# LR 6 GPU acceleration requires OpenGL 3.3 - video card support



## LDS (Apr 21, 2015)

GPU acceleration requires OpenGL 3.3 (or better, I guess), IMHO a good choice because it's going to support a lot of "older" video cards too, and not only the newer one able to support OpenGL 4.x.

For nVidia support of OpenGL, see here https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-driver

Cards going back to the GeForce 8 series should be supported, and also many embedded Quadro/NVS GPUs in older laptops and some desktops.

Intel informations are here:

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-033757.htm

And some AMD informations:

http://developer.amd.com/community/blog/2010/03/25/ready-willing-and-able-amd-supports-opengl-3-3-and-opengl-4-0/


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## PureClassA (Apr 21, 2015)

Great find! Thanks much!


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## Intel478 (Apr 21, 2015)

Mine only does 3.2 That's a bummer!

I'm more than once frustrated with the responsiveness / speed in the develop module with 8x 4GHz and 16gigs of ram...


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## Luds34 (Apr 21, 2015)

PureClassA said:


> Great find! Thanks much!



+1

I guess My old Radeon 5000 series should help out. I'm anxious to see the difference. I like the irony that I will probably upgrade my video card for a desktop app and not, you know, actual gaming.


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## Birding (Apr 21, 2015)

I'm rocking a ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB on my crappy work iMac 21.5in mid-2010 model (thankfully my photo editing computer at home is much better) and the GPU acceleration is active (as far as I can tell...the box is checked, no error messages). So it seems like the minimum requirements might be a slight exaggeration on Adobes part.

There also seems to be a new spinning wheel to indicate "processing" down in the lower right (where the DONE button would be for the adjustment brush). At least I never noticed it before...


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## Intel478 (Apr 22, 2015)

Birding said:


> I'm rocking a ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB on my crappy work iMac 21.5in mid-2010 model (thankfully my photo editing computer at home is much better) and the GPU acceleration is active (as far as I can tell...the box is checked, no error messages). So it seems like the minimum requirements might be a slight exaggeration on Adobes part.



For me it does not work under Windows 8.1 Pro:

```
Graphics Processor Info: 
Check OpenGL support: Failed
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Version: 3.3.13283 Core Profile Context 14.501.1003.0
Renderer: AMD Radeon HD 5670
LanguageVersion: 4.40
```

What did you do different?


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## Birding (Apr 22, 2015)

Intel478 said:


> Birding said:
> 
> 
> > I'm rocking a ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB on my crappy work iMac 21.5in mid-2010 model (thankfully my photo editing computer at home is much better) and the GPU acceleration is active (as far as I can tell...the box is checked, no error messages). So it seems like the minimum requirements might be a slight exaggeration on Adobes part.
> ...



I couldn't tell you, other than using OS X yosemite
If you're on windows you might want to try updating your graphics drivers ?

To be honest I'm not blown away by the OpenCl GPU acceleration, subjectively it feels slower. With the "Use Graphics Processor" box checked, the image updates by being "fuzzy" before fully loading, the sliders are really laggy, and heavy use of the adjustment brush is slow to catch up with the pointer. When I uncheck the GPU acceleration box, the image looks pixelated rather than fuzzy before loading, and the sliders and brush are more responsive. I think I'm just going to leave the box unchecked... oh well 
For the record, these new observations are on a MacPro with dual D500... 
Mike


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## LDS (Apr 22, 2015)

Intel478 said:


> For me it does not work under Windows 8.1 Pro:
> 
> ```
> Graphics Processor Info:
> ...



In Windows the OS GPU support technology is DirectX, not OpenGL, thereby OpenGL support is demanded to the graphic card drivers (unlike OSX), nor you may receive full graphic cards drivers updates via Windows Update. If you didn't already, install a recent Catalyst driver. If you did, AMD may not support the requested OpenGL feature for that card on Windows 8.

Update: there are a couple of threads on Adobe forum about issues with OpenGL support on ATI cards:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1822652?start=0&tstart=0
https://forums.adobe.com/message/7460992#7460992

Here https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/lightroom-gpu-faq.html Adobe says that the "suggested" amount of video RAM is 1GB - it's not clear if it is just a suggestion and it will work with cards with less than 1GB or not.


