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bbbabbs
bbbabbs
Participant
April 16, 2026
Answered

I'm upgrading my pc. Is this a good setup?

  • April 16, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 30 views

I work a lot with layers, plugins, and now adding generative AI to my workflow. Will the following specs work well for Photoshop while fixing my slow rendering problem?
Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 265 processor (20-Core, 66MB Total Cache, 1.8GHz to 5.3GHz), 

NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3050 6GB GDDR6 ,

32 GB DDR5, 2 x 16 GB, 5200 MT/s ,

1 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD

 

      Correct answer davescm

      A couple of points :

      The CPU has integrated graphics which means you will need to force Photoshop to use the dedicated GPU (in NVIdia control panel). Photoshop cannot use dual GPUs.
      The GPU will work today but is now an old model (Nvidia have released the RTX 5 series ) which may limit its future life.

       

      Dave

      1 reply

      davescm
      Community Expert
      davescmCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      April 16, 2026

      A couple of points :

      The CPU has integrated graphics which means you will need to force Photoshop to use the dedicated GPU (in NVIdia control panel). Photoshop cannot use dual GPUs.
      The GPU will work today but is now an old model (Nvidia have released the RTX 5 series ) which may limit its future life.

       

      Dave

        bbbabbs
        bbbabbsAuthor
        Participant
        April 17, 2026

        Okay, based on your reply, I’ll upgrade the GPU. Also upping the RAM to 64GB, so I hopefully won’t have to upgrade for awhile. Thanks!

        D Fosse
        Community Expert
        D FosseCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        April 17, 2026

        ​@bbbabbs 

        The 3050 is getting a bit old, but it should work fine for now. The main thing is that you may have to disable the integrated Intel HD GPU. It should run on the RTX 3050 exclusively.

         

        Dual graphics tend to conflict. There is no way for Photoshop to control which GPU is called, that is entirely at the mercy of how the laptop manufacturer has configured the OS and the two GPU drivers. It may work and it may not.

         

        Dual graphics is fine for simpler applications that just send data downstream in a one-way flow. Photoshop doesn’t work like that - it uses the GPU for actual data processing. You can’t send data to one GPU and get a result from the other.

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