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DavePinMinn
Inspiring
January 1, 2020
Question

Does setting Windows 10 Graphics performance preference do anything?

  • January 1, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 4236 views

I've had to re-install Windows 10 on a couple systems recently, and came across the Graphics Performance preference screen in the settings again - which I've seen before and ignored...

I found a topic in here that someone had put Lightroom in and set to max performance, and thought they'd seen some improvement.  And, of course, others who felt it made it worse...

Anybody have any informed thoughts about whether or not putting Lightroom CC and/or Photoshop into the Classic app would likely provide any measurable performance improvement?  Or switching to the Universal app and doing the same thing?

Or is this just another Microsof thing that doesn't do anything for products like LR or PS?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 1, 2020

It turns out that Lightroom is doing quite a lot in the GPU. For one thing, I recently learned that display color management is executed here, if enabled. Probably a lot of other small things as well.

 

This is rather better documented in Photoshop. The protocol used for much of this is OpenCL, where calculations are sent to the GPU (presumably much faster), and the results then fed back into Photoshop.

 

As long as everything works by the book, the total experience should be a general speed increase. Unless the video driver is buggy, which has always been a huge problem. Video drivers are mainly released to keep the gamers happy, so they can run the latest games. I can't imagine the gaming community is very preoccupied with correct protocol, so if this introduces bugs elsewhere, they put band-aid on it and fix it permanently much later. Games is where their money is and that's first priority.

 

But perhaps this is about to change. Recently nVidia introduced a new "studio" branch of their drivers, as opposed to the "game ready" branch. Hopefully this will improve things. Previously you had to get a rather expensive Quadro (which have their own drivers) to get a reliable card.

D
DavePinMinnAuthor
Inspiring
January 1, 2020

Thanks for the replies... 

My images are sometimes 21 megapixel (5568x3712) for the small D500, and 45 megapixel (8256x5504) for the larger D850.

The desktop is driving a 3840x1600 screen (which will become 5120x2160 once the price comes downa and the quality goes up).

In the Lightroom preferences I know I should turn on the GPU processing.  On the desktop, which has a GTX 970, I'm not sure it helps.  There are days I swear it's slower with the GPU enabled.  But, at the moment I have it on.

The laptop has a Quadro RTX 3000, and having it on does seem to help - it's also driving a 3840x2160 screen.

 

What I was specifically curious about is whether or not the Windows 10 settings for graphics preference in the settings screen (outside the Lightroom or Photoshop preferences) has any ADDITIONAL beneficial effect or if messing with it is a waste of time...  I currently have the Class app, and specifically put Lightroom and Photoshop in with "Mamimum Performance"...  Does this do anything BEYOND what happens in the LR or PS preferences as far as using the GPU?

D Fosse
Community Expert
D FosseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 1, 2020

I think this is pretty much application-specific. The role of Windows is just to provide the components and APIs when apps request them. 

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
January 1, 2020

I guess the answer depends on a lot of things.

 

The first consideration is the size of your monitor (in pixels). The usual advice is that if the monitor is 4K or larger, GPU will help in the develop module and probably elsewhere; if it is small than 4K, GPU probably doesn't produce a noticeable improvement.

 

The size of your photos (in pixels, not megabytes) also has some impact on this.

 

The amount of local adjustments that you do also has some impact on this.

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