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ATI vs. NVIDIA cards for Photoshop CS4 and some gaming

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jsmooth007

New Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
I've been reading mix reviews/discussions and I would like to know if someone has actually done tests or seen a real difference in graphics cards for Photoshop CS4 performance...also knowing it will play some FPS games.

I'm debating on a graphics card.

ATI 5770
ATI 5880
or NVIDIA because of CUDA. Not sure which NVIDIA card.

My possible computer specs to see the entire picture.


CaseChassis: Lian Li PC-A71F
Motherboard: EVGA X58 SLI MICRO
Processor: OverClocked Intel Core i7 920 3.6GHz LGA 1366 Quad-Core Processor (8MB L3 Cache)
System Cooling: Asetek LCLC-120 Liquid Cooling,
Power Supply: 750 Watt Corsair PSU
Graphics Card: Single 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 5770
Memory: 12GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600Mhz (6x 2GB) Tri Channel Memory
Hard Drive One: 80GB Intel X25-M - Solid State Drive
Hard Drive Two: 500GB - SATA-II, 3Gb/s, 7,200RPM, 32MB Cache HDD
Optical Drive One: 24X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability
Audio: Creative Sound Blaster PCI Express X-Fi Titanium
OS: Genuine MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition
 
nvidia cards have CUDA, which photoshop works well with.. it would speed up processing/rendering (though i did mention this in your build thread as well)

nvidia does not have dx11 support yet, they are waiting on their Fermi (400 series) cards to have that, but the price tag might make it moot (possibly over 400 bucks for the lower end 400 series)

ati 5850 kills the 5770 itself for gaming etc, the 5870 is even better..

you dont NEED cuda to work photoshop, but it would speed up rendering times..
 
If you had to go with an NVIDIA card which would it be?

Direct 10 vs. Direct 11 a big difference?

Do you have any links to recent benchmarks on CUDA and the latest cards?

Thanks for your help.
 
latest nvidia cards don't have benches yet (400 series that is)

for 5870 vs 295gtx both top of the line cards.. though ati does have 59xx too there is this nice chart of some popular games with FPS ratings at different resolutions

ATI5870 vs NVIDIA 295GTX

as for dx10 vs dx11.. dx11 is the newest version available and most new games coming out will utilize it.. for photo editing etc you will likely not see much, if any, difference between the dx versions.. mostly for gaming dx11 is smoother/sharper in "most" cases
 
Thanks for the info. If you were in my shoes and photoshop is #1 priority along with speed/performance would you get a NVIDIA card over ATI? Gaming is probably 3rd/4th on my list of priorities of my new computer.

If you had to pick 1 card which would it be?
 
i would probably opt for the dx11 58xx series.. photoshop uses cuda for rendering, but I was just reading the adobe site and it also uses OpenGL for faster rendering.. cuda might be faster, but i have no benches for that..

ati cards use OpenGL.. and the 58xx series uses version 3.1 which is the latest so far...read up on adobe site on how to use the OpenGL option as it "might" be deactivated if they haven't done enough extensive testing on that platform to endorse it..their site doesnt seem to be updated very well with info for win7.. just vista
 
What would you be doing in photoshop. I use photoshop and my current GPU is a ATI 4890 and ive never had problems. Ive used canvas sizes of 10kx10k pixels and higher.
 
Thanks psionic98.

MonkeyMhz I do a lot of heavy web design work and my files can be large in file size or dimensions. I also bounce between adobe applications like illustartor, photoshop, dreamweaver, and flash.

I want speed...i hate waiting

Now that I'm about to build a new computer I want to make sure everything is solid and meets my number 1 priority ...speed/load time

I also play some games but that isn't my main focus.
 
overclock the processor..overclock the gfx card and keep the temps cool!

Good luck!
 
Photoshop PS4 uses OpenGL, not cuda.

Both nvidia and ATI cards work equally well. Even ancient stuff like a geforce 6800 work fine.
 
I thought the 400 series (like shown in the youtube vid) supporst Dx11. Also personally I'd go for nvidia as they have 3D Vision.
 
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