37 Replies Latest reply: Jul 7, 2013 3:17 PM by JJMack RSS

    New video card - AMD or NVidia

    soffner Community Member

      I've got a choice between nVidia Gt 640 with 4 GB or ram or the AMD 7850 with 2 GB. The nVidia cards are a bit cheaper, but I want to be sure they are good enough. The card that came with my PC won't run the oil paint filter and is causing problems in Photoshop. I need something more powerful. Which is a better buy, or are they similar? I do some video editing and also use filters like oil paint a lot. I want a video card that will speed things up a bit.

        • 1. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
          Trevor.Dennis Community Member

          I know we are talking about Photoshop, and Premiere Pro, but have a look at the PPBM5 results, and see what cards figure in the results table.  Hmmm...  just had a look, and they are _all_ using nVidia cards.

           

          http://ppbm5.com/DB-PPBM5-1.php

           

          Try this link as well

           

          http://ppbm6.com/News.html

          • 2. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
            Curt Y Community Member

            According to PassMark http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php the ATI card is 3 times faster with a score of 3697 vs 1320.

            • 3. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
              Trevor.Dennis Community Member

              Curt, do we know how valid those scores are from a Photoshop point of view? 

              • 4. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                soffner Community Member

                Now that is interesting. I don't know how they do their tests, but it seems like the ATI card may be worth the extra money. I'm not using Premiere Pro, only Photoshop, so the Premiere Pro data isn't as useful for me. I may graduate to PP at some point, but for now, Photoshop does everything I need it to.

                • 5. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                  Curt Y Community Member

                  I got this site from Noel some time ago.  At that time he said from his studies indicate that a score of  was 1000 excellent, and anything over that will probably not give a 1:1 dollar to performance boost.  I trust his advice so have gone with it ever since.

                   

                  As with most tests they are relative, and that is the best we can hope for.  Trying to compare oranges to oranges.  I used to say Apples to Apples but the Mac people might rise up to protest!

                   

                  But beware, they test cards with the fast VRAM memory, DD5 so if you get it with DD3 it will not be the same performance.

                  • 6. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                    JJMack Community Member

                    soffner wrote:

                     

                    Now that is interesting. I don't know how they do their tests, but it seems like the ATI card may be worth the extra money. I'm not using Premiere Pro, only Photoshop, so the Premiere Pro data isn't as useful for me. I may graduate to PP at some point, but for now, Photoshop does everything I need it to.

                    For Photoshop most modern display adapters with a GPU and good drivers will do. Perhaps Photoshop extended and its 3D features may be more demanding. From reading this forum I would be careful with ATI(AMD) drivers.  It seems their hardware is good but many version of their drivers have had problems which effected some Photoshop users.   I have an old ATI 5770 Radion in my i7 machine and I'm still using ATI Catalyst 12.8 for it is quite stable se no reason to update the driver.  My workstation has a Nivida Quadro 4000 not the fastest but Adobe has extra support for Applications like Premier Pro and the Quadro series of Nvidia cards.  Both cards work fine with Photoshop CS6 standard.   If your also a gamer you would want faster adapters then I'm using.

                    • 7. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                      Curt Y Community Member

                      ATI really struggled comimg up with a driver for CS6.  From 12.8 to 13.3 there were a lot of misses.  But it seems with 13.3 and now 13.4 they seemed to have gotten their groove back.  Have not seen any compliaints about those.

                      • 8. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                        Bill Hunt CommunityMVP

                        With Ps ONLY, the video driver would be my determinging factor.

                         

                        Thank you for the report on the latest AMD/ATI drivers. That is good to read, as I was only following some of the reported driver issues, from previous versions. As I only have nVidia cards, I have to rely on others, to fill in the details of new AMD/ATI drivers. Glad to hear that they "have that grove back," since they do make good cards, and good chips.

                         

                        Now, PrPro does add some other aspects, like CUDA/MPE, but those do not yet affect Ps.

                         

                        Also, when one gets to near the top of the video card lineups, there can be measured advantages, but one must ask, "will I ever notice those advantages in a real-world situation?" Maybe, but then maybe not. One can spend a few $1000 on an audio amplifier, or $10,000 on one with even lower distortion numbers - but will one ever hear those differences?

