Graphics Cards

[evamartin]

Hey there !

I'm sorry to create this topic, as I could see several solutions were offered through internet, but none did the trick for me. 

As said in the title, I've got an OpenGl bug on Photoshop. It disables an important tool and makes an error message instead. 

Fun fact : I forgot to erase the old version of the soft  and if I run this software, Open GL works perfectly ! that's sooo frustrating ! ^^ 

I of course checked for any update for my AMD Radeon HD 6900's driver.

I tried to set Open GL options in the AMD settings (the only thing I found that was looking as it was in gaming/3d application settings/frame rate control/OpenGL triple Buffering).

I checked if there was another graphic card detected, and there is not. 

I tried the trick of adding AllowOldGPUS command on regedit. 

I'm running out of ideas, any help would be most welcome ! 

Thank you very much

[elstaci]

OpenGL is enabled by the AMD Driver on your GPU card.

To find out if OpenGL is enabled on your GPU card, download and run GPU-Z. At the bottom it should have about 3 or 4 boxes check marked including OpenCL and OpenGL.

Here is mine with an Nvidia GPU card. The ones I underlined are the ones AMD GPU cards should have check marked depending on the AMD GPU card you have:

If OpenCL or OpenGL are not check marked than you probably have a corrupted AMD Driver installation.

Follow this basic method to install and remove AMD drivers from your computer:

Uninstall the current AMD Driver using DDU as per this method:

It could be due to a corrupted AMD Driver installation.

Download free program DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller). Run it in Safe mode with the internet disconnected.

You can also run it in Windows Desktop but then you would need to Reboot the computer for DDU to finish erasing all of  the AMD Driver traces from your computer.

 Once it finishes uninstalling the current AMD Driver in Safe mode and boots back to Windows Desktop, still with the Internet disconnected, delete the AMD Installation folder C:\AMD if it was created before.

Now install the full AMD Drive package you downloaded manually from AMD Download page. Not the express package. Run the package and if it installs correctly again delete C:\AMD folder and reconnect the internet.

This should prevent any conflict when installing the new version from the previous version.

By the way, C:\AMD is always created whenever you run the AMD Driver package

Plus your HD 69xx GPU card is considered to be legacy and not supported by AMD with Driver updates any more. I checked all the HD69xx series downloads and they all have the same drivers to download from here (HD6950): https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-hd/amd-radeon-hd-6000-series/amd-radeon-hd-6950 

You have a choice of:

1- WHQL 2015 version 15.7.1

2- BETA 2016 version 16.2.1

According to Techpowerup specs on the HD 6950, which should be similar to all 69xx series GPUs as far as OpenCL and OpenGl versions it supports goes: AMD Radeon HD 6950 Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database 

[evamartin]

Hello elstaci, thank you very much for this detailed answer ! 

First of all I gave a try to GPU-Z and it appears Open CL, Open GL  and direct Compute are activated. the only checkbox you underlined that is disabled for me is the "Vulkan" stuff.

So with this configuration, do you confirm I have to uninstall/reinstall driver ? 

As you said, 6990 is not supported, so I used 6950 driver last time I updated. 

[elstaci]

No, as long as there are no errors in Device Manager under "Display" it seems to be installed properly.

Vulkan is not check marked because that old AMD Driver doesn't support Vulkan API.

Vulkan became supported with AMD Driver version 16.3 and later versions:https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/vulkan 

Here is Photoshop's GPU Recommendations: Photoshop graphics processor (GPU) card FAQ 

It is possible your GPU card doesn't support all the Photoshop features including the one you want to run especially with out-dated AMD Driver installed which you are stuck with.

EDIT: You might want to open a Adobe Support ticket to see if your GPU and Driver will support all the OpenGL features of Photoshop.

Also I believe you can enable OpenGL in Photoshop: GPU and OpenGL features and preferences | Photoshop and Bridge | CS5, CS4 

[evamartin]

Hello elstaci,

The most strange thing is that I still have the older version of Photoshop I used just before updating, and on this version of the soft, the open GL is enabled and works perfectly.

Setting up the parameters inside the app as in screenshots you gave me is the first thing I've made, but the option to enable openGL is grayed and I can't tick it.

anyway, I opened a ticket at Adobe support, so maybe I'll have soon some more clues.

Again, thank you for your detailed answers, that's very kind of you ! 

Eva

[elstaci]

Hopefully, Adobe Support will be able to figure out what is the problem.

Seems like the new version of Adobe isn't completely compatible with your GPU card since the old version was working correctly. 

 Eva, Take care.

[evamartin]

I'lll post the solution here if anything works, in case somewone else encounters the same issue

[elstaci]

Good idea, Thanks

[evamartin · Accepted solution]

After 3 days, I finally had an answer from Adobe support. It appears that :

Adobe have rendered old and some not so old GPU's useless with this update, Adobe are looking into the issue, the only option you have at the moment is to revert back to version 21.1.3

So in case anybody has the same issue, just go back to old version of the soft and wait for better days. 

[elstaci]

Well, that explains why OpenGL is grayed out for your GPU card even though it is enabled by the AMD Driver.

The new version isn't compatible with your legacy GPU card 100% any more.

Would be nice of Adobe Support to put up a warning in the latest version stating the same thing they mentioned to you. Save many Users with legacy or certain newer GPU cards the headache of troubleshooting a perfectly good GPU card and Graphics Driver.

Thanks for the update!

[evamartin]

Well, it might not be a definitive decision, perhaps not even a decision at all, but a bug instead, since there is this other topic with very detailed (lol) explainations : 

The engineering team is looking into this.