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Projected 'Average' Longhorn System Is A Whopper

Posted by timothy on from the save-your-cans-for-the-rebate dept.

greg_barton writes "At first I thought this was a joke, but this article from Microsoft Watch confirms it: 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.'"

4 of 1,539 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The estimates are OK by pantherace · · Score: 5, Informative
    Yes, like the power4, and the ultrasparc IV (& another ultrasparc that's 2 US2 cores) These chips have are supposed to have 2 processor cores on a single die.

    Right now, that would help AMD a heck of a whole lot more than Intel, because AMD has a MUCH more scalable arch than Intel. (AMD licenced alpha for athlons (32-bit) (dedicated northbridge connection per processor) and copied them for the Opteron (on-chip memory controller, and very fast chip interconnects)) Intel by contrast has a shared memory bandwidth for all it's chips (assume that both Opteron and Itanium have the same base memory bandwidth, for a single chip call it 6.4GB/sec, Assuming it's in the Opteron's own memory (each can have it's own memory) on a dual processor board, each Opteron would have 6.4GB/sec to it's memory, and slighly slower access to the other processor's. Itanium on the other hand shares it's memory bandwidth so each processor has 3.2GB/sec. Scale this up to 4 processors and each Opteron has 6.4GB/sec bandwidth while the Itaniums have 1.6GB/sec bandwidth. Thus why people either cluster Itaniums (with usually a max of 2 processors per node) or have very custom chipsets that emulate what the Opteron does (SGI, and an HP chipset))

    Think of it as on chip SMP which is not some virtualization construct as Hyperthreading is.

  2. Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... by Grand · · Score: 5, Informative

    That is why you run MYIE2 (www.myie2.com). It is a shell for IE that has tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, and a popup blocker. I have around 40 pages open on my crappy work computer (800 mhz, 512 mb ram) and it has no problems.

  3. Microsoft didn't tie IE to the "kernel" by bonch · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, you have to wait an extra 2 seconds for it to load up because the WEB BROWSER isn't tied to the KERNEL. After all, what sort of moronic dipshits would make a web browser an integral part of a system kernel anyway?

    Good question. Microsoft didn't tie IE to their kernel. They tied it to the Windows shell.

    I love the progression of memes around here. IE startes out integrated into the shell, and over time becomes integrated into the actual Windows kernel itself! Cute.

    Meanwhile, KDE does the same damn thing.

  4. What amazes me most is by Boarder2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slashdoters inability to read. Even in the description of the article it says that this is what Microsoft projects a common computer will be about the time Longhorn is released. These are NOT system requirements of Longhorn.

    A common new computer when XP came out was about a 1.4GHz If I recall correctly, but the system requirements are 400MHz...

    Just some food for thought.