                         

                        @ the OP - good luck, and please let us know which card you go with, plus how it performs for you.

                         

                        Hunt

                        • 9. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                          Noel Carboni Community Member

                          I have a VisionTek ATI Radeon HD 7850 with 2 GB DDR5.  It works with Photoshop quite nicely, with all the advanced features turned on.  It's basically instantaneous for everything (on dual monitors).  I'm glad I got it a year ago.  Was about $200.

                           

                          As Bill mentions above, nVidia can have some advantages for some non-Photoshop Adobe applications.

                           

                          -Noel

                          • 10. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                            Trevor.Dennis Community Member

                            Just a thought, but if we Windows users monitor the Performance tab in the Task Manager while performing a heavy lift process in Photoshop, ISTM that the CPU and memory usage figures will not, in any way, indicate what work the GPU is doing.   I’ve often done exactly this, hopefully willing all 12 threads of my 3930k to show activity, but I’ve never seen this happen with Photoshop.  The only indication I get when the GPU rolls up its sleeves and gets serious, is when MSI Afterburner ramps up the GPU fan speed.

                            • 11. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                              JJMack Community Member

                              I do not see anything in the Windows Task Managers user interface that show GPU performance or usage. Sysinternals Process explorer does plot usage of machine resources like CPU, GPU, Memory, I/O.  I don't know if Photoshop ever stresses a Display adapters GPU. Sure it uses it but I think a GPU can just do so much and how effective it is depend on what you doing.  For example if I use a mixer brush and one of the fancy new Fan thick wet brushes and rapidly start stroking. Photoshop performance lags way behind my brush strokes.  When I use a filter liquify and rapidly stroke Photoshop performance is instantaneous. Looking at the Process explorer. The GPU usage looks the same in both features.  I think Programs like Premier Pro would use GPU more heavier then Photoshop.  In Photoshop video rendering does not even seem to use the GPU.

                              GPUuseage.jpg

                               

                              Heavy GPU use looks more like this:

                              HeavyGPU.jpg

                              • 12. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                Trevor.Dennis Community Member

                                One of the most useful things about the PPBM5 results table, is that it shows exactly what gains are from MPE.  I can definitely hear my GPU fans ramp up with some things in Photoshop, but I have never managed to make a brush, or any other cursor driven operation, lag with my current NLE system.

                                 

                                [EDIT]  Speccy shows some aspects of what the GPU is doing in realy time, but mainly only in terms of temperature.  I've not used it a while, so it might do more.

                                • 13. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                  Noel Carboni Community Member

                                  JJMack wrote:

                                   

                                  I don't know if Photoshop ever stresses a Display adapters GPU.

                                   

                                  You're right, it doesn't, really.

                                   

                                  GPU-Z shows very little usage even when moving a 3D scene around, and NONE at all when rendering.  Nor really much of any when working in Oil Paint either.  GPU acceleration is being done in bits and pieces from what I can see, to where the computer system as a whole still ends up waiting on processes in the CPU.

                                   

                                  Note the GPU load shown here, where initially I was moving the camera around in a 3D scene, then I started ray tracing rendering.

                                   

                                  LowGPULoad.png

                                   

                                   

                                  -Noel

                                  • 14. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                    Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                    The 3D scene would be more stressed with additional geometry, lights, and materials.

                                    But much of the time is really spent in CPU overhead with OpenGL managing all those things.

                                     

                                    I've been working with the 3D team to profile this, and trying to reduce the overhead.  Some of it is on the Photoshop side (easy to fix), and some we just need to use different APIs to reduce overhead (which will require working with the GPU vendors to figure out how to minimize that overhead - not as easy to fix).

                                    • 15. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                      Noel Carboni Community Member

                                      It's a reasonably complex scene that notably slows down the frame rate of display updates when moving the camera down to 2 or 3 per second on this big machine.  The raw 3D rendering capability of these cards can no doubt paint this scene faster than that (as they do in games).

