P: Photoshop 25.0 Graphics Processor Compatibility Check fails: Unknown GPU

[elude107]

Hello, I just updated to Photoshop 2024 but I cannot get it to work with GPU acceleration. When I start Photoshop, I get this error: 

I am running a Windows 10 PC with two Nvidia RTX 3090 video cards and a 5950x CPU. 

So far, I have tried:

- Setting Photoshop and sniffer.exe to use my, uh, 'high performance 3090' as opposed to my 'power saving' 3090 (excellent work, Windows)  

- Updated to the latest Nvidia studio drivers and installed all Windows 10 updates

- Removed 'sniffer.exe' from the Photoshop folder as suggested, causes Photoshop to not boot. 

- Enabled "Older GPU Mode" in the Technology Previews, get same error so I disabled it again. 

-  Tried setting the GPU in Nvidia Control Panel, but I don't have a "Preferred GPU" setting like a laptop or PC with integrated graphics. 

- Disabled SLI

- Uninstalled and reinstalled Photoshop 2024

- Manually ran sniffer.exe, it sees the video cards just fine

Thanks for the update Adobe, it works really well

[Xanathon]

And another addition: After installing the "Compatibility Pack" PS24 now also has OpenCL compatibility problems.

After uninstalling the compatibility pack again those errors were gone for PS24.

[Mark.Dahm]

@chrisb13277001 , that is not recommended for non ARM devices. That will divert CL operations to a software CL emulator. If there is an issue with the hardware setup, it might patch around that, but it would be better to stabilize the CL on your hardware.

FWIW, we are working toward eliminating the CL check, since it appears to trigger in more cases than it is useful (ie, even if the Preferences > Performance > Advanced Settings have CL turned off, which everyone on this thread should try).

In the long run, we are working toward eliminating any/all dependencies on CL, since problems like this arise from poor support at the OS level, and better, more modern alternatives are far better supported. 

Note that there are differences between customers who show everything failing (like the graphic shared at the top of this thread), and others who just see a problem with Open CL; that latter is possibly not a problem to use Photoshop, especially if you pro-actively turn off support for Open CL in the Photoshop preferences, as described above.

[mLCreative]

Replacing sniffer.exe with PS 2023 verison fixed my unknown GPU with my dual GPU setup. I have an RTX 3090 and 4090 system. I hope this addational confirm on the working around helps and Adobe sends a fix out soon. Looks like this issue has been an issue since Nov. 2023...

[Mark.Dahm]

@Nik Nastev , we have another release coming out soon, but we do not believe the issue will be fully resolved; we're still working on GPU stability across a range of configurations.

[Xanathon]

@Mark.Dahm What do you mean "will not be fully resolved"? Seriously? For graphic artists it is completely normal to run multiple GPUs, Nvidia is the market leader, and graphic artists have to run them e.g. for render engines. Or because they run a multitude of monitors. Up to PS24 this worked fine, then adobe changed something and it stopped working, we even can drop in an old sniffer and it mostly works again. We now wait for months for a solution and now you tell us "this cannot be fully resolved", despite the fact it worked in version up to 24? I suggest you adapt PS fully to modern PC setups, else this becomes a warranty case in germany and other parts of europe. I already had a talk with my lawyer and he supports my opinion that PS25 has to run on completely normal modern hardware in a completely normal setup. If not, Adobe has to make this clear before someone subscribes.

[D Fosse]

He only said it wouldn't be fully resolved in this release, not that they stopped working on it.

[Mark.Dahm]

We do state the following here:

Does Photoshop take advantage of more than one graphics processor or graphics card?

Photoshop does not take advantage of multiple graphics cards. Conflicting drivers may also cause crashes or other problems.

• If you have a system with multiple graphics cards, see Configuring computers with multiple graphics cards.
• If you have multiple monitors, a best practice is to connect them to the same graphics card prior to starting Photoshop.

[PanBeep]

@Mark.Dahm does Photoshop take advantage of modern hardware and modern software frameworks? Working on some of Adobe software like PS or AE feels like having a Lamborghini which has a constant handbrake being turned on.

[Mark.Dahm]

@PanBeep ,

I simultaneously like and dislike that analogy, but not because it doesn't feel true.  🙂

There are low level frameworks, used here and there, that have been useful for cross platform development that platform providers are not motivated to provide. For example, Save for Web (Legacy) is built on a framework that is also used for Liquify and Adobe Camera Raw. It predated GPU, and therefore utilized all CPU processing primitives. That doesn't sound like a huge deal, but writing a program to run with a GPU is a different thing entirely than CPU. We introduced some GPU capability to speed up Liquify, and Adobe Camera Raw is reworking some of the framework now to handle GPU, but we still bump into instability with how Camera Raw makes decisions about GPU hardware and how Photoshop does it; there is a lot of nuance and differences between things that are there for good reasons, but they come with some active management.