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## Marsu42 (Apr 22, 2015)

Intel478 said:


> Mine only does 3.2 That's a bummer!



Not really - do note that just a gpu nominally has gl 3.3 support doesn't mean at all it'll be effective at offloading tasks from the cpu.

This has often been seen with OpenCL - apps adopt gpu support because of user pressure ("I want it to be way faster, do it already!") only to find that the speed bump is minor, non existent or it's even slower on a medium gpu.


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## IglooEater (Apr 22, 2015)

Maybe I'm just lucky, but gpu worked by itself on a 5-6 year old MacBook pro. Don't know if it's because of that, but LR is behaving dramatically faster for me.


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## LDS (Apr 22, 2015)

IglooEater said:


> Maybe I'm just lucky, but gpu worked by itself on a 5-6 year old MacBook pro. Don't know if it's because of that, but LR is behaving dramatically faster for me.



What it's happening is that given the large number of different configurations out there, especially under Windows, there are issues with some graphic card models (and probably some drivers).

IMHO, in this case the "closed beta" approach of Adobe backfired, because it would have needed to test on and get reports from many more systems. Right now Adone doesn't even have a list of known supported GPUs.

Also, as Marsu42 pointed out, real speed improvements depends on what gets actually executed in hardware (and the hardware speed), and what gets emulated by the driver in software because the hardware does not directly support it (sometimes, even present but disabled for commercial reasons...!).

In turn that depends on what features of OpenGL Adobe used, and how (unluckily, there are some different ways to use OpenGL features, for example some data formats, etc.). If you're "lucky", as in your case, everything goes fine and gets executed fully on the GPU, and using OSX I'm not surprised, because there are less variables to cope with.

If you're less lucky - especially on Windows, you may find issue ranging from smaller or no speed improvements, or no GPU support at all.

I hope most issues will be ironed out in the future updates of LR6/CC, hopefully not being "new features", available to the standalone product owner as well.


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## Marsu42 (Apr 22, 2015)

LDS said:


> Also, as Marsu42 pointed out, real speed improvements depends on what gets actually executed in hardware (and the hardware speed), and what gets emulated by the driver in software because the hardware does not directly support it (sometimes, even present but disabled for commercial reasons...!).



On the other hand (adding insult to injury) after trying LR6 I have to say *if* your gpu is sufficient - even my 4y old laptop with a nvidia gpu is - the speed bump is amazing, I would have never suspected Adobe would manage to achieve that. So for other ppl with performance problem, a gpu upgrade actually might be a good idea.


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## RLPhoto (Apr 22, 2015)

My main system was pretty beast already with LR4, but now, that tiny momentary rendering in a 1:1 with a 39 mp H3D file is completely gone. It's a noticeable difference, at least 40% or more if the file has lots of edits on the brushes or gradients. That's on a single 770 GTX, I can only imagine what the bigger cards could do.

I'm very happy waiting for LR6, LR5 should have had this.


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## pjn0629 (Apr 22, 2015)

Birding said:


> Intel478 said:
> 
> 
> > Birding said:
> ...



The GPU accelleration is only enabled in the Develop Module, but I have the same thing going on with my Macbook pro retina 13"... I thought it was because my i7 was just straight up faster than my integrated graphics. Sliders and brushes are WAY more responsive for me rendering with my CPU instead of GPU, maybe this is a mac bug instead of a symptom of my anemic GPU... And to think i was already speccing out windows machines to run LR on...


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## Luds34 (Apr 23, 2015)

A little disappointed it isn't working for me either. :'(


Graphics Processor Info: 
Check OpenGL support: Failed
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Version: 3.3.13283 Core Profile Context 14.501.1003.0
Renderer: AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series
LanguageVersion: 4.40


Oh well, this system (Phenom II 955 w/ 12 gig RAM) is pushing 5 years old. Maybe it is time for an upgrade. Problem is that it "just works" and has been plenty snappy to use. Tough to justify.


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## helpful (Apr 23, 2015)

Luds34 said:


> A little disappointed it isn't working for me either. :'(
> 
> 
> Graphics Processor Info:
> ...



Don't upgrade because I did to a Mac Pro 6 core desktop (latest). It barely changed. I'm extremely unhappy. Lightroom never uses more than a third of the CPU or about 1% of the graphics card. 

