GPU acceleration in CS4 Photoshop with XP 64

The graphic acceleration in CS4/XP64 is greyed out and not usable. It turns out that XP64 is not officially supported by Adobe, although it runs 100% perfect.

Adobe has posted a workaround. Here’s the problem:

GPU and OpenGL Features and Limitations in Photoshop CS4

And here’s the solution:

Adobe – Photoshop : For Windows : Adobe Photoshop CS4 GPU optional plug-ins

The download is a registry script that turns a flag on. It’s working so far and it’s pretty amazing. So you can now justify a super gfx card for work and other serious stuff.

Speed of Thought

Speed of thought is roughly between 550 and 750 milliseconds. Any longer than that, there’s a perceived delay.

Since 1994, I have been doing graphic + photography work going through Pentium, AMD machines and Macs. None had approached speed of thought until NOW.

I use blending techniques plus burn+dodge to enhance images and it does get frustrating when the image updates 2-3 secs later when I using a 3% airbrush to delete the layer. It breaks my flow of thought. When I airbrush over an area, I expect to see an instant update, like in real life. No consumer machine had been able to do this real time with 16MP files.

Until now.

The new Core i7/12GB/CS4 machine has finally made it possible to work with images at the speed of thought. Due to the perfect combination of processor speed, memory size and software, I am able to think, apply & respond in real time. Like in real life. Photoshop never touched the scratch disk no matter how many files I had opened up, it didn’t even go near the 10GB RAM limit. This is seriously great.

Update: A friend popped over 24Apr night and took a look at the machine. He’s a Macpro(2008)/16GB/CS4/Velociraptor user. We tried out opening 99x 12MP Tiff (a few were cropped) files on the Core machine coz he mentioned the Mac slowing down after loading several files. The Core loaded all of them at full speed showing 5.10GB/10GB on the RAM usage in the image window. (If the friend doesn’t mind being named, just let me know. :-)

Recently, I also assembled a super quiet PC for Kelvin Koh. It was pretty fun. I spent some time researching and finally ended up with an Antec 183 case. It’s well designed, well built and seriously damped for noise control. Another constraint was power/noise ratio. It had to run Diablo3. The system is pretty amazing, there is very little or no noise beyond 1.5 meters.

Had to choose a card with customized fans.

Efficient 3rd party cpu heatsink with low speed fan

Case that had separate chambers to great heat management.
Chose a small but efficient power supply. Too bad the cables couldn’t be
managed better but they were very short and couldn’t go round back the mobo.

12MP at 3.17sec/file for CaptureOne

Did a benchmarking for the Core i7 920 at 2.66ghz 2 days ago. Clocked in 3.17sec/file for a 12MP image processed to 36MB tiff. Not too bad, that works out to be ~1000+ files/hr. Tried to push the processor to 3.8ghz but 12GB RAM wasn’t stable. Ended up with a solid 3.5ghz. Temp’s running at 60degrees for peak vs 56degrees at 2.66ghz.

CS4 Photoshop has taken up 10GB of 12GB RAM. Benched a 76 (36MB tiff) file load up, they took up~4GB of 10GB alllocated. This is seriously good news, Photoshop won’t need a scratch disk at this rate we are going.

Will see if we can push it to 3.8ghz and stabilize it this week.

BSOD disk.sys 0×00000050 error with WinXP64

I was searching for an answer to a consistent disk.sys BSOD issue that was extremely frustrating. I found the answer after almost 2 days of troubleshooting. I hope this post can help some frustrated folks. My system spec:

Core i7 920
Asus P6T v2 Deluxe
LG & Asus DVD writer SATA
OCZ RAM
Seagate HDD SATA
Windows XP64

Windows and the various software would install fine but after that, the BSOD would randomly trigger. But it would trigger 99% of the time when CS4 Photoshop + Bridge was fired up. Based on Google searches, I started troubleshooting by reinstalling the OS on 2 different HDDs and a memtest86+. HDD produced the same problem and RAM was fine.

On a hunch, I tried detaching the LG DVD writer and the problem disappeared. I reckoned it was the DVD writer and exchanged it for an Asus. The problem still remained. I changed settings on the motherboard on the SATA port. It still BSODed.

I tried one last thing. The DVD-R was in Port2 and HDD in Port4. I switched them around. And the BSOD disappeared, I tested for 2 days and had zero errors. Windows must have expected a boot HDD to be the 1st in SATA sequence and not the DVD writer.

Btw, in case you ask. Why 64bit? Coz I am gettin CS4 Photoshop to utilize 10GB RAM on a 12GB machine.

But why not a Mac? Coz CS4 Photoshop for Mac is 32bit and uses < 4GB RAM on any Mac even though if it’s loaded with 16GB RAM. CaptureOne (4.6.1) also crashes quite a bit on the Mac.

Why not Vista? Coz XP64 is nimble, fast, responsive and acts like XP32.

Why a PC? Coz a Core i7 920/12GBRAM/295GTX goes for less than half the price of a similarly configured Macpro (2009). Granted the Mac has an 2 server type chips (they are essentially the same), the price difference is simply too much to ignore. Furthermore, the 920 can be pushed from 2.66ghz to 3.6/4ghz with enough tweaking.

How to win/lose a customer

Had to write about an interesting set of experiences recently. I spent the last week assembling a new PC for work. It was an adventure and a lesson of sorts.

Mr G
I was introduced to a PC guy who worked at Video Pro. His name is G. Talked to him in Feb about the items I wanted. He told me that he didn’t have a particular video card I wanted but he’ll try.

He calls me back 4 weeks later and tells me there’s stock. I was pleasantly surprised that he called and told him I wasn’t too sure but I’ll have a think and let him know. I walked into his shop and had a chat with him about the parts again.

In the end, I bought the parts from Video Pro, he gave me a small discount and was nice to deal with. But I wanted to get a casing he didn’t have. I wanted a small aluminum case with a side fan.

Fuwell
I saw the case at Fuwell and got served by a nice guy. But they didn’t have stock and wouldn’t sell me the display case.

Cybermind
I saw the same case in Cybermind and ask the guy if I could get a set. He checked and said there wasn’t any stock. I asked if I could get the display case and he was good to go. I did a ‘btw I am using a big graphics card’ and he got a bit worried and asked a blondish hair dude. This guy OPENED UP a brand new box, took out the said graphic card and tried it out for me. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Video Pro
I assembled the PC and got some serious disk.sys BSOD error. I checked the net and thought it was a DVD writer issue. I took out the DVD writer, ran to Video Pro 1st thing this morning and asked the girl for an exchange. She checked the DVD box and found out I was short on a SATA cable. I asked if I could bring the cable down later as I was in a rush. She said no and told me it was a $3 extra charge for the missing cable.

Video Pro could have taken a $3 loss to earn eternal customer loyalty. But they didn’t. Too bad. PC parts are commodity items. Customers aren’t.

Apple
A friend called up 2 days ago to tell me that his ’silence’ button his 3G iPhone broke. He took it down to Singtel and had a no questions asked exchange for a brand new iPhone. Over the phone, I knew that Apple had a new convert and probably a new evangelist.