More modern components in Photoshop are in the process of being upgraded to tap into more GPU processing reserves, and things like the main canvas (with rulers, grids, floating widgets), Oil Paint filter all have operational GPU modes that do that; the feature 'Deactivate Native Canvas' was added so you could switch back to the classic GL backed canvas if needed, but the current canvas works natively on Metal and DX12+.

We also recently shipped (last year) GPU compositing, speeding up the compositing portion of screen display by about 200% (ymmv, depending on the kinds of files you work with in Ps). We briefly had to turn it off to fix a compatiblity issue, and some folks instantly recognized the slowdown that reverting to the former CPU-based compositing caused. It's on now by default.

We are also working actively in the areas of machine learning to put modern solutions behind our own generative fill features.

I am working on a large effort now to speed up a whole range of things in Photoshop by using more modern approaches to programming that will probably initially be launched in the Beta just to make sure that we have the stability we need before releasing for everybody; the numbers are pretty great, but stability is paramount. This usually means there will be a switch somewhere in Tech Previews to try some new feature or not.

So the answer is both yes and no; multiple GPUs has always presented a challenge to Photoshop, even to the point of advertising this on our system requirements. Bringing stability to that scenario will depend more on the speed of us modernizing architecture than band-aiding existing code.

[Xanathon]

@Mark.Dahm While I appreciate that you try to help and communicate here:

I have four monitors. It is not possible to connect them all to one graphics card and it also makes no sense not to balance the load to two GPUs.

Also, as I explained earlier, I have already done all things from all Adobe help articles on this and nothing helped.

I want to stress again: Since it worked up to PS23 and up to early versions of PS24 this is definitely notr a problem with my system, it is an Adobe problem.

[Mark.Dahm]

The GPU is designed to blast through many threaded operations very fast, then dump the results out at the end. Calculating polygons (what many graphics apps rely on GPUs to do for games and rendering) can be threaded across GPUs efficiently, establishing a clear performance boost vs CPU.

But not all things work faster on a GPU, at least for Photoshop, so we use a scalpel to introduce GPU features when apps who never mastered the CPU can just use a sledgehammer; Photoshop needs the GPU to hold image state data in the GPU so that it can have GPU based algorithms run and render results. Sometimes the overhead of copying that data from CPU to GPU costs more than the speed up from GPU based processing, and it isn't worth it. Over the years, Photoshop had mastered CPU processing strategies, and to use the GPU, it must be clearly faster than the CPU alternative, otherwise it's a step backward.

The difficulty Photoshop has with multiple GPUs is how it can mainstain a steady enough machine state so that it's GPU accelerated functions can render the right results on the in-memory image data held in the GPU. Other apps can just flush all their work over to the GPU and never have to worry about persistent image data. Because other graphics apps use the GPU in a different manner than Photoshop, there should be differences in the operational expectations. 

We are still working on making these challenging GPU configurations work better, but this information might be helpful to set expectations that not all programs capable of using the GPU share the same architecture or needs.

[Nik Nastev]

So - in 25.5 Beta no fixes still. This is for info.

BUT, there is a HUGE BUT - we GET NASTY BUG. 

After installing latest BETA build - After Effects 24/23 stops opening at "Clean Up Smart Mask interpolation".

After uninstalling latest BETA build of Photoshop - AE start to work again.

There is something wrong with that.

[Xanathon]

@Mark.Dahm As i said, I have sympathies for devs, since I am one myself. However: This worked in Photoshop up to and including 24 without any problem whatsoever. Since I did not change my system, the problem was introduced in PS 25.

[Nik Nastev]

I can confrim and I have already said that before - it was introduced at some time when PS25 beta update comes. In early betas it was OK, no issues.

And at some point this was migrated to PS24 latest updates - it not working also.

Plus we get new introduced BUG with affecting After Effects start, from latest PS25 BETA. 

I'm even more scared now to update BETA, to not break other software. And may be this Bug will be migrated to PS24 also 😕

I have just one question - where is QA team?

