Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

[_ProArtist_]

I'm am just at a loss of words.

What a mess. It could not be any slower. What were you thinking Adobe?

You ripped apart the code just to add GPU support for what? To provide worse performance?

Make sure you DL the demo first... CS4 is a disaster.

The latest hardware cant even run it smoothly... Dont tell me its graphic drivers.

[mikeengles]

Hello
Apologies for returning to this, but I have just done the benchmark
on my son's tiny Samsung laptop with a 12in screen.
It uses Vista, has a 2.4ghz core 2 dual T8200 and 3 gb of ram.
It did the benchmark in 47secs, using the internal 5400rpm drive.
83% of available ram used by CS4. Vista uses over 1Gb of the 3GB and has 80 processes running.
I'm amazed. I might as well buy a little laptop!

Mike Engles

[_c_morley_]

I've got a room full of DELL workstations ranging from Optiplex 745's to DELL Precision 690's with 4 gigs of ram. ALL boxes have NVIDIA cards including several with Quadro FX 3500s with the latest drivers. ALL installs of CS4 show the same (terrible) slowness and choppiness when moving images over top each other. All settings have also been toggled with no change.

As a test, we have one system with an ATI card and performace is just as bad as all the other machines.

As another test, I pulled one of our machines from the network and also killed every single process including McAfee. Performance still very poor.

I'm reluctant to spend more time troubleshooting this for one simple reason: CS3 works perfectly on every single machine we have and CS4 doesn't. That tells me that the problem is caused by something Adobe did. Whether or not the new GPU coding uncovered an existing underlying issue with video cards is not my concern. I'm loath to change our corporate environment to attempt to fix a problem we did not cause. An easier solution for us would be to just return all 20+ copies of our CS4 suites.

Do any of the engineers have any more updates for us?

Systems are WinXP SP2/SP3 with latest direct X updates and latest Video drivers.

[_ProArtist_]

C.Morley

Try my OpenGL settings that i posted a few posts up. Let us know if anything improves.

[_Adam_Jerugim_]

C.Morley: Here's an update, we've been working on the issue since it was first reported and we're still looking for volunteers to help us test a change that may improve performance. If you're interested in helping you can email me directly.

Also, we found a possible workaround (nVidia only) for the issue of images not redrawing or drawing incorrectly when moved:

In the NVIDIA Control Panel:

Advanced -> Geforce/Quadro tab -> Start NVIDIA Control Panel -> Advanced Settings
-> Manage 3D Settings -> Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration

Set to Compatibility performance mode

Note that in my case this setting is on by default for PS CS4 after installing the latest drivers for the 8800 GT (YMMV).

-Adam

[_c_morley_]

Adam, I would love to help troubleshoot this. How to I get hold of you? (I already have my NVIDIA settings as you note)

ProArtist, I tried your settings and while they helped a bit on the chopped graphics when dragting one image over the other (still not usable though) the pen lag and other general slogginess remains the same.

[_Adam_Jerugim_]

My non-adobe email:

travlin_adam at yahoo dot com

-Adam

[Guest]

Adam,

>Also, we found a possible workaround (nVidia only) for the issue of images not redrawing or drawing incorrectly when moved:

Any hope for ATI users?

[_Russell_Proulx_]

I've begun to move away from my 'old faithful CRT' and try out dual LCDs. My previous videocard (ATI Radeon HD-2400) had 1x VGA and 1x DVI outputs and I suspected the slight difference in colour behaviour from one screen to the other identical model was due to this difference in connection. So I picked up a Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Video Card with the hope that this more powerful card might also improve CS4's lag.

In Vista 64 the card works fine and there seems to be very little lag when cloning or drawing. But with XP it's very sluggish and the delay is unacceptable for any real world work (sticking with Cs3 for now).

Tomorrow I'll poke at the OpenGL options that have been recommended in this thread to see if they help. But just to let folks know that it works better with Vista 64 than XP at this point. I'm using the latest 8.12 ATI driver in XP and 8.11 in Vista64 (8.12 has a known issue with Vist64 that's not yet resolved by ATI).

