Thinkpads Forum

wow, I must say I'm rather appalled at the performance of CS4-- and from reading through several posts on Adobe's forums, I'm clearly not the only one; apparently the new integration of "enhanced" GPU features entailed a substantial revision of code, and on my setup at least-- T60p, C2D @ 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, ATI FireGL V5250 256 MB-- it seems slower in every possible respect relative to the prior version. I have also tried disabling the OpenGL features, and while certain aspects are better, overall it still feels slow compared to CS3.

I'm curious to hear others' experiences with the app; have you found ways to boost performance by tweaking any settings? I should also note that, as detailed in prior posts, I'm using the latest driver from ATI's site, as the most recent Lenovo version doesn't even allow one to enable the OpenGL features.

As far as I'm concerned, my T60p specs should be way more than enough to run Photoshop at near-peak performance (and others, with significantly enhanced specs are complaining of the same issues).

Thanks for any feedback.

Same problem here, though my T60 has X1400, 2GB RAM and a 1,8GHz C2D. I gave up on CS4 and decided it wasn't worth the sluggish performance. CS3 is way more pleasing to use.

All I can say, is that it must be nice to have the ca$h for CS4.

I'm still poking along with CS2. Works great for me.

I sincerely hope Adobe is willing to work with the community to get these issues resolved in a reasonable manner.

Didn't have to buy CS4, the trial is available for everyone to try..

There was a lot of finger-pointing from Adobe during the private beta test cycle for Photoshop CS4. Since reps from nVidia, AMD/ATI, etc. weren't in the forums to respond, it was difficult to tell where the fault and responsibility lay. I never did get the OpenGL features of the CS4 beta to work properly on my T60p either (FireGL V5200).

I'll have to try AMD's driver package instead of Lenovo's.

thought I'd post an update: based on a tip found in the Adobe forums, I modified the "performance" settings to keep "Enable OpenGL Drawing" checked, but then disabled all of the "Advanced Settings"-- this seems to make things significantly snappier in general, particularly with zooming and panning.

following all the arguments on the Adobe forums is pretty fascinating; even if drivers are 100% to blame in every single issue a user is experiencing-- which is most definitely *not* the case--, it's mind-boggling to me that Adobe would turn a blind eye to this reality and release the software as is, taking into account the knowledge they must have gathered during the beta cycle (as taob references). I've decided to continue playing with the software on my home machine (T60) but also to wait for some updates before upgrading at work.

I'm running a 2.0Ghz, 2GB T60P with ATI V5250 graphics card, 1600x1050 at 32-bit color. Latest ATI drivers downloaded just a week ago with Mobility Modder applied.

With GPU support enabled, most filters run MUCH faster. In some cases, unbelievably faster. I am impressed with the performance improvement. In fact, using CS4 PS on my desktop (which is 3Ghz, 2GB P4 chip box with ATI 1650 Pro graphics adapter) is also noticeably faster, but not as fast as my Thinkpad on the same filters. Noticed 3D also ran faster, too.

I think Adobe will need to supply better support for video drivers for everyone to see the difference.

Grayslake

Grayslake wrote:I'm running a 2.0Ghz, 2GB T60P with ATI V5250 graphics card, 1600x1050 at 32-bit color. Latest ATI drivers downloaded just a week ago with Mobility Modder applied.

With GPU support enabled, most filters run MUCH faster. In some cases, unbelievably faster. I am impressed with the performance improvement. In fact, using CS4 PS on my desktop (which is 3Ghz, 2GB P4 chip box with ATI 1650 Pro graphics adapter) is also noticeably faster, but not as fast as my Thinkpad on the same filters. Noticed 3D also ran faster, too.

