How Much RAM Does Photoshop Need?

A list of system requirements for Photoshop may be used to verify that the hardware in your computer system is compatible with Adobe’s program, like many other software providers. Most “system requirements” listings, on the other hand, focus on the bare minimum in terms of hardware needs to execute the program rather than on the optimal hardware. It is also possible that these listings are out of current, display older versions of gear, or include poor-quality equipment.

At Puget Systems, we conduct and publish our detailed hardware benchmarks to verify that the systems we provide are precisely matched for Photoshop since these lists may be unreliable at best. If that weren’t enough, you may go through our Photoshop hardware articles and see for yourself what we tested. We’ve compiled a list of the best hardware for an Adobe Photoshop PC based on our extensive testing.

read more: Best RAM For Ryzen 5 3600 

Graphics Card (GPU)

There are just a few effects in Photoshop that can use the video card’s processing power, which has been steadily improving in recent years. According to Adobe’s GPU FAQ, the following effects are supported by the GPU: How to use a graphics card in Photoshop?

However, despite Adobe’s ongoing expansion of GPU acceleration support for Photoshop, its present demand for video card is relatively moderate. You’ll get the most advantage from GPU-accelerated effects, even with an entry-level card, as long as you’re utilizing a mid-range or better video card. A high-end card like the RTX 3090 may help specific jobs, but an RTX 3070 will bring you within a few percent of the highest potential performance.

What’s the best GPU for Photoshop?

However, the actual performance of a compatible GPU will not significantly influence Photoshop’s speed. Even when solely looking at GPU-accelerated operations, the RTX 3070 is within a single percent of the high-end RTX 3090 in power consumption.

Is the inbuilt graphics decent enough to use Photoshop with?

For GPU-accelerated jobs, even a low-end GPU is faster than Photoshop’s integrated graphics can be. The RAM available for a single 1080p display on most onboard graphics cards ranges from 512MB to 1024MB, so if you have a 4K monitor or numerous displays, a separate graphics card is the way to go.

Does Photoshop need a lot of video card memory (VRAM)?

Your video card’s VRAM (video card memory) is vital to the success of your projects, even if you have a high-end GPU. In most cases, 4GB of VRAM is more than plenty, especially if you have more than one 4K monitor. Our Photoshop-compatible video cards have at least 8GB VRAM. Thus this shouldn’t be an issue for most people.

Is a Quadro GPU required for Photoshop?

A Quadro card works well with Photoshop; however, since GeForce gained 10-bit display compatibility in late July 2019, the sole benefit of Quadro is the greater VRAM and marginally improved dependability of high-end versions.

read more: The Best RAM For Ryzen Processors

NVIDIA vs. AMD: Which is better for Photoshop?

NVIDIA is currently ahead of AMD in terms of speed. In addition, we’ve discovered that NVIDIA cards are significantly more dependable than AMD cards (both in terms of hardware and drivers). Therefore we prefer to utilize NVIDIA whenever possible instead of AMD.

The ability to recall information (RAM)

We usually suggest a minimum of 16GB of RAM for all of our systems, based on the size and quantity of photos you’ll be dealing with. However, Photoshop’s memory utilization may rapidly escalate; therefore, it is critical that you have adequate system RAM accessible.

What is Photoshop’s RAM requirement?

The amount of RAM you need will be determined by the nature of your work, but we suggest a minimum of 16GB of RAM for documents under 500MB, 32GB for papers between 500MB and 1GB, and 64GB+ for documents above 1GB.

Please keep in mind that the “Document Sizes” part of the Info Panel or status bar refers to the size of the document after it has been opened, not the file size of the file itself. When you open a Photoshop file, you’ll see two sizes listed: 20.3M and 60.2M. While the left number represents the flat-file size (which is what you would get if you exported your Photoshop project with all layers but no compression), the correct number represents the actual size of the Photoshop document. When evaluating how much RAM your system requires, the most important figure is the one that encompasses all the layers of complexity.

A place to keep things (Hard Drives)

To stay up with your system, even if Photoshop is not the most storage-intensive program on the market, you need fast and dependable storage.

Should I use a hard disc or a flash drive for Photoshop?

There are three basic options for a Photoshop workstation: SSD, NVMe, and classic platter drives. Disks on platters are the slowest of the three, but they’re also the least expensive and have far bigger capacities than either SSDs or NVMe drives. If your assets are large and high-resolution, you may not be able to work straight from a USB flash drive because of this.

SATA SSDs outperform platter drives in terms of speed and cost. However, they are more costly. These drives are great for a wide variety of functions, including storing your operating system and software and ongoing projects.

M.2 and U.2 NVMe drives are available, which are much quicker than an SSD drive. Even though they are more costly, they can provide up to twelve times the performance of a SATA SSD! Most of the time, an NVMe drive won’t make much of a difference in performance because modern standard SSDs are fast enough to rarely a performance bottleneck. But because these drives are getting cheaper, they can be used as an OS and application drive to speed up the boot and launch of your system.

read moreBest RAM For Ryzen 5 2600

What is the optimal Photoshop storage configuration?

It’s possible to get away with only one drive; however, we suggested at least two, depending on your budget and desired performance level:

It includes your operating system and the basic Photoshop installation on the primary drive (SSD/NVMe). To get the most out of your computer, an SSD is strongly suggested, but an NVMe drive is also a viable option for a slight speed boost.

A secondary drive is an excellent place to save your project files (Platter/SSD/M.2 NVMe) if feasible. A platter drive should be fast enough for most users, but a solid-state drive (SSD) will typically be faster and smoother in your workflow.

In most cases, having your scratch files on your main SSD should be enough. However, if your task requires a lot of scratch space, having a separate drive for those files may be advantageous.

Is it possible to use Photoshop files on an external drive?

Even if you were to store your projects on an external hard drive, you could still work on them. One of the most frequent reasons we hear from clients is that their systems are experiencing performance or stability concerns. Make a local duplicate of all of your files before working on them. External hard drives are great for archiving and backup, but they aren’t the best option for working.


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