The Photoshop, the 8970m, and the Cintiq

Hello everyone,

I recently purchased a Sager NP8295 and it's been amazing so far. I seem to run into a peculiar issue when I plug in my Cintiq 13HD and run Photoshop CS6. If I set the profile of photoshop to High Performance so it will use the 8970m, then I get massive lag on my line strokes from the cintiq. Whereas if I set it to power saver and let it use the Intel HD 4600, input lag does not occur at all. I'm running stock specs with Win7x64. This maybe a problem involving dividing the 8970m across multiple monitors, or perhaps something having to do with OpenCL. It's beyond my scope of technical knowledge and what appreciate any assistance. If recommendations need be for a better place to post my problem be it on these forums or another, I would be thankful.

Thank you.

 

Would you get a performance improvement from the 8970M if it was running it?

 

I went for an AMD rather than an Nvidia due to AMDs OpenCL support for photoshop CS6. I would theoretically gain a performance boost on large canvas sizes and opencl functions as opposed to the Intel 4600. Could this be a problem with Enduro or so?

 

Possibly, can you try going into the AMD control centre and changing the power settings to run the 7970M for every application.

Restart and see if that works, if it does, then there may be another EXE to add.

 

Make sure you set sniffer_gpu.exe to high performance mode to, thats the app that actually checks your gpu configuration for photoshop (and adobe packages in general).

EDIT: Oh and make sure that in Edit -> Preferences -> Performance, it actually says it's using the 8970m and that opencl is enabled.

 

I've attempted both suggestions and am still receiving input lag on High performace with my 8970m but normal performance on my intel HD 4600.

 

Update on the issue,

Running several different tests, it seems the issue lies within the GPU itself and possibly the muxless design or Enduro Drivers. When using photoshop with the "High performance" setting, the GPU spikes all the way up to 99% with the program just idling and no canvas even on yet. Disabling the GPU functions do not produce any lag at all surprisingly. I'm afraid I may have to return this excellent laptop if I cant find a further solution to the problem and look for a hardware mux enabled laptop without enduro.

EDIT: Will wait until Monday where I can test this out using various other tablets to confirm it's not a issue with a Cintiq and will test the Cintiq on other laptops to confirm it's not an issue with the GPU.

 

So if i understand correctly the issue appears when you plug-in your cintiq tablet/screen, so it performs normally with just photoshop open without the tablet plugged in? Could you supply us with more info, like what driver version you're using for the cintiq, ati gpu and intel gpu.

 

A picture of the usage graph would be good too.