Graphics card for a Photoshopper, not a Gamer

[Yammer]

I am sick to the back teeth with AMD.

In the last 12 months, their buggy driver software has seriously impacted my working in either Photoshop or Office on a Windows 10 PC. The Office bug was fixed fairly quickly, but the Photoshop bugs take much longer. I had to help them fix the first bug by doing most of their diagnostics for them. They seem to think the latest bug is nothing to do with them. They don't have any respect for customers who don't play games on their computers.

Rant over. I've decided it's time to ditch AMD. The obvious alternative is nVidia, but I wonder is this jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

Does anyone have an opinion on Photoshop-friendly hardware, or any knowledge of graphics cards manufacturers who work with Adobe? I don't need to play Deadly Combat 4 or Space Bananas 3, I just want a reliable fast-ish graphics card which supports OpenGL in Photoshop, made by a company which actually fixes its software when its broken.

[Brad Lawryk]

What is the problem you are experiencing with your graphics card? Perhaps it's more of a RAM problem than a graphics card?

[Yammer]

The latest drivers are putting big delays into colour management on my system. Roll back the driver and it goes away. Only the old drivers don't work well with the latest Windows 10. Rock / hard place.

Re: Very slow printing process - CC 19

In a nutshell, it's driver support that's the issue. They clearly don't test with Photoshop. I want to give my money to a company which does.

[gener7]

In this FAQ, there's a list of tested cards as of Dec. 2017: Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) card FAQ

I think Intel cards are well supported.

[Yammer]

gener7  wrote

In this FAQ, there's a list of tested cards as of Dec. 2017: Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) card FAQ

I think Intel cards are well supported.

Thanks. My graphics card is in the list, but AMD's Photoshop support is glacial or non-existent.

I guess I'm wondering how quickly different manufacturers act on non-gamer complaints.

[rayek.elfin]

Intel graphics chips are generally a terrible idea: performance is below par, and those chips rely on the system's main memory for their video memory - leeching precious RAM. OpenGL support is half-baked.

Avoid for graphics work.

Nvidia works fine for me (GTX1080) and Photoshop. Of course, you could always choose to purchase a Quadro, which is Nvidia's professional line of workstation cards, and Nvidia makes certain the drivers are optimized for application usage, not for games - reliability is key. Driving a 10bit display becomes an option as well. The Quadro M2000 4GB would be a good choice. Drawbacks? A) you pay higher prices B) Quadros suck doing GPU-based computational calculations (for example, CUDA).

[Yammer]

So, I take it from the silence that we're all in the same boat?

[gener7]

The silence was basically sleep and errands.

.

I can tell you I only have an Intel GPUs in my Macs. They work just fine for me since I don't use 3D or animation. I can't speak for Nvidia, but sounds like it's what you need.

Gene

[D Fosse]

I have excellent experience with a Quadro K420, which is a low-end Quadro in the GeForce 1060 price range. There hasn't been a single issue, ever. I even get reliable 30-bit on my Eizo.

The Quadros have a different driver version, as advertised optimized for CAD, 3D and graphics (as well as handling large arrays of displays). More to the point - no games mentioned anywhere!

An additional smart move is probably to install the base driver only. Skip all the extras. The nvidia installers allow that.

[Chasa:Imago]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse  wrote

An additional smart move is probably to install the base driver only. Skip all the extras. The nvidia installers allow that.

Also possible with AMD. And I did; but it didn't make any difference...

[Yammer]

An additional smart move is probably to install the base driver only. Skip all the extras. The nvidia installers allow that.

Also possible with AMD. And I did; but it didn't make any difference...

Just installed a new nVidia Quadro P600 2GB card with minimal software.

Performance seems good, though not quite as fast as the old card (according to Novabench).

No jerkiness so far.

No delays with Photoshop printing dialogue or Colour Management applet.

No crashes in Camera Raw or Photoshop... yet!

Good result.

[Chasa:Imago]

IMHO the specific graphics card manufacturer is not THE issue; the software support IS!

I've been the nvidia road many years and was sick & tired of always crashing with the famous "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" which applies for nvidia as well as AMD.

I'm using GPU support because of two things:

GPU acceleration while stitching panorama images with PTGui PRO; which speeds the process by a factor 10-15x!

GPU acceleration for graphics software, like Photoshop.

It seems, one year the 'n' card does a better job, another year, the 'a' card does a better job. But with all that mining and gaming idiocy going on, a few % gain in performance with every iteration of the graphics software driver seems to be more important then stability in the long run, with serious applications.

Maybe the professional line, like nvidia Quadro or AMD Firepro (which use other drivers) is a better idea? I dunno, because, even second-hand, those cards are (too?) expensive. And for e.g. panorama stitching lots of memory is important, and a Quadro/Firepro card with 2-4GB of RAM is very expensive.

[jbm007]

I have the Quadro 6000

Before that the Quadro CX

The drivers go thru a lot more testing, and the GPU hardware has better thermal control.

You get what you pay for.

[Yammer]

Thanks for the advice.

I have ordered a Quadro P600. Let's see how it fares! 🙂