Is my GFX Card a bit long in the tooth?

futureal33

futureal33

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Morning all,

Continuing from a thread I recently started about Nik Software running very slowly on my PC, after contacting Nik they told me that Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro use the GPU, and I should try updating the driver and/or disabling GPU acceleration (presumably pushing it back to the CPU?) which may improve things...

This made me think and I realise that I bought my GPU about 5yrs ago! So with technology advances etc, this is practically a lifetime!

The card I am using is an ATI 4890 XFX

I am just wondering, would I notice any improvement to my photo editing workflow if I upgraded this to a more modern one?

I don't tend to play video games much, so any benefits there are of no interest to me, I am purely speaking from a Photo editing viewpoint

Thank you :)
 
they say this on their site..

For GPU acceleration, an Open GL 3.0 compatible graphics card such as the cards listed below.
If no compatible card is available, GPU acceleration will be disabled and the CPU will be used.

GPU Compatibility:

NVIDIA GeForce 8 Series, GeForce 9 Series, GeForce 100 Series, GeForce 200 Series, GeForce 300 Series, GeForce 400 Series, GeForce 500 Series, ATI Radeon HD2000 Series, Radeon HD3000 Series, Radeon HD4000 Series, Radeon HD5000 Series, Radeon HD6000 Series, Intel HD Graphics 3000
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i guess the question is, how much load does it push off to the GPU exactly..

whats the spec of the rest of the PC?
 
neil_g said:
they say this on their site..



i guess the question is, how much load does it push off to the GPU exactly..

whats the spec of the rest of the PC?
Click to expand...

The PC is pretty high spec

Intel i5 2500k @ 3.3ghz
16GB DDR3 RAM 1600mhz
128GB SSD (OS and Photoshop installed on this)
64 Bit Win 7

Its been running really smoothly until about a week ago and then suddenly PS has just pretty much died, and NIK software keeps crashing and running painfully slow etc
 
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your CPU shouldnt struggle at all so it might be worth disabling GPU acceleration and see if it speeds things up.

you havent updated (or let windows update) the ATI driver recently? (i dont recall there being a new catalyst package recently). it might be worth going to the ATI site and downloading the latest one on offer.
 
neil_g said:
your CPU shouldnt struggle at all so it might be worth disabling GPU acceleration and see if it speeds things up.

you havent updated (or let windows update) the ATI driver recently? (i dont recall there being a new catalyst package recently). it might be worth going to the ATI site and downloading the latest one on offer.
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Will give it a try, thanks :)

Would you say the GPU is fine, or is it getting a bit dated?
 
futureal33 said:
The PC is pretty high spec
Its been running really smoothly until about a week ago and then suddenly PS has just pretty much died, and NIK software keeps crashing and running painfully slow etc
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If it's been a sudden step change in performance and crashing I'd be looking to see if there is an issue somewhere - perhaps check on temperatures, look in Task Manager for any processes running the CPU flat out and scan for malware.

Computer hardware won't get slower over time, it's either a software change or some kind of fault.
 
When was the last time you did a fresh install of Windows? I tell people time and time again that it's always good to do a wipe every 6 months. Also check the status of the PC internally, those fans tend to get clogged up with dust - especially pet hair etc!
 
Flightphoto said:
When was the last time you did a fresh install of Windows? I tell people time and time again that it's always good to do a wipe every 6 months.
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You should never need to do a fresh install.... The only thing that tends to clog up is startup items due to the user installing crud and not de-installing it. To see what is running at startup do Start->Run type msconfig and then look at the startup tab.

This sounds more like a driver/software issue.

You could do a restore to a point in time before the system slowed and see if that helps debug what is causing it...
 
arad85 said:
You should never need to do a fresh install.... The only thing that tends to clog up is startup items due to the user installing crud and not de-installing it. To see what is running at startup do Start->Run type msconfig and then look at the startup tab.

This sounds more like a driver/software issue.

You could do a restore to a point in time before the system slowed and see if that helps debug what is causing it...
Click to expand...

:thumbs:
 
Flightphoto said:
When was the last time you did a fresh install of Windows? I tell people time and time again that it's always good to do a wipe every 6 months. Also check the status of the PC internally, those fans tend to get clogged up with dust - especially pet hair etc!
Click to expand...

Sorry, but this is plain wrong. I rebuild should only be required as a last resort. The days of having to do a rebuild on very old kit to clean things up are long gone. The op has a very good spec of machine which has suddenly started performing badly. It usually points to an update or install which has gone wrong or virus/spyware.

Op- have you changed anything recently? Is it only the same apps causing issues or other areas? Have you any virus/spyware software installed?
 
Ive been in touch with Nik Software (Google) and they have given me some recommendations.... which with a little bit of extra fiddling seem to have worked.

On Silver Efex Pro 2, turn off GPU Acceleration, therefore making the CPU do all the processing. This has completely cured the problem, and I am now launching SEP2 from within PSCS6 in about 2 seconds, and applying a pre-set filter in 2-3 seconds.

On Color Efex Pro 4, they sent me some commands to enter into the .cfg file which CEP4 uses on start up, basically forcing the program to run in safe mode. For whatever reason, this seems to have cured the problem, and it now launches and runs correctly as it should. GPU acceleration is still turned ON.

No idea what caused this problem, but they are both running at the speed they should be again...for the time being!
 
futureal33 said:
FWIW, do you think I would see any/much improvement by either upgrading my i5 2500k to an i7 (not sure of the model number, but a good one) and 32GB RAM?
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I would monitor usages while you work to see if its overworked first. You would obviously see an improvement but its whether its a worthwhile improvement
 
futureal33 said:
FWIW, do you think I would see any/much improvement by either upgrading my i5 2500k to an i7 (not sure of the model number, but a good one) and 32GB RAM?
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do you know if the application makes use of hyperthreading? if not then no.

i cant see you maxing out the 16gb, to be honest. but check the usage graphs in task manager.
 
futureal33 said:
FWIW, do you think I would see any/much improvement by either upgrading my i5 2500k to an i7 (not sure of the model number, but a good one) and 32GB RAM?
Click to expand...
No. :D
 
futureal33 said:
On Color Efex Pro 4, they sent me some commands to enter into the .cfg file which CEP4 uses on start up, basically forcing the program to run in safe mode. For whatever reason, this seems to have cured the problem, and it now launches and runs correctly as it should. GPU acceleration is still turned ON.
Click to expand...

futureal33, would you mind sharing the .cfg commands? I disabled the GPU acceleration for SEP2 and noticed the same improvement as you - and my CPU and GPU are lower spec than yours! Hopefully the CEP fix would work for me too.
 
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