John Nack has posted a beautifully-concise summary of how to set up a great Photoshop machine:

At Photoshop World this week, performance testing lead Adam Jerugim presented a performance guide with hardware recommendations and information about the CS5 performance preferences.  I’ve put his notes in this post’s extended entry.

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RAM: Enough to keep Efficiency readout at 100%. If Efficiency is low (<95%), adding RAM will provide biggest benefit. 4GB will cover most digital photography uses. 8GB leaves room for other apps and fits huge documents in RAM…..

I do like my new computer – for now, at least, I’m well ahead of the ideal specs :)

Also see: