CS4 Thoughts?

I recently upgraded from the CS3 Suite to the new Adobe CS4 Master Suite Collection and was wondering what others thought of it.

Personally I find it DOG slow compared to CS3, especially when it comes to GUI. Just moving around inside a large image is MUCH slower than on CS3. If I say, draw a selection around an item and hit delete to make a mask, you can actually see the mask draw/redraw.

Anyway, I know I have to upgrade my system, but I don't think I've ever seen such a drop in performance from one PS version to the next. Are those with more powerful machines noticing it too?

Currently I am running:
A64 Athlon 2.4GHZ Dual Core
2GB Dual Channel Memory
Nvidia 7900GT (256MB) PCI-Express w latest Nvidia drivers
1TB Hitachi SATA2 HDD
Windows Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64 beta

I'm planning on getting an i7 system with 6GB-12GB ram, and probably a 9800GT video card (maybe a 260). Will this make that much of a difference for things like screen redraws?

I used to upgrade my system at least once a year to the latest greatest, but when the camera hobby came along, funds went to that instead of my computer, so this one is almost 4 years old (still pretty decent for so many years).

he thing that stands out to me is the 2 gig of RAM, especially with a 64-bit OS. I wouldn't hesitate to put 8 Gig in there, or at the bare minimum 4. That will make a big difference.

I've heard that CS4 utilizes video card resources, but I don't have any details. If so, that could be next, although the current system would also benifit from a quad processor.

On my PPC Mac it's noticably faster then CS2 or CS3.

Your current video card is bottom line for CS4 IIRC. (Mine won't support it at all)

I find it very quick. Is open GL support in CS4 turned on? If so try with it off, or with the advanced opengl features off.

need the 8600+ series of Graphics Cards (with NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology) to take full advantage of CS4, thats whats holding me back atm, i'm just waiting on getting an 86/8800GT

Two things will help.
Tony suggested more RAM, I'm happy with 8 gig.
Add another HD, 500 GB would suffice, for CS4 to use as a scratch drive.
Have had no problems with video card on motherboard.

Ok, all great points. Good to know about the video card minimum, Bobster.

I have another 300GB HDD, CHauncey, and I never thought about using it as a scratch drive. However, most of my images are on that drive, so I wonder if it would benefit.

Tonylong, you are also bang on about using 2GB with a 64 bit OS. The main reason I went with 64 bit is because I knew I was going to 4GB+ soon, and I wanted to make sure everything I had ran smoothly on the 64 bit OSes without any driver problems (so far so good).

Thanks again, I will check back once I get the new machine built

Btw, what are some thoughts on my new machine... Is i7 overkill? Any motherboard recommendations?

its not to say that CS4 won't work with the older Gen of Graphics, just won't be as quick..

if you partitioned off 14 or so GB at the beginning of the drive, the scratch space wouldn't get fragmented..

On my system, CS4 is slow..but only slow to update the screen.

Doesn't peg the hard drive, doesn't bother the processor much and doesn't seem (according to task manager) to be going that excessive on memory.

It's just that if I make a change, the image won't update for quite a while...unless I do something that forces a redraw.

It really seems like that's all it is - neglecting to redraw. Tweaking the opengl features doesn't seem to affect it much.

I'm not mentioning my system specs because they really don't appear to be a problem to me - the system isn't thrashing the drive or slowing any other processing or taking too long to give me a cursor...just not refreshing the screen.

AHA!

Seems the major culprit with poor CS4 performance is....outdated plugins.

Yank 'em out and see what happens...

Worked for me. Plenty fast now. I knew it wasn't my system specs.

(I "only" have a C2D, 2G, 7900GT)

Bobster,
Well, I put the scratch drive on my 2nd HDD, and there is definitely an improvement and less noticeable disk thrashing.

TKFoto, you and I have similar system specs, and guess what, what you describe is exactly what I experience with PS... slow redrawing.

I currently have the following plugins:
Alienskin Exposure 2
Neat Image Pro Plus 5.9
Imagenomic Portraiture 2.0
Lucis Art 2.03
Nik Software Viveza 1.03
Nik Software Color Efex Pro 3

Since none of these load in the 64 bit version of Photoshop, I'm going to run that and see if the redraw is any faster.

Well, I've tried PS 64 bit, with no plugins, and screen redraw is about the same... not great. But then again, having a video card that is 3 generations behind the current is most likely to blame.

What's interesting is that I do 3D modeling as a hobby for many years, and my 7800GT can run pro 3D modeling/rendering packages' opengl much more robustly than Photoshop.

the OGL isn't the culprit, its the CUDA™ technology part thats in CS4, this new tech takes the strain off of the CPU, so the accelerated scrolling, zooming etc is down to using CUDA

oh and don't bother with a 9800, just get an 8800 instead, there's very little between them performance wise (so ive been told by a hardcore gamer who is also in the computer industry)

Thanks Bobster... I've heard the same thing about the 9800 and 8800... basically the same but the 9800 uses a smaller die or something eh?
Btw, love your profile picture.