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Bulky System Requirements for Windows Vista
unsurreal writes ""A Tech Strategist within Microsoft, Nigel Page, has gone on record to discuss the hardware requirements for Windows Vista, due out next Christmas." The next year is going to be an interesting one as hardware vendors smile towards the shocking new recommended hardware needed for the next generation Windows operating system." From the article: "Graphics: Vista has changed from using the CPU to display bitmaps on the screen to using the GPU to render vectors. This means the entire display model in Vista has changed. To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB is a happy medium, but you'll actually see benefit from more. Microsoft believes that you're going to see the amount of video memory being shipped on cards hurtle up when Vista ships." Coverage available at Tom's Hardware as well, with a semi-transcript at Tech Ed.
Yet another reason to use linux.
And then we can say how great Linux is!
Every new version of windows has beefed up the requirements, and I've always found them usable with less than they say.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
Looks like it is going to be a booming year for ATI and NVIDIA when Vista is released
It will be interesting to see the take on from business. Vendor lifecycles not withstanding, moving from the newer hardware boxes with NT4 on or W2K to XP has been largely painless from a performance perspective.
Give me a break! It's an operating system, what technicial leaps must it render that requires so much memory? I can run Doom3 at 1024x768 at pretty high quality with my 128MB card without a problem, yet to render a few windows and a start bar I need twice that?
Eye-candy doesn't result in functionality Microsoft... shift your attention towards usability.
If a basic Windows box requires 256 MB of video RAM to run, then Macintosh OS X on x86 will definitely be the less expensive PC.
I don't know about you, but I really don't like this system of forced upgrades due to "enhancements." If I buy a computer that is 1000$, I expect it to be good for quite a long time. I think computers are at a point now where they can be treated as appliances, lasting for decades. If people just kept on using windows 2000/xp, a current day $500 PC would be good enough until the hardware dies. The problem is, that hardware just doesn't last that long these days. Ah well, maybe it's not a giant conspiracy, but I can see why Dell and such like their partnership with MS.
Well, maybe there are enough people like me who are fed up with upgrades, and they'll just stay with windows 2000/xp or use linux/*bsd.
We're covering this as if most users were going to upgrade from XP to Vista, and will be thus compelled to shell out big bucks for new graphics cards, ram, disks, etc for their current computers just to run the new OS.
This is, of course, not the case. Most users who cannot upgrade will march blithely on with the OS they already have. I'm writing from work, where we're still using Windows 2000. The computer next to me is an ancient Pentium 133--and it runs Win95.
Home users will encounter Vista when they decide to buy a brand new computer, and from that perspective, they'll have gotten a shiny new OS with their shiny new hardware. Nobody will see the cost of the OS and the cost of the hardware to run it as separate things.
Umm... something's here wrong, the whole point of Vector graphics is to save memory, like how flash animations are much more small than GIF animations. Vector graphics is a more of a CPU hog then a memory hog... then again, it's MS, go figure...
Hmmmz, my SGI Indy didn't need 256MB of videomemory to have vectorized icons... somehow I get the feeling Vista isn't the most efficiently programmed software/OS we've seen... ;-)
(and the Indy *did* ship with a journaling filesystem... XFS...)
hardly.
have you seen current 600 dollar pcs?
they far outclass the 600 dollar mac mini and those run tiger.
by the time vista ships, 600 bucks will buy you a lot more power than you "need" to run vista.
if you turn off the eye-candy , it'll run as well as xp does today.
you have it wrong, hardware requirements are not a good reason not to get vista. there are much better reasons not to get it, like the massive DRM and financially supporting ms, which is as good reason as any.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Personally I am looking foward to Vista, and I see the hardware requirements as a positive thing. You can whine about MS all you want and complain about the hardware requirements, but why? As a developer of software I love the idea that the typical user's computer has steadily growing power. It opens the door to new and innovative applications and interfaces. Seriously, if Vista makes 3d graphics cards required and 3d API calls easily available to the developer, can you imagine the possibilities for the improvements in typical GUIs? I think that the software GUI will only truly take another step forward when it has the firm support of the GPU behind it. You can argue with me if you like, but I see no way around this.
Mac OS X 10.4 is capable of rendering the entire interface using the GPU (they call it Quartz Extreme). The system delivers some incredibly cool visual effects (see Core Image), and it does it on systems with as little as 64 MB of VRAM on the graphics card. So what the hell is Vista going to do where 256 will be optimal?
Vista is nearly all eye-candy, if you strip off the eye-candy, all you have is XP with staggering DRM.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Hang on.
However, since 64-bit is handling data chunks that are double the size, you'll need double the memory, hence the 2GB.
64bit data is double the size of 32bit data? Just installing a 64bit version of an OS doubles your RAM requirements compared to the 32bit version?
Since when?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Ouch ;-) Flame hurt, just a bit... Still need to, I have some tools that I need to port to Unixware.
;-)
The company SCO sucks, but the product was not bad at the time. OpenServer 5.0.2 is from 1996, it was miles ahead of then-Linux 1.2.13 or so. Which I also ran from the old Yggdrasil compilations
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Hoe much do you want to bet that Microsfot realizes that most people only pay for Windows when they buy it with their computer thus they will aim to require a new computer for each next majour release?