                                       

                                       

                                      3DSceneInPhotoshop.jpg

                                       

                                      I can't attest to the absolute accuracy of the above GPU utilization measurement utility, however.

                                       

                                      -Noel

                                      • 16. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                        Trevor.Dennis Community Member

                                        Is that your work Noel?  I am PD impressed if it is! 

                                        • 17. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                          Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                          If you send me the file, I can profile it and see where the time is going.

                                          I've already found and fixed several slowdowns, and have an idea of a few places where we might get more improvements.  Now the big trick is finding all the edge cases that cause slowdowns, and prioritizing the fixes (well, and figuring out OpenGL APIs :-) ).

                                          • 18. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                            klsteven Community Member

                                            Chris,

                                             

                                            since I`m interested in a new graphics card, can you tell me, wether Photoshop (or any other Adobe software) uses double precision calculation? The nvidia Titan is much better than a GTX 780 in this aspect, but also much more expensive.

                                            • 19. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                              Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                              Photoshop uses double precision in the raytracer, and some of the OpenCL accelerated filters - otherwise not too much (because it's slower and more precision than needed for most images).

                                               

                                              Unless you use some of the OpenCL accelerated filters all day, I'm not sure the high end card is worth it just for Photoshop.  (of course, it might be useful in other applications)

                                              • 20. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                klsteven Community Member

                                                Chris, thanks for that info! But raytracing is not done on the GPU in Photoshop, right? My GPU usage is 0% during raytracing.

                                                Raytracing is the process that takes extremly much time in 3D work, so I would be thankful for every performance improvement.

                                                But if it`s only done on the CPU, fast GPU double precision performance won`t help, right?

                                                 

                                                Since I hope, that we`ll get more OpenCL filters in the future, fast double precision performance may be useful.

                                                • 21. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                  Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                                  Yes, at this time raytracing is only done on the CPU.

                                                  • 22. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                    soffner Community Member

                                                    Thanks to everyone who has replied. I guess I just have one more question - my choice is between the ATI with 2 GB of DDR5 and the nVidia with 4 GB of DDR3. I know that DDR5 is faster than DDR3. Is the faster RAM more important than having 4GB? Would there actually be a benefit to having 4GB of RAM on the video card, or is that wasted on Photoshop?

                                                    • 23. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                      Noel Carboni Community Member

                                                      It's not all my work Trevor (I imported several free models that I manipulated), though the photography, the arrangement of the components, and setup of various Photoshop 3D features are my doingI created it specifically to get familiar with and test Photoshop's 3D capabilities, for example with transparent, refractive objects.

                                                       

                                                      Chris, thanks for the offer.  If it can help you determine why the model doesn't move smoothly and maybe lead to a more efficient Photoshop version, I'm more than happy to share it.  Note that it's 218 megabytes.

                                                       

                                                      http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/temp/DesktopMiscellany4.zip

                                                       

                                                      It's rare that anything slows this 12 core system down, and to be fair even at a few frames per second the 3D environment is still quite usable.

                                                       

                                                      -Noel

                                                      • 24. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                        Noel Carboni Community Member

                                                        Soffner, I'd say that if you don't have an application that you KNOW needs more than 2GB of VRAM (and I doubt very many do), then the faster VRAM will benefit you more in the long run.

                                                         

                                                        -Noel

                                                        • 25. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                          Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                                          OK, I have the file. I'll see what I can find.

                                                          • 26. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                            soffner Community Member

                                                            Thank you! That's one thing that's been confusing me about the choice. It seemed like 2GB was a good number, I was afraid 4 was overkill for the kind of work I do.

                                                            • 27. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                              station_two Community Member

                                                              I'd say that even 2 GB is overkill.  There's definitely something else wrong with your system if you're having problems.

                                                              • 28. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                                                Even 2GB VRAM can get cramped if you are working with complex 3D models.

                                                                And OpenCL can use that extra memory in some calculations.

                                                                • 29. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                  station_two Community Member

                                                                  Thanks for the correction.  Never worked in 3D. 

