Photoshop/ Video Card?

I recently bought a new computer to use for photoshop editing. I run a lot of actions. Photoshop all of a sudden became really slow. It WAS running fine. After going back and forth w/ PS technical support, I finally spoke w/ someone who told me that I needed a video card (apparently I didn't have one). so I get a GeForce 8400 GS (Nvidia) and it's still running a bit slow - although faster than before. Keep in mind it was running FINE at first. Photoshop tech support tells me NOW that i got the wrong video card, but now says that my computer configuration? is "troublesome". Here's what I have: HP Pavilion a6742p, Pentium Dual-Core CPU E5300 @2.6GHz, 6 GB Ram, 64-bit Operating System. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks coozie - How do I check that?

Ctrl+Shift+Esc would be a shorter way there.

First of all, if it WAS running fine then it's a software issue. Not hardware.

Your computer should run Photoshop nicely. I believe only CS4 has multi-core support for your CPU.

To verify how much of your CPU is being used, open up the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and monitor your CPU usage. You should see either 2 or 4 CPU graphs depending on which dual-core architecture you have.

Minimize the TM, then run some intensive processing then bring up the task manager.

The video card is fine. I think they do have graphics card acceleration but it's not required.

Unless your RAM settings or other settings are screwed up, or Antivirus was kicking in etcetera I'd be surprised you have a problem.

You can also try reinstalling and put on the new Windows 7 RC which is available May 5th and good for 13 months.

Also check the IDE channels on IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers in device manager. If there is any drive on "PIO mode" then it means that's your problem. Sometimes the transfer mode reverts to PIO mode and causes everything to become very slow with alot of processor usage.
A reinstall of the IDE channel should fix the problem.

Photoshop CS3 and lower do not need a dedicated graphics card and will not run faster even if you had one. Photoshop CS4 has the option of using a graphics card. However, I felt that CS4 with my GeForce 8800GT was slower than CS3. Another classmate with the same card had an even slower and buggier experience using CS4. With GPU support turned off, CS4 seems to run as good as CS3, although it took up a ton more RAM.