[drphoto]

Ok, I have a dual 2ghz G5 (3gig RAM, OS10.4.9) It has a Radeon 9600XT video card w/ 128MB VRAM driving a Sony Artisan as main display and old Pressview for palettes.

Here's the problem when running photoshop (CS) sometimes if I use the 'grabber' tool to scroll, the image will 'breakup', that it will separate into jagged sections, and then none of tools will function properly. The only recourse is to quit pshop and relaunch.

I'm guessing the chip in the video card is overheating. Could I add a fan directly to the chip. Should I just get a newer video card that is actively cooled. Is 128MB VRAM just not enough?

[nathanm]

I get the same thing from time to time if I am in full screen and get a little hasty with the panning about too rapidly.  (Quad 2.5GHz PPC, 8.5GB RAM\Geforce 6600 256MB vid memory) I never really narrowed it down, a quick zoom in\zoom out fixes it, but it still is a little annoying.  By tools not working do you mean permanently or just the video is glitchy?  For me everything still works, it's just a redraw bug.  Something loopy with the video buffering I suspect.  I am not sure if that is exactly what you have happening or not.

[drphoto]

Nathan, the zoom in/out thing will fix it temporarily, but as soon as I pan....same issue. By tools not working....the painting tools don't act as expected, a paintbrush displays jagged patches.

Man, that sounds like a monster machine you have. If your Gforce card is doing the same thing, maybe the card isn't the issue. That one has a cooling fan....right?

I've not been able to find any post about this issue on any familiar computer/pshop type websites.

[nathanm]

It is a nice machine, I wish it was mine!  Ahh no matter, it's already "outdated" anyway.  I am not sure if the card has a fan or not.  Might be good to check, and dust out the beautiful guts of the G5.  The inside of a G5 is about the most beautiful thing in all of geardom.  It's like a little hospital in there, everything clean and tidy.

Anyway...I wonder if Photoshop's cache levels\memory allotment preference have something to do with the redraw thing?  I think mine is at 3, 50% memory.  Might want to change that and see if it has an effect.  I'd also try changing your display color depth to Thousands instead of Millions and see if that changes anything.  It sounds like the buffer just can't keep up.  Does this occur on any size image or just very large ones?

[mcullinan]

I have a Quad G5 too... runs Ok, never experienced those problems. Have you run all of the Photoshop CS updates? You could also flash the nvram?? video ram I think, maybe that will help.. I think the 128 is fine, if all else fails plop in a new card.
Mike

[brj]

Visual artifacts can occur when the graphics processor runs too hot.  Macs are very well designed from a thermal standpoint, but too much dust or a bad location (enclosed desk, blocked vents, etc.) can still cause them problems.