                                                                  • 30. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                    klsteven Community Member

                                                                    Chris,

                                                                     

                                                                    can I interpret your answer in the way that GPU raytracing will come to Photoshop? If it used doubleprecision then, a Titan should be much, much faster than a GTX 780.

                                                                    • 31. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                      klsteven Community Member

                                                                      Noel,

                                                                       

                                                                      if I move the camera on your file, I get a framerate of about 20fps (hard to estimate). But you have to make sure that your preferences are set to turn off other layers during 3D interaction. Otherwise it gets slow, of course. I have a GTX470, a Q6600 and 8GB.

                                                                      Btw, when opening your file, the timeline panel opens, although there is not animation or video. This happens on many of my own files as well, but it should not.

                                                                      • 32. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                        Noel Carboni Community Member

                                                                        You're absolutely right.  I'm not sure how the 3D layer got to be 80% opaque (vs. 100%), but without the Levels adjustment layer on the camera motion becomes fully smooth and interactive.  Very good!  Somehow it never occurred to me, but of course Photoshop would have to go back to its layer compositing logic after every frame is rendered.

                                                                         

                                                                        Notably it still doesn't take the GPU up too high in usage but at least it shows something.

                                                                         

                                                                        GPULoading.png

                                                                         

                                                                        And yes, you're right about the Timeline panel inappropriately opening.  That happens with most if not all my 3D projects.  Of course I've already reported it to Adobe.

                                                                         

                                                                        -Noel

                                                                        • 33. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                          JJMack Community Member

                                                                          Yes to stress your display adapter GPU you need a benchmark like Heaven where you cam try different settings to see how they effect frame rate.  Heaven seems to max out the gpu  for all setting I have tried.

                                                                          StressVideo.jpg

                                                                          • 34. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                            Noel Carboni Community Member

                                                                            Clearly games are driving all the GPU advancements, but I personally don't give a damn about gaming.  I use the Passmark benchmark to gauge performance.  The nice thing is that it's got an extensive online database to compare to.

                                                                             

                                                                            GPUs pretty much surpassed all the needs of all other uses a while back.  Now it's up to the applications to make use of the GPU power that's there.

                                                                             

                                                                            -Noel

                                                                            • 35. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                              JJMack Community Member

                                                                              I'm not a gamer either. I just like to see what can be done with a GPU. While there may be a game heaven I only use the heaven benchmark and cal look online how display adapter stack up other display adapters using similar settings..

                                                                               

                                                                              As I wrote I do not think Photoshop will ever stress a GPU doing what it does.  Photoshop could also use GPU more then it currently does, I 'm sure Video rendering and some of Photoshop extended features performance would be improved if Photoshop programming took more advantages of Display drivers GPU support. I skipped CS4 for I knew there would be many bugs for Adobe GPU support was all new code in CS4. Adobe does not test new code very well and there also was  bound to be problem in the new device driver with bugs in new openGL support.  CS5 fixed many and CS6 the buggiest version of Photoshop ever released also included a major change in Adobe GPU support to use the Mercury Graphics Engine for some features.

                                                                               

                                                                              I'll be using CS6 for there is no legitimate way to leave the cloud and be able use all ones assets created in the cloud. So I'll not be getting any new GPU support from Adobe. Unless Adobe support starts to maintain and fix Adobe products.  I feel that is highly unlikely. 

                                                                              • 36. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                                Chris Cox Adobe Employee

                                                                                >> As I wrote I do not think Photoshop will ever stress a GPU doing what it does.

                                                                                 

                                                                                And yet we're already stressing them enough that every couple of driver versions break...

                                                                                 

                                                                                When the drivers are more stable and everything doesn't break underneath us - then maybe we can do more.

                                                                                 

                                                                                And despite your wild mis-guesses, we spend a lot of time testing new code.  But we can't test every version of driver (especially those released after we ship).

                                                                                • 37. Re: New video card - AMD or NVidia
                                                                                  JJMack Community Member

                                                                                  Yes you need stability and standard driver  implenetation for all hardware display adapters.  I think you will get that when there is a RAW standard in place and implemented by all camera makers.  Then with all drivers working maybe you'll fix Photoshop bugs  for you will have no one else to point your finger at.