Photoshop screwing with my GPU while HW acceleration is enabled

[Kashim]

Hi. I've been having an issue with Photoshop for a while and I can't seem to find a solution. I own a GeForce GTX 770 video card and this is what the specs look like while it's idle and Photoshop isn't running.



The memory and core clock are both throttled way down while the card is idle. As soon as I start up Photoshop, both the memory and core clock jump to the absolute highest my video card can do. It's still showing 0% GPU activity, since Photoshop is just idle, but it's still causing my video card to heat up quite a bit while sitting idle. Here's what the specs look like after Photoshop was running for 10 minutes.



I wasn't using Photoshop during the 10 minutes. I just let it sit idle during that time. If I disable hardware acceleration and restart Photoshop then it leaves my GPU alone, but then I lose HW acceleration. Does anyone know why this is happening or any kind of fix to resolve the issue? I'm running the very latest version of Photoshop and the latest version of the nVidia GeForce drivers. I run a lot of different applications and sometimes leave them running for days in the background. No other application interferes with my video card or forces is to run at full speed in such a manner except Photoshop. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Kashim]

Ok, so the place is called Photoshop Gurus, but no one has ANY idea why this is happening? Oh well, thanks anyway. I guess I'll try asking on another "guru" forum.

 

[Zeealex]

well, someone did respond but they removed their message, and with an attitude like that you aren't likely to get help at all.

contrary to popular belief we're graphic artists and designers, who discuss and share information, we're not Adobe or Nvidia tech support, who would've been my first ports of call if i were in this situation.

 

[Tom Mann]

FWIW, I also use a GTX 770 in my main PS computer, and my readings are very similar to yours, both with and without PS running (but not working on an image).

PS not running:



PS running, but not rendering or performing any other computations on an image:



However, your statement, "...both the memory and core clock jump to the absolute highest my video card can do. It's still showing 0% GPU activity...", does not stress the actual computational work that the card is performing. Below are the diagnostic readings when the Furmark graphics card stress test is running:




Note that while running Furmark, the GPU load went from 1% to 99%, and even though for the relatively small size of the diagnostic image that I used, the memory usage went down, the power increased from 28% of max to 100% of max. I would therefore call the "PS-on" state that you are concerned about more of a "fast idle" -- certainly not "full on".

This leads me to believe that keeping the 770 at this "fast idle" whenever PS is running is an intentional design decision. One can speculate on why they might have done this, but it would only be speculation. For example, if there is some modest delay to switch the 770 from "slow-idle" to active, say, even just 1/2 second per transition, this might become irksome to users if this switching needed to be done many times. Of course, they probably could write their own code to manage its operation, but why should they bother? Nobody worries about a GPU running at 50C. OTOH, if we were seeing 75 deg C at "fast idle" I would be concerned.

Tom M

PS - I fully agree with the comment my fellow moderator, Zeealex. Kill the attitude. It will get you a lot further in life.