Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Yep, but even with less RAM - say 8GB - but with 4 cores ( 2 physical, 2 virtual) and balanced I/O it can work well. However balancing performance takes a little knowledge and a few tools. My system is hitting its limits right now, but I'm waiting for another tech generation before I build another one...

Tet68survivor Loc: Pomfret Center CT

Wrong choice of description, I meant an SSD device not a memory stick! My new desk top I had a choice but of 12 gb psyhical ram or the 128SSD device and I chose the wrong one! I was concerned about another "mechanical" device which it is not! Sorry for the confusion!

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

I have done Photoshop on a 4 gb laptop. It worked a little slow, but okay. For real production with PS the more RAM the better up to about 16gb after that it gets iffy.

On the other hand, other software may be less greedy. My Affinity Photo runs beautifully on 8gb.

therwol Loc: USA

I think that the most important question is whether the operating system is 32 or 64 bit. You really have to go out of your way to buy a computer with 32 bit Windows installed, but there may be some people who upgraded 32 bit XP to 32 bit Windows 7 and beyond. Of course, a computer that old might be challenged by modern software for many reasons, but here is the real sticking point. You can put all of the RAM in the world up to the maximum capacity in such a machine, and 32 bit Windows will only recognize 4 gigs of it, typically 3.2 to 3.5 usable, with the rest being used by the OS.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Exactly. Peter and I have mentioned this as well - it's a key point that is often overlooked

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

RAM importance depends of photo software. Each sets aside some bufferspace to hold intermediary data during an operstion. These specs can be learned from the manual or software company. Buffers must be contiguous. I used to have an app that would rewrite the files to recover discontinuous memory.

rpena2860

Good point brought up about RAM on a 32bit OS. I tried running PS on an I3 dual core w/ 8GB of RAM with Win10 x86. Of course, it only recognized approx. 3.2GB since x86 (32bit) OS won't recognize any more. It ran PS, if I kept the number of open images to 4 RAW images open at once (16-24mpx), but as soon as I launched a plug-in like Topaz, BAM -- 'Low on memory. Please shut down in-needed programs' error. Upgraded to 64 bit OS and 16GB of RAM (max computer would support), and no issues at all now. ** Really depends on how you use it and what you are willing to 'accept' as far as performance goes.

Another thing -- if your computer has an imbedded graphics card, it likely set aside a portion of system memory as video memory, so that potentially another hit on actual RAM available to your OS and programs. Do yourself a favor and upgrade the RAM (and OS to 64bit if using 32bit), and if you are using an imbedded graphic card, buy an inexpensive AMD or NVidia add-on card. You will not regret it and the cost is not that much.

** This is my secondary computer. My primary computer is at a another level: Intel I7 quad core at 2.7GHZ, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD (OS and apps), 64GB SSD (swap drive), 2TB hybrid drive for data, Nvidia GTX 960 w/ 2GB GDDR 5 VRAM. If it were any more capable or faster, it would not only post-process my images for me, but would likely shoot and then cull them in LR before doing so.

(Yeah -- I'm a geek. Can you tell I'm in the IT computer industry.)

therwol Loc: USA

Another thing to mention is that if you are using a computer that will only let you install a maximum of 4 gigs of RAM (like one of my old laptops), you gain little or nothing if you upgrade from 32 to 64 bit Windows. You won't likely notice any difference. If you're not happy with the performance, then you need a new computer that will let you install more RAM AND a 64 bit OS. Chances are it will come with 64 bit Windows anyway.

zoomphoto Loc: Seattle, WA USA

I have 32G installed on my PC. I allocate 21 to PS because I scan large format negatives that can reach 1G in size. PS needs that much allocation to expedite opening and processing of such files. My point being, you need to have and allocate to PS the appropriate amount of RAM based on your individual needs.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Have 16GB lightroom using 2.33GB Chrome using 4.4 GB 6GB free, theres 99MB used as Swop About 10GB in use is typical for me. Unless I launch an external editor then Lightroom is quite light weight. Using layers in photoshop or Affinity ect gets quite greedy for ram each layer is usually 24 bit and the size of your image.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I use Photoshop on an hourly basis but with the monthly updates, my computer got slower and slower. Some Photomerge tasks using 48 separate pictures wouldn't complete anymore. Finally, I had a freshman computer science major at Berkeley build me a super computer (see http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-461559-1.html). Now those tasks which wouldn't complete take about 3 minutes. Those tasks that took 30 minutes now take 30 seconds, and those tasks that took 3 minutes now take 3 seconds. I realize that I have lots of processing power now but that processing power also includes 32 GB of RAM, and Task Manager shows that 90% of that RAM is being used with those Photomerge tasks. The other 10% is being used for OS and all the other programs that I keep open 24/7 (Word, Excel, Bridge, InDesign............

srat50 Loc: Ware, Massachusetts

there is in edit/preferances a slider for ram use. the defaoult is 60% I moved mine to 80% and noticed quite a differance.I have 8 gigs on my laptop and 2 gigs on my desktop

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I used to have a Laptop with initially only 4GB of RAM. Using Photoshop CS6 made it "smoke". Once I tried to stitch a panorama together as a 32-bit file, big mistake. It took the poor Vista Ultimate 64-bit PC a full 35 minutes of actual run time to complete the task. Then I found I could not save it as a PSD file, ( I believe TIFF was Greyed Out), I found I could save it as a PSB file. I eventually saved it as a jpeg and then ultimately deleted the monstrosity. A half hour on a 3 GHz computer is nearly forever! Later I added RAM twice to get up to 16GB (two new modules).

My current Dell XPS Tower has 32GB RAM and can create a pano in less than a minute. No 32-bit ones though, they are so huge to store. 16-bit is fine. You can't have too much RAM, but you can waste money on it. My wife does not do image PP on hers and I only use hers for editing or burning music from LP to CD-R. Her Dell tower has only 8GB. I might eventually want to add more to 16GB.

By the way, you need more than 4GB to run a 64-bit OS or other 64-bit programs. 4GB can run a 32-bit version of MS-Office fine. Hmmm, will Windows 10 run with 4GB? That might limit you to Windows 7 as well.

therwol Loc: USA

Windows 10 will run just fine with 4GB. I have a laptop with 4 GB and two copies of Windows 10 on it, 32 bit and 64 bit. I can't tell any difference in speed. It's just as fast with MS Office or other "light" programs, and just as inadequate for more challenging programs. I've tried video editing on the machine. Forget it. I have better things to do with my time than wait for hours while the machine churns. I have other machines for such tasks.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Other than the CPU (I am using a 5 yr old i7-2600K overclocked to 5 gHz, you have described my system. I recently built a system EXACTLY like yours, but with an NVidia Quadro 2200, and it FLIES! When it is not overclocked, however, it is no faster than my 5 yr old system.