[DarthSlater77]

I like several of the new features like AI generative fill in the new Ps version. However, I did fine without them before and having to turn off GPU acceleration for Ps to be stable is not a good solution. I appreciate that the devs are working on this and giving good feedback on the issue, but can we get a toggle in the settings to disable the new features that are causing crashes? Or can you roll those features back to the beta release until the bugs are worked out? Will some folks be upset that a feature got rolled back, yes. But if an update is causing issues it needs to be brought back to the drawing board. There are professionals the depend on the adobe suite to make a living. 

[Xanathon]

That is only an intermediary solution, since I only andy especially renewed my PS subscription because of the new AI functions and filters that I now cannot use since I am stuck with an older version of Photoshop because of this GPU bug.

[nobu nakata]

PS v24 works well with GeForce 3070 but v25 doesn't.

Photoshop v24.7.2

Photoshop v25.4

[Xanathon]

Nice find, so it's not only multi Nvidia GPU setups, but also single Nvidia GPU setups.

[nobu nakata]

I just installed "NVIDIA Studio driver" (instead GeForce Game ready driver) and Photoshop v25.4 works with it. Give "Studio driver" a try!

[DarthSlater77]

@nobu nakata 

Ugg. It is unfortunate if that is the solution but worth a try. This recent bugginess has me looking into upgrading my PC. It still has plenty of power for my use case but these driver isses are getting annoying. 

i7-8700k

32gbRAM

1080ti

900 series Titan 

[usagi35416700n13b]

Issue: When only laptop built-in 2070super GPU is enabled, Photoshop uses GPU as usual. But when 2080Ti GPU connected and enabled, compability check shows that GPU is UNKNOWN.

My 2 mainly used external monitors are connected on that docked 2080Ti, and this bug made me only able to use Photoshop with GPU when only laptop built-in monitor is able to use.

• Photoshop version: 25.4.0 20240118.r.319 67d7f0b x64
• Photoshop language: Chinese Simplified
• OS: Windows 11 64-bit
• Setup: https://pastebin.com/raw/gwELfFM7

Steps to reproduce:

1. Turn on a gaming laptop (mine is OMEN 6 plus)
2. Connect a 2080Ti GPU using Thunderbolt 3 dock
3. Boot Photoshop and compability check window shows the error

• Additional Info: It might not be a problem of win11's "hardware accelerated gpu scheduling" option, I tried turn it on and off and error still exists.

[Nik Nastev]

Beta 25.6 -(with latest Nvidia Studio driver) - No luck. AND NEW error - sniffer.exe cannot start or run due to incompatibity with 64-bit versions of Windows!!!!

REALLY????

WHEN - WHEN We will get working SOLUTION?

We ARE PAYING for THIS?

Thank You!

[PanBeep]

@Mark.Dahm working with photoshop does not feel like it is using modern frameworks (except AI) or hardware. Take a look at text tools, they are the same since I remember and I worked with photoshop over 20 years.
Lets have a look at Figma web based free tool where working with text is super smoth and fast and fun. Comparing the same experience with Photoshop makes me feel like it is stuck 20 year back with same tech behind. You haven't even made all tools available when working in 32 bit mode which is a mystery for me why it hasn't beed done fo so many years. Another example, flick panning, this is completly jerky and its lagging behind the mouse movement.

I have a feeling PS has been slow in improvement of regular tools and the only development you see now are the AI tools which are great and PS has the best tech behind this. 

[D Fosse]

Just for perspective on "all new code", here's an internet classic; as true now as it was when it was written 24 years ago. Well worth a read regardless of this current issue.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ 

With that said, the current situation is not good. Something happened last autumn/fall. This worked flawlessly for so many years, and then suddenly, kaboom. It pains me to see the forum flooded with GPU issues that seem impossible to figure out. It stopped being a simple case of "your driver is old, update it" or "your GPU is hopelessly outdated". Now, I just don't know what to tell these poor people.

Yes, dual GPUs is a problem. Laptops with vendor-modified drivers is a problem. But there's more now.

It all seems to center on OpenCL. Will the final solution be to finish the whole migration from OpenGL/OpenCL into DirectX?

I do appreciate the complexities involved, and Mark Dahm is obviously eager to get this resolved. So no complaint, just a sigh.

[Nik Nastev]

It's a normal to have bugs in development stage. But this is ridicoulus now, as this is not only in Beta, but in retail version. And not fixed still.

Plus I don't understood how we get sniffer.exe packed in this Beta release, that is NOT compatible with 64bit Windows? This is pure ... how this is posisble? What devs are looking and QA team? Really?

Thanks!