PS CS6 Extremely slow and sluggish. Brush tool delay.

[ForeKeith]

Hello everyone.

I own a copy of Photoshop CS6.

Switching from Photoshop CS to CS6, I have found this version to be extremely slow and I can not find a reason why it is like this. It is impossible for me to work on it.

Problem: Slow performance, when using the brush tool there is a long delay - lag. The brush takes more than 8 seconds to catch up with my strokes.

Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS6 x64
OS:	Windows 7 x64 SP1
CPU:	AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE
GPU:	Radeon 6790 OC @ 920Mhz
RAM:	A-Data DDR3 1333Mhz CAS9 4GB (x2)
SSD:	A-Data 510 128GB SATA3
HDD:	Samsung SATA 1TB

Tried:

- Memory usage allowed upgraded to 6GB, nothing changed.

- Default selected "Scratch Disk" is the main SSD which has over 58GB of free space, I've tried selecting the secondary HDD as well but nothing changes.

- Disabled the "Use Graphic  Processor" square. nothing changed.

- Disabled the "Use open CL" square in advanced Graphic Processor Settings. Nothing changed.

- Changed power management settings in windows to "High Performance". nothing changed.

- Disabling tablet pc service doesn't help.

Notes:

- Graphic drivers are the latest release on AMD website

- Windows is completely updated

- SSD Firmware is the latest available.

- The issue happens both with mouse and tablet.

- 1px brush and 5000px brush lag just alike in zoomed and not zoomed canvas.

- This happens on both x64 and x86 versions of the software.

Any help is aprecihated.

Thank you in advance.

[john worthington]

I do not think the problems are caused by the cards, it may be a driver problem but these cards should be performing faster.

Just to be clear, when you run Liquify the preview does not have the (CPU mode) thin black pixel outline, right?

Does the cursor seem to track the mouse better when the cursor is not over the preview in the Liquify dialog? Like when you hover over the tools or controls.

[ForeKeith]

AMD replied to my email just today and said that my graphic card should be compatible and should perform great with the current drivers.

I would love to have the issue with my graphic card fixed because mercury engine is the main reason I bought CS6.

However, even when I'm in CPU mode, moving layers around is very laggy, even with thumbnails preview turned off in the layers window...

[Noel Carboni]

ForeKeith wrote:

AMD replied to my email just today and said that my graphic card should be compatible and should perform great with the current drivers.

Wow, they went out on a limb and said that?    AMD clearly is denying any problems just as any corporate entity appears to do nowadays.  Didn't someone once say "shoot all the laywers"?

It's pretty clear the Catalyst 12.4 release is a bust with Photoshop.  Lots of people have seen that.  And I just checked - AMD hasn't released Catalyst 12.5 yet.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

But I agree that your card is MORE than powerful enough.  Mine is slower than yours and my Photoshop experience is quick and interactive.  There is a SPECIFIC PROBLEM that's manifesting here.

But just to be absolutely, completely, undeniably sure we're not talking about a performance issue with very large files, please do the following:

1.  Create a new, blank document as follows:

2.  Choose the Brush Tool then reset it by right-clicking in the little brush icon at the upper-left and choosing Reset Tool:

3.  Make the brush 1000 pixels in size, fully soft.

4.  Set the foreground color to something other than white and brush quickly from the upper-left corner of the image to the lower-right.  Roughly how many seconds does it take for the actual on-canvas stroke to get all the way to the bottom (i.e., how far behind does it get)?

Is it:

• Nearly instantaneous?
• One second behind?
• Many seconds behind?

On my system with this big brush and huge image, it gets about 1 second behind.

-Noel

[ForeKeith]

11 seconds?

[Guest]

1 second here.

[Noel Carboni]

Sounds like metallicfist is seeing a more or less typical delay because literally millions of pixels have to be manipulated.  Should it be faster than 1 second?  Maybe, but that's the state of the art.

But 10x slower than that, as is being seen by ForeKeith, indicates a problem I think.

-Noel

[ForeKeith]

Noel Carboni wrote:

(...)as is being seen by ForeKeith(...)

You can call me darling.

[ForeKeith]

I'm still looking for a solution to this problem.

[john worthington]

There is a team of engineers working on the problem here.

[ForeKeith]

I don't know if this is related but yesterday PS crashed when I tried to use the color selection tool.

[Noel Carboni]

Jworthin, you don't realize how positive it is for users to hear something like that.

-Noel

[ForeKeith]

So true.

