Ok our department are due to get the CS5 Design Suite in the next few weeks so I decided to install some 30 day trials to get a head start with things. Dreamweaver works fine and I'm generally impressed with all the little updates. As for Photoshop... it's a complete different story. It's seriously laggy, you can't even draw a box with the marquee without having to wait about 5 seconds for it to show up. It's a pretty decent PC here too - Core 2 Duo E8400 (2x3GHz), 4GB RAM and Vista 32bit Enterprise. The graphics card is an ATI HD3600 and I've got the latest drivers.

 

Any advice?

 

Thanks

Only thing I can think of is the default resolution for the page is set to something ridiculous causing a slow down.

 

Pat

Hi,

 

It must be the way your PC is set up as Photoshop CS4 works extremely well for me and indeed it seems faster than CS3, more than likely because CS4 takes advantage of your GPU.

 

Don't know what's happening at your end. Sorry.

maybe the colour settings in photoshop

Thanks for the replies guys but I've not got anywhere.

 

It's nothing to do with the resolution as I've tried running a canvas as small as 200x200px and there's still a massive lag. I've played around with the cache and switched on/off the OpenGL support. It recognises the ATI HD3600 graphics card (512MB) and it's definitely got the latest drivers. The PC is a fresh install with everything legit and up to date - there's no reason it's not working as the spec is more than enough.

 

I'm just about to install it on one of the other office PC's which is slightly lower spec but it's on XP - we'll see...

Go back to CS3 until you have a quad core processor.

 

You need at least an Intel Quad Q6660 for CS4.

 

I don't care what they say on their website, you need a quad core CPU for CS4. I have a Q9600 and it runs a dream!

Go back to CS3 until you have a quad core processor.

 

You need at least an Intel Quad Q6660 for CS4.

 

I don't care what they say on their website, you need a quad core CPU for CS4. I have a Q9600 and it runs a dream!

 

it may run like a dream but how can you say that if you dont know how it runs on other computers, i have an intel core 2 duo t8100 in my laptop and all cs4 programs run like a dream so saying you need at least a quad makes no sense at all

Okay well to be fair my comment was a bit bashful.

 

But, the reason I said that is that I have just upgraded my PC from a dual core 2.6GHz. It was quite slow (not as bad as what he is experiencing) on the old processor, and it's amazingly fast now.

 

I know that CS4 is designed to make use of each processor individually to allow multiple projects to use different processors.

 

So with only 2 cores it stands to reason that it will no perform as well.

I'm not sure it's the CPU, this one is a dual core 3.0GHz and I've not seen it written anywhere that it works so much better utilising quad cores. I've just tried it on a couple of year old iMac with 1GB RAM and it runs real smooth (fair enough, that's mac though so who knows - they just work).

 

I tried it on an old P4 2.8 with 1GB RAM (XP) and it was still laggy but not quite as bad - makes me wonder if it's a Vista thing?

 

I've got a Q6600 running 3.2GHz with 4GB RAM and a graphics card with 768MB RAM at home, I'll try it there later

well it might be a vista problem but its not standard because im running vista aswell and its not giving me any problems

 

it most like isnt hardware related either because those specs should very easily run any cs4 program

well it might be a vista problem but its not standard because im running vista aswell and its not giving me any problems

 

it most like isnt hardware related either because those specs should very easily run any cs4 program

 

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I set this PC up myself and I know everything is running fine, it's very strange. Gonna go try it on another PC when I get chance. Thanks for the replies

i have a pc with vista ultimate 64bit, I7 prossesor 2.7ghz, 6gb of ram, ati hd 4870 x2 (2gb) and gigabyte mother board the only one that supports the i7 i forgot the model but any way i installed photoshop cs4 after uninstalling photoshop cs3 and i found cs4 realy laggy which means it has a delay and i tried opening 64 bit version and 32 bit version, no difference can any one help me its realy killing me and i tried small pics realy small same thing and btw i just got this pc so its new and clean

Hi,

I think it's not a hardware problem and your PC specs are just fine and adequate. 2-4 Gb ram is adequate. And not a Vista issue either. Might be a software problem that maybe Adobe can find a fix. Maybe stick to CS3 for now? There's this wordpress blog about many Photoshop CS4 users complaining about its slowness. The last guy who commented had a solution but this is not verified if it will work. Check here.

Go back to CS3 until you have a quad core processor.

 

You need at least an Intel Quad Q6660 for CS4.

 

I don't care what they say on their website, you need a quad core CPU for CS4. I have a Q9600 and it runs a dream!

 

Shut up. I have a dual core CPU and it runs "like a dream".

 

Anyway I did notice that on Vista my trial ran really slowly, however if I set the compatibility for XP it seemed to fix the problem for whatever reason. I also allocated it more RAM than it uses by default and disabled the GPU features. I'm currently running the Windows 7 beta though and it runs really smooth with that installed, probably even faster than CS2 on Vista.

When you create a doc, is it set to 400dpi or less?

 

Also check the drive adobe's storing temp files on (normally C:\\) it's best to try and keep atleast 40% of this drive free.

 

OR try a fresh install, alot of people have had this problem (search it on the adobe forums and you'll see what i mean). Some with the best specs money can buy, sometimes it just installs funny, mine did the first time and was dead glitchy.

 

Also open task manager when your in photoshop, and just monitor the cpu & ram spikes when your doing stuff.

 

Vista pre-caches ram (the first windows os to do so i think). And i know this caused problems with some older software, doubtful cs4 would be affected though.