Russell

[_Daniel_nieto_]

Is it possible that when you disable or modify some OpenGL settings in order to get CS4 to redraw faster that you are sacrificing the new CS4 feature of its providing a finer screen presentation at odd zooms other than 100%?

At this time, I have no way to test this since I had to remove my OpenGL card because of unrelated issues [dont ask]well, OK: my power supply was insufficient for the card upgrade making the card make a terrible noise for 30 seconds upon a cold start-up. Oddly hot-starts werent a prob. So rather than fool anymore with my 5 yr old PC: gonna get another but am afraid to until this screen lag problem is solved.

[hhansard]

Daniel,

There are sources for larger-capacity power supplies. I typically work with xoxide.com

Hugh

[Guest]

>making the card make a terrible noise for 30 seconds upon a cold start-up. Oddly hot-starts werent a prob.

That scenario would make me think about fan bearings going bad...

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

Same here. I migrated to fanless, big heat sink video cards for that reason.

[_Russell_Proulx_]

> I migrated to fanless, big heat sink video cards for that reason.

I just finished grafted an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1(rev2) onto a Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 following the method outlined at http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page1.html and it's totally silent, except for a 120mm fan set to low that was recommended by the same silentpcreview article.

Now back to XP with CS4...

If I go to CS4's Preferences -> Performance -> OpenGL Advanced Settings and turn off some of the features the lag is reduced substantially to the point that I can work with the app easily:

1) Vertical Sync : Worse choice/ very sluggish drawing response

2) 3D Interaction Acceleration:
Slows things a bit

3) Force Bilinear Interpolation:
Doesn't slow things down (might even help?)

4) Advanced Drawing, Use for Image Display, Color Matching:
Doesn't slow things down

All the bells and whistles of PSCS4 seem to be working fine with 1 and 2 disabled.

FWIW this card works fine in Vista64. Hope this might help some who use Radeon cards and for whom these simple settings changes might help.

[Guest]

Didn't help, Russel, but thanks for the post.

To reiterate: My biggest problem with CS4, with OGL enabled, is dragging an open window around. When I do that, the content disappears. Chris Cox has said (somewhere in this never-ending thread) that Adobe has been unable to reproduce the problem. This leaves me with a very empty feeling, update-wise.

I know, without searching, that other people have seen this. Are any of you still out there?

[hhansard]

Nick,

What PS build are you using?
What is your OGL version?
What size image?
Do you use Bigger tiles?

I get tile repaint and transparency issues with OGL , but not full drop-out.

Have you disabled Documents as Tabs -- I used to get drop-out until I disabled that.

H

[hhansard]

Russell,

What version of OGL do you have?

Have you started to play with the underlying driver OGL and 3D management settings?

May I borrow this post and your response for another thread? It may come in handy.

H

[Guest]

Hugh,

This PC is XP Pro, SP3, Opteron dual-core processor, 4 GB RAM, video card is HIS ATI Radeon X1950 Pro which supports Shader 3.0 and OGL 2.0.

With OGL enabled in prefs, this happens with any image that is opened, from web graphics to poster-sized, and with Bigger Tiles enabled or not. I despise Documents as Tabs, so it's been disabled from the first.

Nick

[_Russell_Proulx_]

> What version of OGL do you have? Have you started to play with the underlying driver OGL and 3D management settings?

I installed the latest v8.12 'driver only' which I downloaded from the ATI.AMD.com website. I do not install anything from the CD that comes with the videocard as it's usually old before the product ships.

I did not install the Catalyst Control Center as I've learned from past experience that it offers little benefit and just adds additional overhead with stuff that runs in the background. Much of the junk can be disabled (see: http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html ) but I find it's just easier to avoid it altogether.

Here's the card info link at Sapphire's website:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=219&grp=3

I assume this page has the OpenGL version info you're asking about. Though I have only turned off stuff in Photoshop's own OpenGL preferences menu and without the Catalyst Control Panel I don't think I can change anything else.

