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[OM] The GPU - was More Memory (OT)

Subject: [OM] The GPU - was More Memory (OT)
From: SwissPace <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:31:49 +0200
  "Times they are a'changing", the GPU is much more capable nowadays and 
can do a lot more, more and more computational work is being handed over 
to it, this will only increase with time hence my recommendation I am 
not sue how much photoshop hands over to the GPU but see this comment


So what does GPU acceleration actually mean for Photoshop CS4? Quite a 
lot, actually. For a start, everything works faster, and this is 
especially noticeable when you’re panning or zooming your way around 
large images. The Zoom tool is instantaneous, with no lagging, and 
completely smooth no matter how close you get. When you get to 500 per 
cent, you can get right down to a pixel-by-pixel view with no bleeding 
between the pixels – this pixel grid is perfect for extremely precise 
editing.

full article here
<http://www.photoshopdaily.co.uk/featured/gpu-acceleration-in-photoshop-cs4/>

and also for aperture
Aperture Performance: ATI Radeon HD 4870 vs ATI Radeon HD 5870 
<http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/product/MC743ZM/A?mco=MTQzMzA4NzQ&pqid=QJPJFXKDYKA4HUTK4T2XYP2UD97J2K9YC>
 



I have an early 2009 Mac Pro with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card.

Do you think there will be a significant performance boost using the 
5870 over the 4870 with Aperture ? Apple says the 5870 is great for 
"motion graphics, 3D modeling, rendering, or animation", but not sure if 
I should expect much improvement using it with Aperture. I am pretty 
happy with the 4870, so don't want to spend the cash for minimal 
improvement.

Any thoughts or speculation?


          Answer

Currently, Aperture 3 ONLY uses the GPU when applying, and rendering 
adjustments. Everything else is CPU bound.

If you are having slow response with sliders, or brushing on 
adjustments, the card may be worth upgrading.

The biggest change would be that the 5870 has 2x the amount of VRAM and 
aperture can start to run slow If you've brushed on a lot of layers, and 
there isn't enough VRAM to hold all the layers in the video card's 
memory - Another factor here is if you have 2 displays at high 
resolution - You will need more VRAM.

There's really no scientific way to test this, but I've found that you 
need at least 256MB of vram per display for aperture 3 to work well with 
21MP raw files.

snipped from this page
<http://store.apple.com/us/questions/product/MC743ZM/A?mco=MTg3MjE2MDA>


with mine I noticed minimal performance improvement from going over 4Gb 
ram, it did improve a bit but the main benefit for me was because I need 
to run two virtual machines on it for work and it helps there. I did 
notice an improvment when using aperture with my 8800GT and also the 
3870HD. If I had spare cash I would stump up for the 4870 but the 
landrover is taking all that at the moment ;-)



> For the display card, as far as I know it pay no part in speed up the
> editing function. It only affect the zoom and scroll of image IF you enable
> the OpenGL Drawing function.
>
>
>

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