[DrTc]

Just to confirm performance hit in CS6, working on a win7x64 machine with both CS5 & CS6 installed.

GPU:GTX460 1G OC & GT520 driving 4 displays.

Cpu: i7 950

RAM: 24Gb DDR3

On images of about 8500x5500 pixels with many layers & groups, CS6 is definetly slower than working on the same file within CS5, with a lag in brush strokes, especially on layer masks. It is slower to display changes on the navigation window, which is fully expanded in another monitor. Saving takes way longer than CS5 too.. Does this bg saving have to do with it?

Also although brush preview is checked ON I cannot see it anywhwere. Any ideas?

[john worthington]

Evan, as a test try unplugging one of your video cards and see if the performance improves. Multiple cards (especially different cards) can sometimes cause odd conflicts in the video drivers.

[ForeKeith]

jworthin, can you please notify me if there will be a solution to my issue?

I'm waiting faithfully...

Thank you in advance.

[john worthington]

ForeKeith, Please try the AMD/ATI Beta 12.6 driver. It solves many of the ATI driver problems we have seen with 12.3 and 12.4 drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst126beta.aspx

From another angle, does your motherboard have any built-in graphics hardware? It could be conflicting.

-John

[ForeKeith]

jworthin wrote:

ForeKeith, Please try the AMD/ATI Beta 12.6 driver. It solves many of the ATI driver problems we have seen with 12.3 and 12.4 drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst126beta.aspx

From another angle, does your motherboard have any built-in graphics hardware? It could be conflicting.

-John

Yes it does have integrated graphics but BIOS disables it when PCIe card is connected, In fact, windows doesn't detect it...

I'll try them out, thanks!

[ForeKeith]

jworthin wrote:

ForeKeith, Please try the AMD/ATI Beta 12.6 driver. It solves many of the ATI driver problems we have seen with 12.3 and 12.4 drivers.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst126beta.aspx

From another angle, does your motherboard have any built-in graphics hardware? It could be conflicting.

-John

Sadly it didn't change the situation, I still get the extreme slowdown with the "use graphic processor" option enabled.
You know what is funny? I had upgraded my system when I read that Photoshop CS6 would support GPU acceleration. Damn! I hope to find a solution soon...

[DrTc]

jworthin, I apreciate your prompt reply.

This is not "my" machine, so it would be difficult to try so. Moreover, both  GPU's (GTX 460 & GT520) are used and needed  to drive all displays, and share same driver 296.10.

Nvidia cards where installed in the first place just for Adobe apps that utilized CUDA cores (PP, AE, PS). However up to recently they only supported 2 displays. Otherwise a single Radeon would have handled more displays with less overhead..

On the same system CS5 is handling much faster, how come?

[Guest]

Photoshop does not use CUDA, but the Mecruy Graphics Engine.  A lot more tasks are shifted to the video card in CS6 over CS5.

As you have seen in these posts drivers are still being tweeked to fit this new demand.

[DrTc]

Yes, but Mercury engine takes advantage of CUDA cores and not Radeon cards. Would you suggest downloading latest drivers from nvidia 301.42?

[Guest]

No, PS does not use CUDA!  At least that is what Cris Cox says, and you have to believe him as he is a program engineer.

CUDA is used for some functions in Premere Pro however.

Don't know anything about the drivers for Nvidia, except they are also scrambling to redo drivers.

Not only do you have 2 video cards they are not the same version.  Can you disable the weaker one?

[DrTc]

Yes, I mentioned basically use for PP & AE. If I disable the weaker, no 3rd display (used to display to clients full screen on large pro display).
Only recently with GTX 670 & higher did Nvidia start to support more than 2 displays in their GF series.

Moreover installed cards 460 & 520 are just one year old. They do have the horsepower and perform well in PP & PS CS5.

[john worthington]

Evan, I realize your workflow requires the extra video card, but it would help us find to narrow down the cause if you could just test to see if using a single card solved your performance problem. I believe using multiple video cards is not supported by Photoshop because of the problems it causes.

[DrTc]

Drivers now updated to 301.42.

First impressions feel snapier, could be autosuggestion 🙂

will have more in depth insight this w/e and perhaps could manage getting allowance unplugging the second card.
Will keep u posted.

ps: in the AE list it was mentioned that having an nvidia card (570 upwards) headless and a secondary Ati one driving the monitors, will produce superior results for PP & perhaps AE, as all Cuda cores are dedicated to the Mercury engine instead of driving the displays. Would PhotoShop benefit from a setup like that?