Graphics Card performance in Photoshop and Premier CS3-4

I haven't been able to find out how much speed difference there is between graphics card in these two programs.

Is a quick card necessary?

vram is more important than speed of cards for CS4, but CS3 to CS4, the user experience is improved much more than processing speed.
512mb card, even a lowly geforce 120, should be fine

I've got on-board graphics currently (Intel G965 chipset w/X3000) and I think anything will be an upgrade for me.
I don't want to heat up the room, so I've been looking at some of the lower-end, passively cooled PCI-Express cards:

Radeon 4350 (25w TDP) (~$40)
Radeon 4650 (55w TDP) (~$60)
Radeon 4670 (70w TDP) (~$90, this card was $80 last week though)
Radeon 4770 (80w TDP, haven't found any passive cards yet) (~$110)

The new ATI Radeon 5000 series, which will probably hit the market around August or September, should look pretty good. 40nm GPU's, DirectX 11.0 & OpenGL 3.0 (AFAIK, the 4000 series are DX 10.1 & OpenGL 2.0).

Max Thermal Dissipation figures found here:
http://en.wikipedia.or​g …R700_.28HD_4xxx​.29_series

At present I'm looking at the GTX260... But since I don't play games; im wondering whether I need to spend so much.

The major difference with CS4 is that it uses Open GL for a number of screen display functions (such as gaining smooth display sizing at all percentages), and that it can use the video card graphics processor instead of the motherboard cpu in Windows.

So with CS4, the power of the video card graphics processor becomes important, whereas it wasn't much in Windows with CS3.

Remember, though, that Photoshop is still a 2D display, and memory is still the most important factor.

RDKirk wrote in post #8231848
The major difference with CS4 is that it uses Open GL for a number of screen display functions (such as gaining smooth display sizing at all percentages), and that it can use the video card graphics processor instead of the motherboard cpu in Windows.

So with CS4, the power of the video card graphics processor becomes important, whereas it wasn't much in Windows with CS3.

Remember, though, that Photoshop is still a 2D display, and memory is still the most important factor.

CS4 also supports CUDA, but needs a 280 based quadro card to get the most of it. Pretty sure that 3500 buck quadro is out of OP's budget though

260 should be fine, it's about the same (maybe slightly faster) than my radeon 4850, and the 4850 runs cs4 beautifully.

No, a fast graphics card isn't necessary....video RAM is much more important. The CS4 suite requires a minimum of 128MB video RAM so a 512MB card will provide some future-proofing.

Take a look at the listing of graphics cards tested by Adobe for CS4: List of tested graphics display cards for Photoshop CS4

My main workstation has a XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog 512MB card...it was a cutting edge gamer's card a few years ago but would be considered low-end now so I bought one cheaply on CraigsList and it works fine with the entire suite.

twofruitz wrote in post #8230758
I haven't been able to find out how much speed difference there is between graphics card in these two programs.

Is a quick card necessary?

PixelMagic wrote in post #8232933
My main workstation has a XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog 512MB card...it was a cutting edge gamer's card a few years ago but would be considered low-end now so I bought one cheaply on CraigsList and it works fine with the entire suite.

I've got the same card, it was one of the best, and is now very low end.

However, it is far more card than you need for CS4.
While CS4 does make use of openGL, it really doesn't need a super fast card to use it.

How about Premier guys? Does it require any more video card than Photoshop?

twofruitz wrote in post #8235566
How about Premier guys? Does it require any more video card than Photoshop?

Depends on what you are doing. Some of the multi-monitor options and graphs require workstation drivers (hardware is fine with 8800 mentioned, but problem is that standard drivers are weak, you need the quadro drivers because they can be up to 20x as efficient). For standard stuff (preview+few fancy filters, etc), pretty much anything works.

As for rendering though... adobe's media encoder is pretty damn slow and bad at compression... I highly suggest you output to something fast be relatively uncompressed, then compress with megui (in my estimates, about 8x-30x faster depending on the video)

Does the amount of RAM make a difference? ie, 512MB vs 1GB?

overclock wrote in post #8240120
Does the amount of RAM make a difference? ie, 512MB vs 1GB?

From what these other guys are saying, VRAM is much more important than video processor performance. Having said this; they are also saying that the video card is not too important for normal operations.

twofruitz wrote in post #8243048
From what these other guys are saying, VRAM is much more important than video processor performance. Having said this; they are also saying that the video card is not too important for normal operations.

perfectly said

I agree with the others here. If you're gaming with QUAD SLI like I do for Left for Dead than you don't need high end cards.

twofruitz wrote in post #8235566
How about Premier guys? Does it require any more video card than Photoshop?

overclock wrote in post #8240120
Does the amount of RAM make a difference? ie, 512MB vs 1GB?

I use Premiere CS3, After Effects CS3 and Final Cut Studio 2 along with Photoshop CS3 & CS4 - all professionally for either broadcast (TV) and print. The very simplest answer is if you purchase a mid-range card, say in the $100 - $150 range that supports OpenGL (ex. ATI 4850) you'll be just fine in CS3 or CS4 programs.

The slightly more complex answer is this: video cards have one prime function. They rasterize images/video onto a monitor so you can see them. A CPU cannot show you what it is doing to an image - so think of the video card as an interpreter of the calculations made by the central processing unit. So, is more video RAM better. No, there is an upward limit or a point where you get less return from video memory. A video card with 1GB of RAM will not be faster than one with 512MB. Memory bandwidth is more of a limiter than video memory itself. In other words, it is more important how fast a video card can accept information from the CPU and convert (rasterize) the information into a viewable format. If you have a card with 1GB this does not guarantee that it will be able to use the entire 1GB because by the time the CPU has given the video card information it may already have changed (say, you move the image an inch to one side or the other) and another 'draw' will have to be made - changing the information in video memory. The only time you need gobs of video memory is when the program requires it to store objects that do not change in themselves so they can be reused over and over on the screen.

The simple answer: 1GB video cards are typically seen as gimmicks - though there are some that have enough bandwidth to be worth the cost - however, there are few programs that will take advantage of these cards. Unless you are going to be working with images larger than 10,000 x 10,000 and 1GB+ it really isn't worth getting an expensive video card.

Now, if you plan on becoming 'very' serious about video production then you should look into the Quadro or FireGL - but remember, you're paying a premium for drivers not hardware. That is, unless you're a tinkerer and want to hack a GeForce or Radeon with Quadro or FireGL drivers