Video card for CS4 opinion

Posted By
Mar 30, 2009
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OK, My MacPro has a ATI Radeon HD 2600 (256MB). I have 8GB of RAM. It seems fine. But with CS4, I get some not-to-annoying anomalies such as the screen pulsating when running a selection and using Healing Brush. According to the support site here, I should turn off Enable GPU Drawing in Preferences. So I’m hoping that might help.

I’m wondering if I buy a nVidia 7900 GTX (512 MB), if it might make any difference—in general. I am really not to clear on what fancier video cards will do for my photoshop work. So maybe I need some help on that too.

What difference, if any, will getting this seemingly better video card do for Photoshop.

Thanks

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 12 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 1.6 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP31.006C.B05
SMC Version: 1.25f4
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NK
Neil_Keller
Mar 30, 2009
Eric,

I posted some links in the grey panel at the head of the Photoshop/Mac forum that includes a list of supported cards, and related issues you should be aware of.

Neil
P
PShock
Mar 31, 2009
‘m wondering if I buy a nVidia 7900 GTX (512 MB), if it might make any difference—in general.

It’ll make a difference, all right. Mac OSX won’t run on it! 🙂

That card is PC only unless flashed (hacked firmware) specifically to work with Mac. There’s really no point in that as there are several high performance cards already available for the Mac Pro.

Besides, the Radeon HD 2600 should work without anomalies – it’s one of the cards supposedly tested by Adobe to work – without the need to turn off OpenGL.

You can try to upgrade the card to something beefier, but that’s no guarantee you’ll be glitch free – reports of graphical "issues" have been posted for just about every type of card available for a Mac Pro. Not everyone has these issues though – seems to be hit or miss.

Choices are:

From Apple –
Nvidia 8800 GT
ATI Radeon 4870
(a bit of an unknown at this point – just released with new Mac Pros but would be the fastest card available w/o spending $3k. 2008 MPs and newer only.

From ATI or <http://macsales.com/> –
ATI Radeon 3870
(a very solid performer and the cheapest of the bunch – $217)

Performance-wise for Photoshop use, upgrading to any of those cards probably wouldn’t result in a noticeable gain unless you do much 3D stuff. They may solve your issue or they may not – again, the HD 2600 *should* work fine without having to disable OpenGL. (I realize it’s not, however)

-phil
Mar 31, 2009
Thanks Phil and Neil. I really appreciate the advice.
ZB
Zeno_Bokor
Mar 31, 2009
You have got to be kidding me, $217? i can find that card for the PC for under $100 so it costs over $100 just to flash the card(flashing the card means running a small program from DOS, it’s all done in under 2 minutes)? I’m in the wrong business 😛
AS
Ann_Shelbourne
Mar 31, 2009
Nothing to stop you trying to make your own Flashed Card if you want to — I just chose to buy a warranted flashed card.
SG
steve_guilhamet
Mar 31, 2009
Eric,

Another consideration is how many and what size/resolution monitors are you driving with that card.

You might also try going into Prefs.> Performance> (GPU) Advanced Settings…> and changing the Advanced Drawing option. Also, what is the image size you’re working with and do you still see anomalies with 1024px x 1024px?
Apr 1, 2009
Ah, good point Steve. I use 2 monitors. 2 NEC Accusync 120’s. 21 inch or something like that. They’re big.

Since turning off GPU, I don’t see the problem anymore. Not sure why.

I’m usually working at 240 or 300 ppi.

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