One of the questions many of us encounter when upgrading/replacing our computers are the right specifications to opt for in order to meet our needs (wants).
Typically these might include questions about higher CPU clock speed vs number of cores, GPU acceleration, how much memory, effects of cache, HT and turbo boost etc. I have omitted some specification choices such as the hard drive since SSD should universally improve performance vs spinning HDD.

However, when doing a some quick research there appears to be quite a lot of variation depending on your software of choice.
I have not come across a resource page that outlines the computer specification goodies that would enhance particular software performance. They tend to be very generalised or you have to trawl the boards of the specific software forums for specific info.

So I was wondering if anyone knew of such a resource page and if not, maybe we can pool one together here.

Some major photographic software to consider with some very preliminary personal notes (perhaps misconceptions too so please correct if required):

Photoshop:
- higher CPU clock speed most of the time
- improvement with 2-3 cores but appears to plateaus after (although task specific).

Lightroom:
- likes more memory (but does it max out at some point?)

Capture One:
- more cores (for exports)
- higher clock speed (for creating previews)
- GPU acceleration supported (for what operations?)

DXO PhotoLab

Affinity



For the purpose of this discussion, I'm limiting things to still photography processing and omitting video.

Or is this too difficult a task due to wide variation in number and size of files and the processing task that each of us are doing?