Adobe’s MAX conference is early next month, which means that there will be new Lightroom Classic and cloud-based Lightroom releases. There will be some system requirement changes at this time.

Lightroom Classic and Cloud-Based Lightroom Operating System Requirements

Mac OS: High Sierra (10.13), Mojave (10.14), Catalina (10.15). Sierra (10.12) will no longer be supported.
Windows 10: Version 1809 and later. Version 1709 will no longer be supported.
Window 7: Service pack 1 – supported for Lightroom Classic only, not for the cloud-based Lightroom; Lightroom Classic GPU acceleration performance features won’t work.

GPU Performance Improvement Requirements

When Adobe introduced image-editing performance improvements in Lightroom Classic 8.4 and cloud-based Lightroom 2.4, gained by use of the graphics processor to perform these calculations, your graphics card was required to support either OpenGL or Direct X (or Metal on Mac).  With the upcoming releases, support for OpenGL is being dropped. If the performance improvement introduced in 8.4 or 2.4 made a substantial difference for you but your graphics card or computer doesn’t meet the new Direct X or Metal requirements, then you may wish to continue to use Classic 8.4.1 or 2.4.1 until you upgrade your hardware.

Full Requirements for GPU Peformance Improvements in Nov. 2019 Lightroom Classic  and Cloud-Based Lightroom:

Windows: graphics card with DirectX 12 support, at least 2GB of VRAM and a recently released driver.

Mac: computer that supports Metal, and at least 2 GB of VRAM (video card RAM). Click here for a list of Mac computers that support Metal.

Here is a statement from Jeffrey Tranberry of Adobe about these operating system and GPU requirements.