I still have to pause for pictures to load, even JPEGs. 

I'm rarely so negative, but the performance in quickly looking through photos is a total failure for Adobe.


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## Luds34 (Apr 23, 2015)

helpful said:


> Luds34 said:
> 
> 
> > A little disappointed it isn't working for me either. :'(
> ...



Thanks for the advice. Yes, lightroom is the only thing that tends to be a little slow for me and everything I read makes me think it is just part of the nature of the beast. It would be pretty disappointing to upgrade and not see any real performance boost. I thought the GPU enhancements might be just what was missing. Nope, I think I'm going to hold out one more year. Maybe I'll treat myself to a new tablet this year, ya know for Lightroom mobile.  Yeah, I just upgraded the HTPC with new cpu/mobo/RAM combo (and an SSD). One computer a year is enough.


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## LDS (Apr 23, 2015)

helpful said:


> Don't upgrade because I did to a Mac Pro 6 core desktop (latest). It barely changed. I'm extremely unhappy. Lightroom never uses more than a third of the CPU or about 1% of the graphics card.



I would say "don't upgrade until you tried it and you're sure it works well on your machine". There are reports of systems getting real speed improvements, others none, and others getting even slower with GPU support enabled.

I'm not surprised because as a long time user of flight simulation software (something that hammers the GPU/CPU combo much more than any other "game") , I very well know what different combinations of GPUs, drivers, graphic libraries, OS and settings may mean. Again, I believe Adobe biggest fault has been the lack of a public beta/preview to identify and resolve issues before the final release. I understand a preview with these issues could have been somehow "bad promotion" too, but I guess a final release disappointing paying customers is even worse. Or maybe they think a bad public preview can hit sales, while bad upgrades disappointment comes only after the sale....


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## tomscott (Apr 23, 2015)

I have an old 2008 Mac pro 2x2.8ghz with 14gb ram and a evga 285GTX and its all working for me with open GL support


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## Marsu42 (Apr 23, 2015)

Intel478 said:


> For me it does not work under Windows 8.1 Pro:
> 
> ```
> Graphics Processor Info:
> ...



Which is proof that the OpenGL level alone doesn't mean much because it allows for software emulation - and LR obviously checks for real hardware implementation and speed. Fyi, this is my 5 year old nVIdia laptop:


```
Graphics Processor Info: 
GeForce GT 330M/PCIe/SSE2
Check OpenGL support: Passed
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.82
Renderer: GeForce GT 330M/PCIe/SSE2
LanguageVersion: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
```


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## siegsAR (Apr 23, 2015)

This is the only feature I care about though the rest has its benefits too. I'm glad its working.


```
Graphics Processor Info: 
GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST/PCIe/SSE2
Check OpenGL support: Passed
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 344.11
Renderer: GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST/PCIe/SSE2
LanguageVersion: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
```


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## LDS (Apr 23, 2015)

Marsu42 said:


> Which is proof that the OpenGL level alone doesn't mean much because it allows for software emulation - and LR obviously checks for real hardware implementation and speed.



It looks LR beyond checking for the OpenGL version interrogates the card to get some supported parameters, (i.e. GL_MAX_COMBINED_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS, it's pretty technical stuff), and if the card returns values LR deems inadequate, it disables GPU support, even if the OpenGL version is OK and the card may work in other software (including PS). For example for that parameters some ATI cards return 32, many nVidia return 96, and LR looks to require at least 48.

Don't know if it also performs some real performance tests on startup to determine if GPU support is valid.

Some users reported more detailed messages in their system info outputs including those errors, others don't (don't know if they had access to a test version or not).

Maybe LR developer have been very conservative and the actual checks are too exclusive, or maybe LR really needs them to work properly, only time will tell... it would be nice anyway if LR could return a more detailed report about why it disabled GPU support, and anyway a list of minimum and actual parameter to help diagnose slowness and other issues.


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## Random Orbits (Apr 23, 2015)

Luds34 said:


> A little disappointed it isn't working for me either. :'(
> 
> 
> Graphics Processor Info:
> ...



I'd try downloading new drivers from ATI first. I have a 6800 series card, and I got a similar report from LR. I bought my card in 2012, but I never updated the video card driver since I installed it. Downloaded the latest driver, and now it works.


