p8400 not enough for Photoshopping?

Okay, this has been bothering me for quite some time, it's just photoshop lags quite bad at 1920x1080 when I was editing photos, the rendering filters usually don't take very long and it's somewhat acceptable. What really bothers me is the photoshop menus lags really bad, say when I was trying to switch "layers" to "filters", the menus always lag behind, which is very annoying. My question is is photoshop really that CPU intensive? I am running a p8400 at 2.53Ghz, GPU is a 9800M GS.

 

My T6600 that came stock in my CW was more than able to handle Photoshop without lagging at all. Of course I didn't have 50 or 60 layers all at one time. I'd say something is up elsewhere that's causing issues in Photoshop.

 

Impossible.. My [email protected] with Nvidia 9600M GT DDR2 runs Photoshop CS5 smoothly..

 

hmm, something smells fishy here, but I did have a lot of layers open at one time sometimes. I am not sure what caused the menu lags, at what resolutions do you run photoshop? Could the high resolution cause the lag at all?

 

running 1920x1080

Did you enable OpenGL Drawing ? I set mine to Advanced.

 

hmm, openGL drawing? I am not sure where I can enable it, will that make a difference? Thanks for the help!!

 

Have you checked your commit usage in taskmanager while it's laggy?

 

@Dufus
I checked, there was nothing intensive running in the background while it's lagging, I am not sure what other cause it might be.

 

Check your GPU card clocks, it sounds to me that either its in low 2d mode state or is/its not throttling correctly.

I see that you've undervolted your 9800m GS, that would explain.
You can try this:

Go to Nvidia Control Panel, select 3d Settings->Global Settings. Select the power management option from "adaptive" to "max performance" (sorry i dont remember perfectly all the values, im going with mind).

Then switch to Program Settings (second tab). Check if Photoshop is listed into installed programs in the dropbox (check "show installed programs only").
If it isnt, add the program.

Once you've added it, check that the program is using Max performance under power options (it should be).

Also be sure that your cpu doesnt underclock as well, which is typical of EIST mode. But if you run it at 2,53 ghz i suppose you're DualIDA'ing it.

Let me know.

PS: get GPU-Z, open it and select the SENSOR tab. Leave it open and open Photoshop. Now see what kind of clocks the GPU is using.

 

Okay lidowxx. I actually meant commit as in the how many MB of memory were committed. If your running earlier than W7 it might be called Page File instead of Commit. I guess the name might have been changed because it could be confused as the pagefile on disk, idk. Just thought you might be low on memory and overly swapping out to disk which would also be evident by long periods of hard disk light activity during lagging. Poor guess on my part.

 

1920x1200 on a 25.5" Asus external monitor. An Intel GPU shouldn't even have problems there.

 

scratch disk issue?

 

I would suggest the same as Dufus... I can run Photoshop CS4 fine on mine and it only has a T2400 with 2.5GB RAM.

If your resources are becoming low, that would defiantly make it lag... Check it out in your Task Manager. When it is lagging, do other applications lag? For example, switching to a browser.

 

Guys, thank you for your replies, I closely observed the CPU/GPU activity while it's lagging(when I am switching between different menus), the RAM usage is always below 50% and CPU jumps from 70% to 95%, I guess the high CPU usage explains the lag? The GPU always stays at 2D level, won't jump to 3d/gaming level at all. I must repeat the lag only happens when I am switching menus or dragging a toolbar. Other programs runs fine when photoshop is lagging.