CUDA in Photoshop/Creative Suite

[plodocus]

Hi

I am very new here. I just wondered if anyone could explain in simple terms what, if anything, Nvidia CUDA brings to the table in terms of Photoshop performance?

Would there be any reason to choose a high end Nvidia GPU over an AMD one if it was going to be used in Adobe CS? Is there any discernible jump in performance?

Hoping someone can shed some light on this, as all I am getting at the moment is quite vague 'oh yeah, CUDA is good if you have Photoshop' from someone, without any real explanation.

Cheers
plod

[kalniel]

It doesn't bring anything. Photoshop/creative suite use openGL and open CL accelerations(1), which nVidia cards are slower at than AMD cards(2) (from the current generation). However both are fast 'enough' and you probably wouldn't notice a difference.

1 - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ro,3208-6.html

2 - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6025/r...-to-gtx-680/14 (second graph down)

[plodocus]

It doesn't bring anything. Photoshop/creative suite use openGL and open CL accelerations, which nVidia cards are slower at than AMD cards (from the current generation). However both are fast 'enough'.

Thanks. I suspected that this might be the case.

Excuse the stupidity, but I have never really understood what I was actually doing by turning on 'GPU acceleration' in PS. I guess it helps to render brushstrokes etc in real time? I have a graphics tablet that I draw with, but on large work/with large brushes it lags quite a lot. will a better GPU than I am currently using (ie the 670) reduce this lag?

[kalniel]

See the first link (I edited in). Mostly it's things like transformations or applying filters. Improving your GPU past a 670 probably won't make much or any difference to input lag from your tablet.

Improving CPU speed, having plenty of RAM, and running PS and the cache files from an SSD are likely the best ways of improving performance.

[plodocus]

Yeah I think I will see a bit improvement overall when the new rig is up and running.

[TheAnimus]

Lightroom and Photoshop have never really appeared to benefit from any form of GPU processing : (

It drives me nuts as most of the image processing in lightroom for RAW digital camera could be seriously parrallised on GPUs