Who uses Photoshop CS4 and what graphics card/processor are you using?

Anagoge

Senior Member
I decided that I'd install CS4 last week after using CS3 for the last year or so. However, what I wasn't prepared for was the serious sluggishness of Photoshop.

My specs aren't top notch, but they're certainly not shabby either. I'm running a dual core 2.4ghz, with 2gb ram and an 8800GT graphics card. I had assumed that would be plenty. I tried turning the 3d acceleration off in the preferences, but the whole application just seemed sluggish. In the end, I decided to uninstall CS4 and go back to CS3, which works perfectly.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has had these sort of issues. What specs are you using to run CS4?
 
Can't afford cs4 at the moment, I dunno how all these people get this software? Dodgey sites maybe. I got given a copy of CS3 at my previous job and still use it to this day, its great. Whats new with CS4 anyway? Anything drastic?
 
hmm I'm using CS4, on a quad core 2.0ghz, 4gb ram, 8800gtx. no problems,

And also on my laptop dual core 2.2ghz, 4gb ram, ati 4570HD no problems either, seems abit strange that it's sluggish for you, other than maybe the 2GB RAM. Are you running Vista? could be that Vista's thieving the available memory and not leaving enough for Ps.

But, to be honest, I use CS3 as well, there's no differences for any of the stuff I do.
 
I've given cs4 a go and in my opinion it suffers from the same issues that cs3 did on release, it wasn't ready for release. If I disable all the new gpu acceleration gubbins it runs fine but when all thats turned on my system seems to struggle. An update seemed to fix the exact same issue in cs3. As a side note, the issue is more noticeable in 32bit photoshop versus the 64bit version.
Now I know I'm using vista (x64) but my gpu (in this case a 7000 series geforce) can handle 3D work fairly well so it should be able to work photoshop. I'm running what is ultimately a slower cpu (x2 2.2GHz) but it does have 4GB of ram.

I have noticed one familar trend to the graphics issues with photoshop and thats the gpu always seems to be nvidia based, ati doesn't seem to have the issues.
 
I'm running XP and I tried with/without the acceleration. It didn't make any difference though. Still quite sluggish unfortunately and this was right after a clean install of XP.
 
I'd put it down more to driver choice on xp, I never really had the issues with cs3 on xp, it was more when I upgraded (yes it was an upgrade!) to vista x64.

How is your page file etc set up too as that can have an effect too.
 
I updated my drivers to see if that was the problem but unfortunately that made no difference either.

I didn't mess around with page files, but considering CS3 works absolutely fine, it just seems strange that CS4 doesn't.
 
well it could be down to adobe, its not like they like to support older os's (snow leopard and cs3 wasn't even tested properly)
 
You can hardly say cs3 is an old program though plus I'd say 90% of adobe software only upgrade every other release at the earliest. I would have thought that they would have atleast tested the previous version but hey I don't have the monopoly.
 
not a clue don't use flash.

Basically 64 bit photoshop, a few extra features like canvas rotate and improved 3D tools in extended but its not really a necessary upgrade and a slight change to the interface etc. Nothing ground breaking.
 
sounds strange, it should definately not be sluggish on that spec!

i have a laptop running it with a single core 1.7ghz centrino and 2gig ram and works perfectly.
also have a work computer with much higher spec working great. in fact i have entire cs4 master and only program that runs slowly on laptop is premiere pro. flash is fast.

is it a fairly recent install of windows or old an old one with lots of programs/files etc... as thats the only thing i can think of that would slow it down.

dont know your level of pc knowledge so excuse if patronising....

remove temp files/prefetch
disk clean up and defrag

all i can suggest.

if that fails then new hd or format original if not too old and os reinstall for optimum performance.
 
Thanks for the tips, Charles.

The original reason for getting a copy of CS4 was because unfortunately I suffered a massive hard drive failure, resulting in the format of it and a clean install of Windows XP. Admittedly, it was XP minus all three service packs until I updated. In other words, new/format HD can't be why.

Graphics card is an 8800GT. Looks like you guys are running CS4 fine with that or less. Ironically, Crysis looks great with it!

RAM = 2GB, can't need any more than that, especially on a clean install.

Processor = 2.4 x 2, again guess it can't be that if you're running it great on a 1.7 single core.

So, perhaps it's the prefetching? I don't quite know what this is to be honest so if you could give me a bit more information, that'd be great. What I did do was play about with cache sizes and also set the scratch disks to the right location but again, that didn't help.

Anyway, thanks for the tips. I'll stick with CS3 for now, now that I've reinstalled it!
 
i usually empty temp and the prefetch folders in windows

also run - %temp% and empty when having a tidy up.

arev all f your other programs running o.k?

what type of tasks in photoshop are causing a lag?

only other thing i can think of that is rather unlikely to cause this is your gpu being underpowered by your psu, other than that am unsure...
 
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