Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

About 10 days ago I posted the same results with Nov 08 DirectX update. It didn't help other people though.

amazing.

Great news!!!

I think I actually found the root of the lagging-interface-problem that alot of you, and Adobe, have been struggeling to solve.

I was helping a friend of mine out with this. His computer has an Intel Q6600 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a NVidia 8600GTS graphics card. System is Windows XP SP2 updated to SP3 and the latest NVidia drivers.

Photoshop had huge user interface performance problems. Extremely slow and non-responsive (with and without GPU acceleration).

I then installed DirectX (using the Redistributable version from August 2008), rebooted(!), and guess what?..... It made all the difference in the world!!!
Now everything is superfast and smooth and hardware accelleration works like a charm. As an added bonus, his Lightroom program also got alot more responsive!

Don't know which DirectX version is included in Windows XP SP3, but it seems to me that it's too old to support the new Adobe user interfaces.

Hopefully I wasn't just lucky and this is indeed the solution for all of you. Well, I'm sure you guys will let me know either way.

Good luck!

PS. It probably works well with the latest DirectX (November 2008) update as well but, since it's now working, he wouldn't let me try it out :-)

Dennis - that isn't something we've seen or heard from any other users.
Undo (and other history changes) is normally instantaneous if the document isn't hitting the scratch disk too hard (if it comes even close to fitting in RAM).

Im running 12gb of ram on mac pro running windows vista. cs3 works great on it.

I like cs4 a lot but the main issue is that, no matter what the settings, multiple undos on sizable files take waaaay too long.

On cs3, I can draw 6 or 7 path points and then multiple undo and it works as I type.

Same file on cs4, it takes 10 12 seconds to go back 5 or 6 steps.

I just purchased Photoshop CS4 Standard via download. There were a few bumps but it installed just fine.

My graphics adaptor is the Mobile Intel 965 GMA X3100 part of my Toshiba laptop,latest drivers from their (Toshiba) website. The GPU functions are reported as not available in Photoshop's Prefs under Performance.

Other than that it's running fine and I like the new features. Nice that the install did import my Bridge workspace settings.

I did a quick canvas rotate test on an 80 MB multi-layered file. It's twice as fast as CS3.

So is it still possible I may get the GPU goodies in the future?

Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit
Version: 6.0 Service Pack 1
System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:15, Stepping:13 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2
Physical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 1729 MHz
Video Card Vendor: Intel
Video Card Renderer: Intel 965/963 Graphics Media Accelerator
OpenGL Drawing: Disabled.
Video Card: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family
Video Mode: 1280 x 800 x 4294967296 colors
Video Card Driver: igdumd32.dll
Driver Version: 1280 x 800 x 4294967296 colors
Built-in memory: 2038 MB
Free memory: 918 MB

I'm getting tired of hearing that perhaps my graphics card, one of the Adobe-tested ones (nVidia Quadro FX1500) is defective, or the driver is the wrong one, or nVidia and Adobe passing the buck back and forth on this. As it stands, my graphics card works perfectly with every graphic and 3D application I've ever tried. The older card on my other computer works great with Maya and so on. Puh-leez, quit saying that all the people reporting the lag issue might have defective hardware. I really, seriously doubt that both of my graphics cards are by some enormous coincidence both defective.

Chris says that not that many people are reporting problems. Well, not that many people in proportion to all Adobe users access this forum. The fact that more than a few are reporting a serious issue in common speaks to the fact that there is a flaw in the software somewhere. If the coding is so delicately sensitive that a slight variance in hardware or drivers can send it out of kilter like this points to non-robust code.

I really want a solution, not a shrug of the shoulders and an "I dunno" or, as seems to be the growing consensus on this forum among people who don't have the lag problem: "It must be your fault. I'm all right, Jack."

I wouldn't buy you HDD, memory or displays from Apple. But that's just me. I think you're looking at more like $3500 then. With a new 24" flat screen. :)

I just ran the configurator, and all I added was upgrading to a second (small) hard drive and 8GB RAM. $4500.

No thanks. Can't do it.

I've been running Vista64 on a MacPro (dual, quad-core, Jan '08) for the past few months without any issue.

The hardest part (in my case) was getting boot camp and the Vista installer to play nice. Once that was working, I just needed to grab some extra drivers (and update other drivers - for example the default nVidia bootcamp driver is ancient) in order to get everything working correctly.

-Adam