SLI any help?

Anyone out there with an SLI rig that can let me know if they think it has
overly helped their photoshop use? I'm working with large (several
gigabyte) images and am looking a buying a new setup. I'm wondering if I
should bother getting two cheaper 512 meg cards or just stay with the one
(I've heard that high mem on the vid card helps with transformations and
layers on large images).
Comments?
Thanks,
Chris

Chris Brooks

Re: SLI any help?

If your running Win XP x32 then it will only address 2Gb ram. Photoshop
cannot over ride that. But you can put a mod to your boot.ini file to
increase that to 3Gb Ram.
But yes go for nVidia PCI-Express cards. But make sure you can get 64 bit
drivers for it as thats the future at present.
If you go to a 64 bit processor and run Win XP x64 then you can use all the
memory. But Photoshop may only use up to 4Gb. It really isn't compiled for
64 bit yet.
I use iot on my 2 x Dual Core Opteron with 16Gb ram and 2 x Sta 250Gb HDD's
and it flies. Handles 1.5Gb files doing raster updates in 1.5 minutes
compared to 30 minutes on a P4 with 2GB Ram.
Hope that helps.

PJB

Re: SLI any help?

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:14:14 -0400, "KatWoman"
snip
If it is of any use I'm using Windows XP 64 pro on an AMD 2.6 single
2GB RAM and CS2. thing hums along nicely.
K
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BoilerBill

Re: SLI any help?

Please report back about your experiences in PS using 64 and Vista
we are curious....

KatWoman

Re: SLI any help?

In article <12ekslb1gfb4t28@corp.supernews.com>, cab938@deletemeplease.mail.
usask.ca says...
I've got a 32 bit setup with dual-core Intels and 4GB, running PS CS2 just
fine. I have not bothered doing any benchmarks, as to % of memory used, etc.
but am very pleased with it.
As to the utilization of GPU power by PS, there really isn't much need for it.
Even games of last decade were more graphics intensive, than PS. Now, as it
grows, release, after release, things might well change. PS is being
incorporated more and more into work in video, especially After Effects. As
this evolution happens, we might well see aspects for 3-D built into PS, but
until then, I doubt that the programers are bothering much with GPU usage.
But, it cannot hurt PS to have this vid-RAM capability on the machine, so if
you use it elsewhere, you will not take any type of "hit." You just will not
utilize all of that power in PS.
Hunt

Noone@hunt.com (Hunt)

Re: SLI any help?

Graphics cards are good at 3D rendering. "Take this surface, with this
colour and texture, with these reflective characteristics, then hit it
with a light source of this colour, from this angle, with this
intensity, and render the result. Now do it lots of times in parallel
each second to build a picture." That is not a process that Photoshop
finds particularly useful.
It has been demonstrated that the GPU on modern graphics cards can be
used to run some math-intensive (particularly matrices and vector
analysis) processes since they have primitives implemented in massively
parallel hardware. Then again, by the time you've shited your huge image
into GPU-accessible memory, done the work, then shifted it back again,
it will often have been quicker to do it with the conventional
processor. Plus you've got the issue of trying to work out what hardware
is in the machine, whether it has the facilities a particular job
requires, and whether it will be quicker than the normal CPU anyway.
Although it might be theoretically possible to use GPU hardware, in
practise it's not quite as easy or useful as it looks.

Derek Fountain

Re: SLI any help?

Sorry, I misunderstood. But now you got me dreaming!
H.
"Chris Brooks" <cab938@deletemeplease.mail.usask.ca> schreef in bericht

HTech

Re: SLI any help?

Just to clarify, the box I am putting together will be (likely) a 64 bit
core duo machine with 4 gigs of ram (hopefully 2x2gb so there is room for
expansion). The hds will likely be raided seagate 7200.10's - I would love
raptors but the price is a bit steep.
A bit unfortunate if photoshop doesn't make use of the onboard memory on vid
cards well - this memory is much faster access than system ram, and I
imagine the gpu could easily do many of the alpha channel/image
transformations much faster than a cpu - thus intensifying the importance of
the on board memory. Hopefully this will be addressed in future releases as
an sli setup is easy to get (say, $300 for both cards, making a gig on card
ram and two gpus). Would be nice to accent the system ram.
On a side note, can photoshop cs2 handle > 4 gigs of ram (in particular
interested in vista 64 bit setups)?
Chris

Chris Brooks

Re: SLI any help?

In article <vZcGg.32920$r42.438291@phobos.telenet-ops.be>, henriylen@hotmail.
com says...
HTech,
I believe that the OP was referring to the on-board Vid-RAM (512MB), rather
than System RAM - but I could be very wrong.
To the OP, I've used a Matrox G-450 64MB card just fine with up through CS on
multi-GB images. I've now got nVidia Quadro FX4500-512MB and it really is not
noticeably faster, than the old Matrox in PS. However, I got it for video work
too. Adobe has upped the suggested Vid-RAM requirement to 128MB at around the
CS release. I still use the old Matrox with no ill effects in either CS or CS
2.
If you are also doing video, or 3-D, then you will benefit from SLI, but for
PS, I doubt that you could measure the improvement, much less notice it.
Hunt

Noone@hunt.com (Hunt)

Re: SLI any help?

Hi Chris,
You need to better describe you system configuration for anything
intelligible can be said about it but most likely it is 32bit XP Pro
with 4GB of memory - if so you have maxed out and are better off
waiting for Vista before making major decisions.
Good luck,
Ron

Ronviers@gmail.com

Re: SLI any help?

In article <12eicf3q1p6tc59@corp.supernews.com>,
You heard wrong. An accelerated 3D graphics card does not offer any
benefit to Photoshop, which is a 2D program. You are better off spending
that money on more system RAM, a faster hard drive, or both.
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