struggling with tech to make my precision tower run the newest photoshop cc

thank you  bertro514

in fact i've been running photoshop cc and lightroom just fine until the last update several days ago.  this is dicey territory for me... ideally i'd like to find a reputable online dell graphics card reseller that can unequivocally certify a graphic card fit for my system. does such a service exist. short of that even if i find a suitable card. where can i find online help installing it?

this is a black art and i'm not a practitioner.

tws

Your CPU and RAM look fine. Your GPU could use an upgrade. According to the specs on the nvidia site your K420 might have 1 or 2 GB of video memory and is DirectX 11 compatible. It will still run PS, but the low amount of Vram will probably make it painful for high resolution images. 

As far as I know, PS is more CPU bound than GPU bound, so don't go spending tons of money on the best Quadro out there (unless you also do animation). A P2000 might do the trick just fine with its 5GB of vram. And they go for under $350 on ebay.

Before you buy anything though, have you installed Photoshop on your current rig just to see how it works? You can either run a benchmark like this or just try one of the larger projects you would usually work on and see how it does. 

To be even more specific I advise going into PS and checking Advanced settings and turning OFF everything linked to your card, such that PS does not try to use your card at all.

See what that does.

Here's the Adobe article you need to read:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html

That article also says you want at least 2000 GPU points on Passmark chart, and links to a list of every graphics card, sorted by Passmark score. That list does NOT filter by things like DirectX version, but you can still start there if you want to buy a new card.

That said: You do not necessarily need a card at all, or more accurately you do not necessarily need Photoshop to push its calculations to the card. You can set Photoshop graphics card use to "basic" as per the article. If I'm reading that correctly, Photoshop responds to that setting by transferring load to the CPU.

If I were you, I would try that now, with your existing card. Play around w/ Photoshop settings as per the link; so long as your card can still drive your monitor, the other DirectX stuff will become moot.  Maybe it will work well enough, at least until graphic card prices return to normal.

(I know that PS will run without a card because I don't have one.  I'm on a 4K monitor and am running LR perfectly well (and photoshop on occasion) using the built-in UHD630 graphics chip on a Xeon, though it steals 16G of system RAM.  But RAM is cheap and these days graphics cards are far from cheap, so I'm just biding my time to get a decent one.)

thanks hammarlund

i'll give it a try... i've already stepped back one version of ps to regain the program, while my lr remains the latest ver with no apparent problems, so far.

update:

i discovered i was one driver version delinquent on my graphics card... after downloading and updating the driver PS worked!

it there is a dell savvy  person here i sure would like a link to the available (will work on my system) graphic cards for the dell precision 5810

thanks

Have you tried this one?

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/171729/en-us 

The Quadro K420 is listed among the supported cards. The computer around the card shouldn't matter as much (except for having the correct Windows).

All you need is a Quadro P1000 full Height. Newer Turing RTX cards are out of reach price wise due to coin mining and demand and tariffs. Quadro 6000 series starts at over $4000 for the card and I'm fairly sure  you wont go for this based on your current card.

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/user-guide.html/premiere-pro/system-requirements/2020.ug.html#hardware-acceleration-system-requirements

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/design-visualization/partners/adobe/

https://www.amazon.com/PNY-QUADRO-P1000-Graphic-Card/dp/B0845NGFG6

@mforrest , hi, this is the link to the latest driver https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=m4wn4&oscode=wt64a&productcode=precision-t5810-workstation.

If you are still looking to upgrade your graphics card, I suggest to look into the Quadro K2200.  A used one could be had for more than a hundred bucks on eBay. 

If price is not an issue.

• API Supported: OpenGL 4.5
• API Supported: DirectX 12
• API Supported: OpenCL
• API Supported: DirectCompute

https://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-Quadro-P6000-Graphics-DisplayPort/dp/B01M0S2FKR/