooth all the way. The animated multi-view works perfectly without any lagginess.

Turning off GPU acceleration off does, RIGHT NOW, show a difference in speed and is almost on-par with CS3. The speed is, however, very unstable depending on the wind direction (or whatever Adobe correlated the speed with).

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

When turning GPU acceleration on, yes. Right now, without GPU acceleration, typing text is not that awful.

As mentioned by other, sometimes the CS4 version actually seems as fast as CS3, but then the weather changes...

I'll be trying it without GPU acceleration for the next few days to see if I can a steady speed out of it - if not, I'll reconsider sending it back.

[Adam_J...@adobeforums.com]

David (and others),

I'm still investigating this issue and will continue to work with those affected to identify the cause.

The silence (at least on my part) was due to my back going out last Weds and then having to spend the last 4 days horizontal. The good news is I'll be back in the office tomorrow.

Is anyone who is experiencing this lag located in the greater S.F bay area (ideally San Jose)?

-Adam

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

Pay my ticket and I'll be there in a jiffy :)

[Paul_...@adobeforums.com]

Adam

If you want to take a drive to Fresno...

Paul

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

I got an email from Nvidia:

(Quote)
Hello Torben,

NVIDIA Software Development is aware of this application performance problem and is working with Adobe to get the issue resolved in a Adobe point release.

Best Regards,
Troy
NVIDIA Customer Care
(end Quote)

Just to clarify: A "point release" - does that cover an ordinary product update or are we talking "next generation Creative Suite"?

[Adam_J...@adobeforums.com]

Is anyone who is experiencing the performance lag using an ATI video card? Or does the issue seem limited to those using nVidia cards?

[Robert...@adobeforums.com]

this was already covered in earlier posts. It makes no difference to the lag

[John_H...@adobeforums.com]

From Adam Jerugim:
Double click on DisallowOpenGLWindows_ON_D.reg to activate that specific registry key. Quit and re-launch CS4 to see if that helps with the lag. If it doesn't, use the other key, DisallowOpenGLWindows_OFF.reg to get the application back to its default state.

Adam, that makes no difference for me either (I'd tried it previously, but had another with the other key for old GPUs simultaneously, even though the 9600GT is one of the cards tested by Adobe with PS CS4). Even with the OpenGLWindows key loaded and restarting PS CS4, I can even still smoothly zoom and rotate images (with 32 bit version; don't get smooth scaling and rotating with 64 bit version regardless), but there's no difference in the lag for other functions. I still have to have Use for Image Display disbled in OpenGL Advanced Settings for images to display (unless they're very small).

I had thought there wasn't a lag with my brush either, but I had done more than a few strokes. When I write something with the brush, there's a lag in PS CS4 that's not there with PS CS3.

ASUS EN9600GT video, Vista 64.

[David...@adobeforums.com]

Hey Adam, Sorry to hear about your back. If you can convince Adobe of the seriousness of this problem and get them to pay for a flight to Hong Kong, you can test out the problem on both of my computers, and enjoy some excellent dim sum in between.

Meanwhile, I'll be happy to send you more details of my system and to try out any interim test solutions you may have.

And to reiterate: Allow_OldGPUS_On, with alll OpenGL Advanced options turned off, mostly alleviates the brush drawing problem, but it doesn't fix the lag in dragging free-floating windows, and zooming on images is also pretty choppy, not at all smooth as in the promotional videos about Photoshop CS4 I've seen.

[John_H...@adobeforums.com]

I made some more progress with PS CS4 performance by changing the cache level. My zooming and panning have been fine (Vista 64, 6GB RAM, ASUS EN9600GT), but redraws have been slow and brush (and probably other things) a bit laggy. I also have to have Use for Image Display turned off to get an image display.

I had cache level set to 1 for accuracy of display. I set cache to 6 and restarted PS CS4. Display speed is now vastly improved, and layer masks appear almost instantly, all similar to CS3 display speed at a cache level of 1. CS3 with higher cache level is much faster again.

There's still some slight lag for me in CS4 when using the brush (and probably other things). However, if my plugins work, I may at last be able to start using PS CS4 32 bit for real work instead of using CS3.

Cheers, John

[ProA...@adobeforums.com]

"Hello Torben,

NVIDIA Software Development is aware of this application performance problem and is working with Adobe to get the issue resolved in a Adobe point release.

Best Regards,
Troy
NVIDIA Customer Care
"

So... Let me get this straight... Adobe didnt test Photoshop CS4 on nvidia hardware? They just released Photoshop without doing ANY QA testing?

We're not talking about some obscure peice of hardware only found in the most remote regions of the congo. We're talking about NVIDIA. Adobe didnt test photoshop on THE most popular graphic card maker's hardware? Most pros are using nvidia hardware... and Adobe didnt notice this problem?

wow. sad

Well it sure is assuring to know that you can still pay Adobe your money while you wait for a fix.... Sounds like a real bargain!

sigh

MAKE SURE YOU DL THE TRIAL FIRST.

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Adobe didnt test Photoshop CS4 on nvidia hardware? They just released
Photoshop without doing ANY QA testing?

That remark is...well, it sort of speaks for itself.

[John_H...@adobeforums.com]

From ProArtist:
'So... Let me get this straight... Adobe didnt test Photoshop CS4 on nvidia hardware? They just released Photoshop without doing ANY QA testing?'