Please, could you share your CS4 PS settings? Thanks

Marin

Marin85 wrote:

Grayslake wrote:I'm running a 2.0Ghz, 2GB T60P with ATI V5250 graphics card, 1600x1050 at 32-bit color. Latest ATI drivers downloaded just a week ago with Mobility Modder applied. [SNIP]

Please, could you share your CS4 PS settings? Thanks

Marin

Here are the settings from within Preferences file under Performance:

Available RAM: 1679 MB
Let Photoshop Use: 1192 (71%)
Scratch Drive is : 420GB
GPU Settings: Enable OpenGL Drawing (Box is checked)
Vertical Sync: Box is checked
3D Interaction Acceleration: Box is checked
Force Bilinear Interpolation: Box is UNchecked
Advanced Drawing: Box is checked
Use for Image Display: Box is checked
Debugging/Compositing: Gamma Corrected
Color Matching: Box is checked

My ATI drivers are: Driver Package 8.552-081028a-070226C-ATI
2D Driver Version 6.14.10.6879
Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0621
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.8201

I'm using Windows XP with SP3. Graphics card is ATI 1650 Pro/512MB on AGP 8X running at default speed, 1280x1024/32bit on my desktop box. Laptop is Thinkpad T60P Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2.0GB with ATI V5250 FireGL card (512MB) running at default speed, 1600x1050/32bit. CS4 on laptop has same settings in Preferences/Performance as the desktop. I do not believe Mobility Modder really has any effect on the GPU function.

This is probably more info than is necessary, but this is the whole banana, for what it's worth. I think the use of the GPU is, at this early point, very much dependent on the video card being used, and the specific drivers in place.

Grayslake

hi Grayslake-- a couple questions for you regarding your T60 setup with PS4 (which is pretty much identical to my own):

(1) Is the driver info you have listed for your T60? The latest driver I see from ATI is 8.543 (you have 8.552 listed)

(2) You have 512MB listed for your FireGL V5250 memory-- is this factoring in hypermemory? (my card has 256MB physical RAM-- did Lenovo offer 512MB on the T60p?)

(3) I use PS primarily for color correction and basic image manipulation; with the settings configured as you've specified-- which seems to be the default--, I find that zooming and panning large 300 ppi images is rather slow compared to doing so with the settings modified as I posted earlier (i.e. enabling OpenGL drawing and disabling all Advanced Settings). For example, when using the hand tool to pan a large image, I find it takes longer for the image sections to "materialize" i.e. to load from previews and form a sharpened view; also, using tools such as free transform seem to respond better when disabling the advanced settings;

Thanks for any feedback.

Ad (2): All ThinkPads with Mobility FireGL V5200 and V5250 graphics cards have 256 MB dedicated memory, the rest is hypermemory, which amount varies depending on OS (for XP it additional 256 MB, for Vista it is additinal 768 MB, ouch...).

@Grayslake: Thanks for sharing your settings!


Marin

npish wrote: (2) You have 512MB listed for your FireGL V5250 memory-- is this factoring in hypermemory? (my card has 256MB physical RAM-- did Lenovo offer 512MB on the T60p?)

My T60p is very similar to yours, with ATI FireGL V5250.

In Windows XP Professional SP3 it reports 512mb (also reported the same with SP2 before updating.

In Vista it reports 256MB. I don't imagine why. I'm dual booting.

I'm not graphic designer, I'm webdeveloper. I have photoshop because sometimes must open some file.

I'm having lot of troubles, because with default settings when I open a photo it looks in around 8bit, almost grayscale, fully deformed. I was using default drivers from lenovo. Tried to install the modded driver but file when installing.

When click on the "install" icon it crash and says "Catalyst Installa Manager has stopped working blabla yadah yadah... -Close the program - ".

I get that, modded or not.

I'm on Vista Ultimate x64. My Card is a FireGL V5250, see my signature.

Thanks in advance. Melvyn

npish wrote:hi Grayslake-- a couple questions for you regarding your T60 setup with PS4 (which is pretty much identical to my own):

(1) Is the driver info you have listed for your T60? The latest driver I see from ATI is 8.543 (you have 8.552 listed)

(2) You have 512MB listed for your FireGL V5250 memory-- is this factoring in hypermemory? (my card has 256MB physical RAM-- did Lenovo offer 512MB on the T60p?)

The V5250 has 256MB on board, 256MB as "hypermemory" thru the OS.

I downloaded the ATI driver from the AMD/ATI website very recently. I then applied the Mobility Modder from DriverHeaven.Net
But I don't think the MM has any effect other than enabling some control features on the T60P. I no longer download Lenovo video updates - I go straight to ATI.

I have not noticed slower panning with large images within Photoshop CS4. But one thing did occur to me last night. The tools seemed to "stick". As I use the Clone tool, it automatically moved the image around as I moused about the image.

Had to shut down the laptop and restart to get functionality back. Obviously, there are some bugs in the code!