Graphics card capabilities.

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I am thinking about learning Photo Shop but have been told that you need a Graphics Card capable of handling it. Here are 2 screenshot from DirectX Diagnostic Tool and I would like some advice on what it all means. My Samsung Ultra Book is a touch screen and when I bought it I changed the 500 GB hard drive with a 128 GB SSD. Will the Graphics Card named there be able to run Photo Shop, I am aware Photo Shop is not easy to run. Thanks for any help and advice on this.
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Pete.

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Pete, there are a relatively few effects in PS that benefit from GPU rendering, for many people, any recent IGP, like your Intel HD4000, will do fine.

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Pete, there are a relatively few effects in PS that benefit from GPU rendering, for many people, any recent IGP, like your Intel HD4000, will do fine.

That’s great, thanks satrow; the sale’s guy trying to sell my Wife a Microsoft Surface Book was saying the i5 128 GB version had no Graphics card needed for Photo Shop, but if we can use my Samsung for Photo shop we won’t need the more expensive i7 version. We need to consider our options a bit more on that purchase but she needs a touch screen with super good screen pixels and running a SSD. Just saying, no question in that.
Cheers Pete.

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That sales guy needs to brush up on specs, MS’ details of the 128GB Surface Pro specs:

Graphics

i5: Intel HD graphics (non-GPU) • i5/i7: NVIDIA GeForce graphics (GPU)

So you either get the dedicated (NVIDIA) with the higher end versions, or the IGPU HD (or Iris Pro 540?). “Non-GPU” = Intel GPU on the CPU chip, or non-dedicated GPU.

Adobe’s list of PS features that can use accelerated GPU (NVIDIA’s CUDA):

Photoshop requires a compatible graphics processor in your computer for the following features to function and/or be accelerated:

Artboards
Camera Raw (see note)
3D
Scrubby Zoom
Birds Eye View
Flick Panning
Smooth Brush Resizing
Image Size – Preserve Details
Select Focus
Blur Gallery – Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Path Blur, Spin Blur (OpenCL accelerated)
Smart Sharpen (Noise Reduction – OpenCL accelerated)
Oil Paint (OpenCL accelerated)
Render – Flame, Picture Frame, and Tree
Perspective Warp

Also, the HD4000 can use some GL features, the IRIS Pro is fully supported:

Note:

AMD/ATI 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 series; nVidia GeForce 7000, 8000, 9000, 100, 200, 300 series; older Intel HD Graphics (for example 2000, 3000, 4000 series) cards are no longer being tested and are not officially supported in Photoshop. Some GL functionality is available for these cards, but newer features may not work.

After that, the faster the CPU runs, the better, larger file sizes will also benefit from more RAM:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CS6-Memory-Optimization-182/page4

More on GPU accelerated features:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CS6-GPU-Acceleration-161/

Conclusion

From our testing, we can now confidently state that even though the NVIDIA 600-series and Intel HD 4000 graphics are not on Adobe’s compatibility list, GPU acceleration in Photoshop CS6 works great on those cards.

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BTW, you can use the Snipping Tool to take a shot of just the window you want, not the whole screen.

cheers, Paul

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Graceful degradation of function based upon the hardware you have. Amazing what happens when you program properly!

The only thing I could ask further of, is why doesn’t Adobe make this matter clearer in their documentation? They can officially support what they want, yet still make it clear that ‘unsupported’ will probably still work.

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