Hi Torben. Unless you're joking, I can't imagine why you would make such a statement. Common sense says Adobe tested PS CS4 using a bunch of NVidia video cards (and other video cards). The Adobe knowledge base gives the details:
<http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb405711&sliceId=1>

From Photoshop, there's a GPU entry in the Help menu to a kb page. Among all the info on that page, there are links to other kb pages, including the one I linked for you. Perhaps there are variations between different manufacturer implementations of video cards for the listed chipsets that somehow cause problems. Hopefully Adobe and NVidia will figure out what's happening soon so that PS CS4 can live up to its performance potential for all of us.

Cheers, John

[Torben_Bygvr...@adobeforums.com]

You are quoting "ProArtist" but blaming me? Please get the names straight. I merely posted the reply I got directly from Nvidia, so don't kill the messenger!

[Russell...@adobeforums.com]

I'm running a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO and it's working ok but not great. I get image flickering when moving a floating window around and PS feels generally sluggish when drawing. A quickly drawn line will trail the cursor by a wider margin than with CS2 or CS3. I'm hoping to learn something by watching this thread.

A question to anyone else using ATI cards:

Will installing the full ATI Catalyst driver suite offer controls that can be tweaked to fine tune CS4's performance? For the moment I've only installed the driver without the Catalyst control panel. I usually resist installing the extra video driver junk as my system isn't used for playing games.

Russell

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

Will installing the full ATI Catalyst driver suite offer controls that
can be tweaked to fine tune CS4's performance?

Russell,

It will provide you with many controls to tweak, but I can't get ATI to tell me what the controls do or which ones might result in better CS4 performance.

I'm using Catalyst Control Center 8.10 with the X1950 Pro card. I emailed ATI support asking for advice about the controls and all they told me in response was to re-install CCC.

I'd say go ahead and install CCC and see if it helps. You can always uninstall it later if need be.

[Russell...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Nick, I might give it a try. I just hate installing stuff that offers no advantage for what I do and potentially adds resource hogging/competing/conflicting stuff that is sometimes difficult to remove. Doing a system backup/restore is a possibility, but a bother.

I used to have the whole Catalyst Control Center installed but found that it offered nothing for me and just caused a bunch of apps to run all the time in the background. So now I just install the most resent driver.

I think I'll wait until someone jumps in with a confirmation that it solves a performance issue with CS4. At this point I suspect there are issues that are not unique to Nvidia cards that will be corrected with an update. The price we pay for being brave ;-)

Russell

[John Joslin]

You could always try the generic Windows driver for laughs! :)

[Nick_...@adobeforums.com]

At this point I suspect there are issues that are not unique to Nvidia
cards that will be corrected with an update.

I'm hopeful for that, too. I've asked in another thread what ATI drivers Adobe used in testing, thinking that maybe a roll-back to those drivers would help with the problems I'm having (image content disappears after dragging a window). So far, no joy.

[John_H...@adobeforums.com]

From Torben:
'You are quoting "ProArtist" but blaming me? Please get the names straight. I merely posted the reply I got directly from Nvidia, so don't kill the messenger!'

Sorry Torben. I didn't know that Torben and ProArtist were two different people. There's no way of telling from ProArtist's post and even when I went back a few pages looking for your post with the NVidia response to you I didn't find it, so gave up. This bulletin board format with a only a few posts per page doesn't facilitate quickly searching posting history to avoid false assumptions like the one I made.

Thanks for setting me straight and good luck with sorting out your PS CS4 performance issues. Perhaps we'll all succeed at the same time once Adobe and NVidia (and ATI, etc) figure out the global cause and develop a global solution.

Cheers, John

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

little off topic, but for john: you can click "show all messages" just above the new message box to show all the messages in a thread at once (or a great deal more than is standard, at any rate).

i think the actual number shown is tied to your forum preferences. click "preferences" link in the gray bar UNDER the red "post message" and "check spelling" buttons... click "miscellaneous settings" link. update maximum characters per page and maximum messages per page. i think the biggest # you can put in either is 99999. that's what i have mine set to...

hope this helps
dave

[John_H...@adobeforums.com]

For Dave M, thanks for your advice on forum viewing prefs. Much more useful now.

Cheers, John

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

you know how those "arteest" types are!

Oh please, Dave. Artiste. If it's not too much trouble.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

no problem john. if you're new-ish here, welcome to the forum. this is a great place to learn, if you're willing to put up with the cranky regulars! :)

(you know how those "arteest" types are! ;))

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

:P

what do i know. i'm a hacker.

[Free...@adobeforums.com]

Not judging by those two little pieces over in that other thread...I loved those.

[dave_...@adobeforums.com]

they weren't mine. fotw. (found on the web) <hangs head in shame> :)

[Adam_J...@adobeforums.com]

For those that are experiencing the lag - let's get back to trying to figure out the problem here - I need some more information.

Can you please tell me the following:

1. What your screen resolution is?
2. How many monitors (and what size) you're running?
3. If any other applications (including virus checkers) are running when PS CS4 is running?

If you are experiencing the performance lag, take a look at Task Manager and see if Photoshop is the top process on the list. If it isn't some other process may be running and taking resources from PS.

thanks,
-Adam