Photoshop CS4 64 Bit Initial Impressions

[Noel_Carboni]

It's a 3 year old Dell Precision 470 workstation with dual 3.6 GHz Xeons (which support EMT64 instructions and Hyperthreading). I have two new Barracuda drives in Raid 0 config. The system is no slouch.

Vista x64 lists the Experience Index as 4.5, but the video and disk are both max-scale, 5.9.

I had been running the new system under Remote Desktop during setup. I just booted it up connected to a real monitor (i.e., through the video card). The good news is that the accelerated video is now working. Phew! Adobe obviously hasn't changed the error message the Edit - Preferences - Performance tab puts out.

The video acceleration is VERY cool!

-Noel

[Martin_Doudoroff]

I realize this is a bit tangential, but John Nack has an easily-overlooked tidbit on his latest blog posting that they’ve added an option to the Save for Web... dialog box for specifying IP metadata to leave in the output file.

Even if it’s a perfunctory band-aid feature, it seems a welcome addition to me (I rely on this dialog a great deal, day-to-day).

[Randy_Vestal]

I'm upgrading this week to Vista 64 and new hardware. Tyan Tempest i5400XT (S5396) MB, 2 Xeon processors (E5420, 2.5 GHz), and 16 Gb memory. I'll use my existing RAID array and video card.

Everything is on order, as is the CS4 upgrade. I'll get the system built and stabilized on Vista before I install CS4, but will report back on the experience once everything is up and running.

[Randy_Vestal]

Well, I had hoped to be able to report back about my experience with CS4 64 bit, but things are a bit delayed.

Seems that 4GB FB/ECC memory strips are in short supply here in the UK and Kingston UK is having to get them from the US. I'm told they will be here on Monday so I can hopefully start building the machine then (everything else is here). But (there is always a 'but', isn't there) CS4 Web Premium is also on back order and now not due until 11 Nov.

In the meantime, I'm taken my existing Core Duo machine and have used it as a test platform for Vista 64. I have to say that the experience has been nothing like I was led to expect; the install was flawless with no Vista problems, no driver issues, no BSOD (except for the >3GB memory problem on the initial install which was easily solved). Vista 64 has now been running since last Thursday with no crashes. Overall experience index on this test platform is 4.8 and that's due to the graphis card which is a 512MB Nvidia 8500GT; all of the other performance scores are in the '5's', with memory and hard disks max'ing out at 5.9.

Based upon this limited experience so far, I think Vista has largely gottten a bad rap. I know others have had bad experiences, but I'm very happy.

I'll report back once CS4 arrives and the new machine is finished.

[MathewLodge]

"Based upon this limited experience so far, I think Vista has largely gottten a bad rap. I know others have had bad experiences, but I'm very happy."

Yep, me too. I have a Dell Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory & dual Raid 0 250GB system drives running Vista32, and it has performed extremely well. With the /3GB boot option, "large tiles" plug-in and tuning of the memory percentage, PS CS3 really flies. I suspect -- from what I have read of those who've had problems -- that having enough memory is key for Vista.

[Noel_Carboni]

First, let me say I agree with you: I am now running Vista x64 with 8 GB and I'm a happy camper. Initially that was not so.

It's easy to see how it's gotten a bad rap. I had a 3 year old nVidia graphics card that was near top of the line for its day. It sold for well over $1,000. When I first put in Vista this system was lousy with problems - freezes, slowness (sometimes it seemed like a 386), crashes.

Turns out nVidia has chosen to put virtually no effort into updating their drivers for Vista x64, even though people like me sent them thousands of dollars for these super duper graphics cards just a few years ago.

I'm a software engineer, with 30+ years experience in computers, and it wasn't at all clear to me that the problems were the fault of the nVidia SOFTWARE until I did a lot of disciplined debugging - at one point even swapping out the entire card for another identical one known to be in working order. The problems followed the nVidia drivers!

I gave up on my nVidia FX 3400 and bought a modern and relatively inexpensive ATI card (Radeon HD 4670) early in the week, and now everything works, and works PHENOMENALLY WELL! It's not had a bit of flakiness, Aero is faster and more responsive than any UI on any computer I've ever used, and it's been running under hard use for 3+ days now without a glitch. During that time I've processed astro data for hours on end with Photoshop CS4, done software development with Visual Studio, collaborated for tens of hours with my co-workers remotely using Yugma and Skype, kept up with my eMail, web-surfed, used virtual machines under VMWare to run XP for software testing, evaluated new file comparison software (and found bugs in it but not the system). At one point I had about 50 windows open.

People could be excused for thinking Vista was responsible for all the new problems they were having, when in fact the parts vendors are at fault.

I hope nVidia realizes that they will not get any more of my money, nor (I hope) that of the folks who read what I write. There is NO EXCUSE for their lack of support here, expecially with hardware sold into the workstation market that is still physically up to the task of supporting Aero and Vista x64. The worst part of it is that they've put out drivers they CLAIM work, but in fact appear to be no more than an afterthought and cannot be taken seriously.

Buy ATI and make Vista sing!

-Noel

[ChrisPerry]

Originally Posted by Noel_Carboni

People could be excused for thinking Vista was responsible for all the new problems they were having, when in fact the parts vendors are at fault.

I hope nVidia realizes that they will not get any more of my money, nor (I hope) that of the folks who read what I write. There is NO EXCUSE for their lack of support here, expecially with hardware sold into the workstation market that is still physically up to the task of supporting Aero and Vista x64. The worst part of it is that they've put out drivers they CLAIM work, but in fact appear to be no more than an afterthought and cannot be taken seriously.

Buy ATI and make Vista sing!

-Noel

Excuses? 3 years is about 2 generations back in the computer world so that's a large part of it, and secondly there's no money in supporting the old stuff. Free updates? Not likely unless they raise the prices of their products. This is a disposable society -go spend $150 and buy a new card and it'll work like a charm. Don't expect 3 year old hardware to run new software (or vice versa in a many cases).

I suppose a $1000 card might be considered different,but how many folks really upgrade/update their hardware? Doing to usually voids the warranty so it's obviously discouraged. Gamers and overclockers- the 'hot rodders of the digital era' do it but that's about it.
I bet 98% of computers sold will die with the original configuration untouched.

The box I'm writing this on is about to be retired. It's had HD's added and at some point a vid card upgrade (years ago now). It was put into service 9/9/01 and still works fine. My kids are getting it - it's just very slow - compared to the new stuff out there. It's got CS3 on it and it runs it fine (as in everything works, just sometimes in slo mo )