FWIW: When I move images around the screen (with XP) the image remains visible at all times. Though when I release the mouse at the end of the move there is a slight flickering that I've never seen with any pervious versions of PS. The flickering does not occur with the OpenGL feature turned off in PS Preferences. This is with an 11 layered RGB image (including 2 text layers) that weighs in at 308mb (40.9mb when flattened).

Russell

[Guest]

Russell,
The CC Panel does have some openGL settings that can be turned on and off. Also heat generation wise your card is just like my 4870. CS4 really puts my card to work and it heats up fast. The CC Panel has a option to speed up the cooling fan on your card to keep it cool when you stress it out.

[_Russell_Proulx_]

David,

As mentioned earlier I replaced the fan with an Accelero S1 VGA Cooler as detailed at http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page1.html and it's very silent (just a 120mm fan running a low speed) and seems to be running very cool. Anyway.. at this point CS4 seems to be running ok under XP with just turning off those CS4 OpenGL options. I hope the few hiccups that remain will be resolved with a 'dot' release.

Nick,

If the image is disappearing while moving it about the way you describe I'd probably suspect a hardware conflict. I'd look to see if the videocard could be moved to another slot on the motherboard if another PCIe slot's available to try. I'd also pull out any other unnecessary cards that might be causing a conflict (just as a test). I'd also try running the system with only 2GB RAM to rule out any issues there.

It's possible that it's not a CS4 issue other than CS4 doing stuff that's exposing a hardware issue.

Russell

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

I suspect that if one runs CS4 on Vista 64, running an Intel Nehalem processor on a good x58 board, most problems will go away, but not all.

I know that manufacturing techniques follow the basic pattern establishing interchangeability of components, which ought to lead to units that run within spec, but it seems to me that we are almost back in the handmade age, where each production was unique.

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Adobe sees problems at the deep level that we will never observe ourselves. That is, it ain't perfect by a long shot!

It is my opinion that Adobe seriously needs two things:

Structured Exception Handling reports at the user level

A formal bug tracking system to which we can contribute such as Bugzilla.

[Guest]

Russell,

> I'd look to see if the videocard could be moved to another slot on the motherboard if another PCIe slot's available to try.

Unfortunately, not an option. It's an AGP card.

I'm seeing decent performance with OGL turned off in prefs, so I'll probably just wait and see if "the fix" fixes my problem.

Beyond that, I have a copy of Vista 64 that I can install at some point on that box. As I mentioned some time ago, I have CS4 installed on my other box, which is already Vista 64, and CS4 runs fine on it.

[_Russell_Proulx_]

> Unfortunately, not an option. It's an AGP card.

Must be an older system. That probably doesn't help :-(

Russell

[Guest]

Yeah, it's several years old, but it was pretty much state of the art when I built it. I've been toying with the idea of building a new one, but all the research into mobos, CPUs, etc., is daunting. Back when I built it, I was going through a stage of actually enjoying all the tinkering, but I guess my geekness has worn off. Now I just want something that works without me having to get under the hood.

[Jan_D_Curtis]

A question for the forum:

A few weeks ago I tried to install the CS4 upgrade (currently running CS3, with a large number of extra Gradients, Styles, Actions, and plug-ins).

CS 4 had so many problems I uninstalled it (totally unusable).

I have now upgraded my video card to a much more powerful, higher end card from the Adobe Tested List as well as swapped out my 300 watt power supply for a 650 watt. My system is running beautifully with the hardware. Within a few days I will be doing a reinstall of CS4 and hopefully things will go much better.

My question is this: CS3, with all of its extras is installed on the C (system boot) drive. I have two additional internal harddrives, can CS4 be installed on one of those secondary drives, or must it be installed on the boot drive (C drive)?

For business purposes CS3 must be kept operational and intact with all of its extras and plug-ins.

I would also like to be able to work with CS4, try out the many settings changes and suggestions that have been submitted to the forum, see what extras and what plug-ins it will work with until Adobe can provide enough fixes to make the program functional and reliable enough to handle my business projects.

JD Curtis