TechNote

Graphics Acceleration (GPU) support in Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications

What's covered

General information
Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications
Supported Video Cards
Product-specifc GPU information

General information

Many of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications have enhanced features designed to take advantage of your display card's GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) to accelerate application performance. The GPU is a dedicated graphics rendering chip that may be integrated into the computer motherboard or attached to a separate video display card and is very efficient at manipulating and outputting computer graphics. The extra processing power of the GPU makes some effects and accelerated rendering possible that would otherwise require extraordinary CPU (Central Processing Unit) speeds and large amounts of RAM. If a supported GPU is detected during launch, the application will take advantage of this added processing power.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 applications

The following list of Adobe CS4 applications will take advantage of the advanced processing capabilities of the GPU:

Acrobat 9
After Effects CS4
Bridge CS4
Flash Player 10
Photoshop CS4
Premiere Pro CS4

Note: For details regarding GPU support of individual Adobe products, please visit that product's system requirements page on the Adobe website.

Supported Video Cards

Adobe recommends DirectX 9.0 or later (on Windows) and Shader Model 3.0.* Display cards with 512MB or better of VRAM and support for OpenGL 2.0 are recommended. If your video display card is not detected as a supported card, GPU effects and preferences will not be visible within the application. It is also recommended that you download and install the most recent drivers available from your video card manufacturer.

*Note: Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Bridge CS4 use OpenGL 2.0, rather than DirectX. For Photoshop specific GPU documentation, please refer to the "GPU acceleration in Adobe Photoshop CS4" section of this document.

Tested Compatible Video Cards

Note: The graphics chipsets below are tested to function with Creative Suite 4. Individual applications may have a much larger list of cards that they have specifically tested with.

Windows systems

NVIDIA	GeForce 6 Series	6800 Ultra
	GeForce 7 Series	7800 GTX
	GeForce 8 Series	8800 GT
	GeForce 9 Series	9600GT, 9800 (single GPU variant one)
	Quadro FX Series	1700	Mid-Range
	Quadro FX Series	4600	High
	Quadro FX Series	5600	Ultra High-End
AMD/ATI	Radeon X1000 Series	1900
	Radeon HD2000 Series	HD2900 XT
	Radeon HD3000 Series	HD3870 X2
	FireGL V-Avivo Series	V5600	Mid-Range
	FireGL V-Avivo Series	V7600	High
	FireGL V-Avivo Series	V8650	Ultra High-End

Macintosh systems

Mac Pro	First Generation	AMD/ATI	Radeon X1900
	Second Generation	NVIDIA	GeForce 8800 GT
iMac		NVIDIA	GeForce 8800 GS
MacBook Pro		NVIDIA	GeForce 8800M GT

Product GPU information

GPU Acceleration in Adobe Acrobat

333447â“ GPU Acceleration support in Acrobat and Adobe Reader
324073 - Issues with an ATI video card
kb405218 - Video card list and GPU information for Acrobat 9

GPU Acceleration in Adobe After Effects

OpenGL support for After Effects

GPU Acceleration in Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player system requirements

GPU acceleration in Adobe Photoshop CS4

For information on GPU features in Photoshop, and a list of the GPU chipsets that have been tested for use with Photoshop CS4, please refer to the following documents:

kb404898 â“ GPU and OpenGL Features and Limitations in Photoshop CS4
kb405745 â“ GPU accelerated features in Photoshop and Bridge CS4
kb405064 â“ Crashes occur, Photoshop CS4 won't open, some features are slow and OpenGL is unavailable.
kb405711 â“ List of tested graphics display cards in Photoshop CS4