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Card for moderate gaming & Photoshop

Curio

Curio

Curio

Soldato
Joined
14 Mar 2004
Posts
8,040
Location
Brit in the USA
Putting together a rig mainly for the wife's Photoshop work, but I'll be using it for some gaming - I don't play a huge amount of games anymore but want something that won't be too weak. It will be used with a 23" Samsung widescreen monitor/TV (1366x768) and also must have dual DVI out as the missus would like to move to a dual monitor setup in the future.

I was thinking maybe a HD 4850 - but would that be overkill for the resolution I'll be using? I'm working to a tight budget, so if a lesser card would work just as well I can spend the money elsewhere in the system.

CPU will be a X4 965 BE I've picked up off a friend. I would prefer ATi, but am open to suggestions if there's something brilliant from nVidia that would fit the bill.

Thanks

ps. I'm a bit out of touch with hardware as I haven't built anything for a couple of years :o
 
nvidia would be better in photoshop...but I'm guessing that 1366x768 ain't pushing it much these days with any recent cards. 4850's are available reasonably cheaply 2nd hand. 4870 with gddr5 would be better.
 
Oddly was about to ask a similar question to the OP's...

Twice in this thread it's been mentioned that nVidia are the better option for PS - anyone care to back that up with a factual link? :) Not sure exactly what is/is not GPU accelerated, would probably be worth knowing if it's just some obscure corner I never actually use xD
 
i was gonna ask why this is too, my gf uses photoshop but im not gonna be using a nvidia card so what do i loose in the PS department?
 
What advantage is there using nVidia card? I was under the impression that Photoshop is more of a CPU and memory hog.
 
It would seem that both brands of card are supported, can comment on which one will work better but there is more info here http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404898.html
I do remember just before CS5 came out there was something about openGL not being good enough for what adobe wanted to do so they were using CUDA, but it would seem this was either lies, or adobe has streamlined their code to make it more vendor agnostic.

maybe someone could chime in with a bit more on the subject, as I'm not too sure what happened.
What I do know is that even CS3 detects my radeon 5850 and theres a check box for 3d acceleration (in photoshop preferences>performance tab)
 
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eddiew said:
Oddly was about to ask a similar question to the OP's...

Twice in this thread it's been mentioned that nVidia are the better option for PS - anyone care to back that up with a factual link? :) Not sure exactly what is/is not GPU accelerated, would probably be worth knowing if it's just some obscure corner I never actually use xD
Click to expand...


Both ATI and Nvidia will work well with Photoshop.

The preference for Nvidia is only becuase Cuda is more advanced/supported and I think even Adobe advertise the Nvidia logo on the Phtotoshop Box's. So I would assume they test and support Nvidia technologies.

Thats it... mostly marketing probably... although, you get the added benefit of compnay actually testing and supporting a technology...
 
Although I have mostly only owned ATI cards if I had desires to run photoshop and game, then I would prob go for Nvidia, for no other reason than its what is advertised.

But dont discrete ATI. If sure their cards work fine.... but you may need to do your independant homework on that front.
 
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People need to stop assuming that Nvidia cards are better for Photoshop. For the record, Photoshop CS5 (and all previous versions) do not use CUDA or any specific Nvidia technologies. They use OpenGL, which will just about run on anything.

Adobe Premiere, on the other hand, does use CUDA. Maybe that's where the confusion stems from?
 
Happy you put the brackets in that statement reflux, I'm stuck on the office's old copy of CS3 - would be gutted to find out that it was limited to nVidia right when I'm eyeing up an AMD 6770 :D
 
I'm sure I've read somewhere that nvidia's cards are quicker than the equivalent ati card in ps. I know it's definately true in Premiere and After Effects as I've tried it. Not much quicker, but it is quicker.

PS does use opengl, but I'm sure that nv's opengl performance has historically been better than ati's
 
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