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howardc67119558
howardc67119558
Participant
October 2, 2019
Question

New Nvidia driver support OpenGL 30 bit color in PS CC?

  • October 2, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 1500 views

Nvidia has released Windows Studio Drivers that they claim to support OpenGL 30 bit color in many of their mainstream gaming cards. Has anyone gotten these to work with PS CC 2019?  

Some relevant links:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/studio-driver

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/creator-ready-drivers-supercharge-creative-apps

https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-driver

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4 replies

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 3, 2019

The entry level Quadro is the P400, which as you say is not particularly expensive. The main problem with it is that it has only 1GB VRAM, which is a bit on the low side, at least if you plan to do 3D work in Photoshop. Other than that, it should work well. The next one up is the P600 with 2GB, which is much better.

 

Photoshop doesn't really require much in the way of video card performance. As long as you have enough memory, and the driver is reasonably bug free (!) you'll be fine.

 

The Quadro P2000 that I have in my work machine is about equivalent to the GeForce 1650 or 1660 at half the price. So why pay more? Reliability and no driver bugs, that's why.

howardc67119558
howardc67119558Author
Participant
November 20, 2019

Chuck, D_Fosse (and anyone else),

Following up on my earlier posts...

I ended up purchasing a BenQ SW240 (99% AdobeRGB), a GeForce 1660 Ti graphics card, an X-rite i1 Display calibrating device and a DisplayPort cable.  I've loaded the latest nVidia Studio driver and set it and Photoshop for 30bit/10bit color.  My experience so far is that the driver has been stable and works well.  I'm using my old Dell sRGB monitor next to the BenQ and I can see quite a difference! 

I got pretty good pre-Black Friday deals on all purchases, which came to a total of about $750 (I probably could have saved some $ by buying a less powerful graphics card).

So, I'm happy.  Thanks for your inputs last month.

Howard

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 2, 2019

    BTW, this policy change from NVidia is most welcome, since it expands the market considerably and puts more pressure on all the vendors to keep it up and working. This is 2019 and there's no reason we should put up with 8 bit signal paths anywhere in the processing chain.

     

    It may make it a little harder for NVidia to sell Quadro cards at the obvious price premium compared to similar GeForces. I imagine a lot of the incentive is gone for many users. Still - for me it's still worth it, just to keep the gamers away from the drivers. There's no question the GeForce drivers are made primarily to satisfy the gamers (just glance at the release notes), and I'm also pretty sure that's responsible for most of the bugs that have plagued Photoshop users. My Quadro cards have been 100% reliable and rock steady for the years I've been using them.

    howardc67119558
    howardc67119558Author
    Participant
    October 2, 2019
    Thanks, Chuck Uebele and D_Fosse! Chuck - I had seen the thread you linked to, but you triggered me to check prices of Quadro cards. I was surprised to see that the low end of the line can be had for $200+/-. I had thought that they were much more expensive (as some of them are). D_Fosse, your post is consistent with my understanding of the Nvidia announcements - they "should" enable all of their GeForce cards to provide 30-bit color to PS. It would be interesting to hear from people who have actual experience with them. With regard to your comment of HDMI vs Display Port, does it apply to HDMI 2.1, which seems to have very high throughput? .
    howardc67119558
    howardc67119558Author
    Participant
    October 2, 2019
    I've been using an sRGB monitor and a Radeon card for PS, but now I'm ready to upgrade to Adobe RGB. I think that the BenQ SW2700PT monitor should serve my (amateur) purposes, but the graphics card choice is pretty complex. I'm thinking that I'll go with a GeForce at about $200-250 and hope that the Studio Driver is stable and does what Nvidia says it does.
    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 2, 2019

    Yes, that may be it. The "output color depth" setting is at the very bottom of the Display > Resolution page in the NVidia control panel. You may need to scroll and it's easy to miss. When I changed this from 8bcp to 10bpc, the whole monitor blacked out for two seconds - and then it worked. No stepping whatsoever in the test gradients.

     

    Note that you do need a DisplayPort connection. DVI or HDMI don't have the necessary bandwidth.

    According to NVidia it now works in GeForces the same way as in Quadros, as long as you use these Studio drivers. So if you have that switch in the driver, and a 30-bit capable monitor fed through DisplayPort, it should work.

     

     

    Chuck Uebele
    Community Expert
    Chuck UebeleCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 2, 2019

    I'm not sure if this relates, but check this thread: https://community.adobe.com/t5/Photoshop/Photoshop-and-NVidia-Quadro-and-30-bit-display-revisited/m-p/10643237

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