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## Luds34 (Apr 23, 2015)

Random Orbits said:


> Luds34 said:
> 
> 
> > A little disappointed it isn't working for me either. :'(
> ...



Yep, I made sure to get the lastest, greatest from AMD/ATI. I did hop over to the adobe forums briefly and it did seem to be a common thread among a number of the older ATI cards in the HD 5000 and 6000 range (7000 too but latest driver seemed to fix them). I didn't spend much time there, but the one thread I looked at did have an engineer engaging folks even asking them to run a sample utility/program to help him diagnose the issue. In short, I got the vibe that the expectation was these cards that are failing were expected to be working from Adobe's standpoint.

Running tests with OpenGL Extensions Viewer in windows showed I had full support of the 4.0 standard. I think by 4.2, 4.3 it was missing an instruction or two. And all the 3.x tests passed with flying colors.

I did see someone say they completely uninstalled all AMD drivers before installing the lastest driver and that got it to work. That individual was using a 5770, my exact card, however I did not have the same success.

So all said, I probably messed around for maybe an hour trying to see if I could get it to work. No big deal. I'll hang tight and see if an update down the road gets GPU support and then see if it is even an improvement (as others have said GPU support has been slower in some cases) as my hardware isn't state of the art. It was a new system built for the release of Starcraft II, which I believe was summer of 2010. Time flies, can't believe it's been 5 years already.


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## m (Apr 23, 2015)

I guess I get the trial version first with my ancient AMD card, even though it supposedly supports 3.3.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Apr 23, 2015)

I have the cheapest of the cheap plain vanilla GE Force GT 720 graphics processor in my Dell, and it seems to accept it, but I don't notice any improvement.

Graphics Processor Info: 
GeForce GT 720/PCIe/SSE2

Check OpenGL support: Passed
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 347.88
Renderer: GeForce GT 720/PCIe/SSE2
LanguageVersion: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler


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## endiendo (Apr 23, 2015)

I'm happliy surprised !!

I had Lightroom 4 and 5, and I was more and more waiting for performance improvement. I bought a 4k-screen last month, and with this high resolution, lightroom 5 was very very slow in develop mode. (when adjusting...).

Lightroom 6 is way more fast ! in Develop mode, it's really instant ! I have no problems and it works very fluent.

- Dell p2715q 4k (3800 x 2600 px - march2015)
- Dell XPS from sept 2012: 
.core i7 3770k 3,4 Ghz
.16 gb ram
.ssd cache 30 gb
.2 to seagate
- nvidia gtx970 4gb (from jan2015)
- windows 8.1 x64


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## Alejandro (Apr 23, 2015)

*Radeon HD5x00 and 6x00 series:

Uninstall and Re-install Catalyst 14.4
This will fix the problem with the GPU not being recognized.

But, there is no improvement in Lr 6 at all, on the contrary, it slows the system*


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## Crapking (Apr 23, 2015)

FWIW

Mid 2012 MBP Retina
OS 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
2.7 i7, 16 GB Nvidia GT 650M 

OPEN GL support passed and automatically enabled upon upgrading from LR 5 to LR CC

First import / develop module / export to JPG showed 'modest' speed improvement with a small batch of 30-40 RAW files from 5dIII


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## grimson (Apr 24, 2015)

Operating system: Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 2.4 GHz
Built-in memory: 8191.3 MB

Graphics Processor Info: 
Check OpenGL support: Failed
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Version: 3.3.13283 Core Profile Context 14.501.1003.0
Renderer: AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series
LanguageVersion: 4.40


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## Intel478 (Apr 24, 2015)

LDS said:


> Update: there are a couple of threads on Adobe forum about issues with OpenGL support on ATI cards:
> 
> https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1822652?start=0&tstart=0
> https://forums.adobe.com/message/7460992#7460992
> ...



Thanks for the links! It turns out my card has only 512MB and the website of AMD tells me only 3.2 is supported.
Of course I have the latest drivers etc. I double checked.

Btw: I notice that all the people here saying it works for them have Nvidia cards ...


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## jthomson (Apr 25, 2015)

Intel478 said:


> I have a Radeon HD-7700 with 2 Gb of ram, and it is definitely snappier with version 6 than with 5.7.
> Still not as fast as ACDsee or Photo Mechanic for just viewing files but getting close.


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