Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

Although there are a lot of people posting here with genuine problems (and I really sympathise) I wonder what percentage that represents of the total sales of Photoshop CS4 so far.

Occurs to me that in some instances problems may not be caused by drivers. The presumption is that the card itself is functioning properly.

A year ago my 7900GS was stricken with the infamous Nv4_disp.dll Infinite Loop . . . intermitently. The only consistent advice from users on Nvidia's forums and in general was to update the drivers or revert to an earlier working version.

After several months, under warranty, I tired of looking for a solution and after performing Dell's hardware video tests, replaced the card. End of of problem.

For peace of mind, those experiencing problems might want to make absolutely certain their card does indeed function properly. Just because the card is new does not guarantee it is working as it should.

Just a thought . . .

Adam,
When you say the same card is it physically the same card tried in different PCs or do the other PCs just have the same model of card?

I wonder if it could be related to the card bios or even the manufacturing date of the card, perhaps some un-documented changes were made to the card hardware for different production runs.

Adam,

As stated in previous posts, my experience is quite different than what you're experiencing. Disabling OpenGL makes performance worse. Using the settings you listed above also makes it worse. Again, the only way I get decent (but not great) performance is:

AllOldGPUS_ON.reg in place
Enable Open GL
Disable all Advanced settings

Any other combination of settings brings the problem back.

It seems the problem is very hard to pinpoint.

Maybe you should give some us a phone call, ask us to try different settings, and give you instant feedback. I'm ready and willing to spend the time to help you get to the bottom of this.

In my case, I'm using the nVidia 8800 GT (512MB VRAM). It is worth noting that the same card runs CS4 without any issue on three other systems in my office (one XP SP3, two Vista64).

Adam, no joy over here. There's still about the same amount of lag, and if I drag a window the content disappears.

I would add, though, that with AllowOldGPUS_ON.reg in place, 3D Interaction Acceleration is grayed out in the Advanced GPU Settings.

What video card are you using?

As promised, here's more info:

On the system in my office that I'm seeing the problem on (Pentium D 3GHz, 4GB RAM, XP Sp3), using a combination of the AllowOldGPUS_ON.reg and then using the following settings in the GPU advanced settings:

Vertical Sync: enabled
3D Interaction Acceleration: enabled
Force Bilinear Interpolation: disabled

Advanced Drawing: enabled
Use for Image Display: disabled
Color Matching: disabled

The brush lag, in my case, is mitigated with these settings. Disabling Open GL Drawing altogether brings the brush performance nearly in-line with CS3.

Still investigating...

-Adam

Bugs.

Team A develops a program or an app. They are the basic engineering team. Their work becomes the core for Team B. Team B has been created or enabled by marketing to take A's work and put a skin on it, and wouldn't it be nice to ad this feature, make that feature more useful or glitzy, etc. B develops what marketing wants. Now, the design begins to be buggier than the early alpha version of Team A. In fact, when the remaining bugs for A's product gets resolved, team B's product generates evenmore bugs. So they talk. Team B files a bug report that starts out in the setup description with "Install the Team B app". "Hold on!", says A. "We didn't create that. You did." "Yeah", says B, "but when you fixed big number XYZ, we have another problem show up." A says that's not our problem. But in the spirit of cooperation, A takes a look, and, with it's core running fine they cannot generate the bug. Bickering starts. Team A issues a final release, whereby Team B rejects that ....

You know the story, I'm sure. Now, Team A and Team B are separate companies, and the battle is more like a marriage gone bad.

Could it be that Adobe is asking the video card and driver to do things the card vendors haven't anticipated, and in fixing things for Adobe users, it fouls the nest for other users, causing a cascade of bugs and fixes? On both sides?

>updated drivers are the only thing that will fix them.

OK, thanks. Does me no good, though, because ATI won't admit to any problems with their drivers. They care about gamers, not PS users.

If I knew what ATI drivers you used for testing CS4, I would roll back to them. Then maybe CS4 wouldn't be a problem for me.

Adam's office is next door to me - we talk, well, a lot. There are several "lag" problems being discussed.

But things like "incomplete redraws" and "incomplete brush cursors" are known driver bugs, and updated drivers are the only thing that will fix them. Again, we have to get those known issues out of the way first before we can start looking for other problems.