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
HD-DVD and BluRay can join DAT, SACD, and DVD-Audio as formats that were killed by greed.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
virtual pc ring a bell?
through emulation at least.
you cannot emulate the DRM of the x86 mac or the "EULA" of the ppc macs but you can install the basic vista on a ppc machine. the DRM (secure boot) isn't mandatory or you'd have several billion computers that vista couldn't be installed on.
that's what i mean by artificial restrictions. you can buy mac os or windows and install on any chip arch/hardware if the manufacturers don't go out of their way to prevent it. DRM and the like are artificial restrictions. because even when you pay for the software, you are at the mercy of the vendor and don't really own it.
ironic that apple said they won't prevent people from installing windows on osx86 but yet the reverse isn't true. what's apple's excuse?
people who buy region 2-5 dvd discs cannot play them on unapproved hardware (i.e. hw that has the ability to play multi-region). the fact is, the dvd consortium et al have no right whatsoever to tell you what hardware you may use to play it back on. if we had some competent judges and legislators they wouldn't be allowed to artificially restrict discs/software/movies/music to certain hardware in the first place. it places undue harm on the customers for no gain in return.
any hardware that has the capability to play and use the purchase is perfectly ok and legal. but the corollary to that isn't for the manufacturer to build custom chips to circumvent the then right (if we ever see the day when congress and judges do the right thing) for users to choose their hardware.
why the heck not? they paid for it.
artificial restrictions. that's why.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Let's see a link to a $600 SFF PC that far outclasses the mac mini.
We all know that the Mac Mini is pretty much the most powerful computer you can buy in a package that small, so you Mac zealots can put that tired old line to rest.
However, for some people, size really doesn't matter that much. It's pretty much a fact that you can buy a heck of a lot more computer for the money if you don't mind it being the size of a breadbox rather than the size of a standard CD drive. And then there are some people who actually do like things like extra drive bays and PCI slots.
CPU stacks now have 8-byte entries, so they are pretty much always twice as big.
AMD64 code is quite a bit bigger than IA32 code. Most estimates say 15%.
None of these double your memory requirements, but it's probably easier for them to prereq 2GB of ram than 1.4GB.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
As a Mac user... ... but seriously - I don't think GPU screen rendering is a bad thing. Microsoft are going in the right direction by offloading that sort of donkey work.
But why such a powerful GPU? If Apple can achieve the same thing using a minimum of 32MB (like my little iBook), why can't Microsoft?
What's the compelling reason for such a hefty GPU requirement? Do you have to launch Doom III to 'delete' files? This is serious GPU power here, and if it's just rendering windows it seems to be poorly optimised.
Maybe it's a beta thing, and by the time it ships you can get by with lower GPU requirements.
I thought the primary purpose of an OS is to manage resources, not to eat it.
dude get a clue.
do you realize that the bulk of the pc's out there are P-III 866 or less? there still is a HUGE userbase of windows 98? Most people call their home pc "good enough". you do not need more than Windows 98 or 2000 on a P-III 550 with 256 meg of ram and NO 3d video card to go online, run that stolen copy of office 97 from the office, use tax-cut once a year and read email. those items cover 90% of all computer uses in the typical home.
Dont believe me? go house shopping. 9 out of 10 homes have a really stinking old PC. Hell I still see OKI dot matrix printers at people's houses once in a while, and I'm shopping the $200,000.00 price mark in michigan where that is considered a really nice house. (as opposed to the one room crapshack in da hood you would get in San Fransisco for that price)
People are not buying new pc's. Most will not upgrade until they buy a program they need and it will not run or refuses to install.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
(Nintendo barely survived, and Sega perished a few years later).
You were doing so well right up till this point.
Nintendo has never been and still is not in any danger of going anywhere. At any given time all of their supported platforms have many spots in the top 10 selling titles on the platform-wide charts. Their largest first party titles sell nearly as many copies as the most of even the best chart-busters on the other platforms.
Nintendo can sell less cubes than Microsoft sells boxes, and Nintendo is still shoving a flaming foot of victory right up Microsoft's ass because their volume of first party sales is so high.
To illustrate the point, take Halo for example. Nearly all XBox owners bought Halo 1 and Halo 2. Very few other titles on the XBox have enjoyed that kind of success. On the Gamecube, the list of chart-busting first party titles that sold to nearly anyone seriously playing their cube isn't limited to Metroid Prime 1 and 2. There's also Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Smash Brothers, Starfox Assault, Mario Party, Double Dash, and so on. Keep in mind these are all Nintendo branded titles.
The situation was very similar on the N64 as well. It's just a basic fact that Nintendo has always relied very heavily on it's first party titles and has profited very handsomely as a result.
Nintendo didn't just barely survive. Nintendo has been doing exceptionally well. The falling value of the Yen the past few years has hurt Nintendo much worse than sales have.
Just because the numbers don't make it out to appear as if Nintendo is doing just fine doesn't mean it isn't the case. Microsoft continues to just piss away sewers full of money on the XBox, and many believe this will continue to be the case with the 360.
In the worst case scenerio that the falling support for the Cube will carry over into the Revolution, that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo still owns the handheld market.
Despite Sony's claims to the contrary, the GBA still dominates, and the DS is fat and happy with stellar sales. (Though I honestly wish I understood how Nintendogs has become so popular....)
There's also one other thing to remember.
Practically every Gamecube player is still waiting for Twilight Princess, delayed though it may be.
If the Xbox is lucky, it MIGHT see one last huge seller before the 360 replaces it. Don't count on it, though.
(BTW - DC, PS2, XBox, GC, GBA, DS, PSP... Yes, I got'em all...)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
You want to stay with Microsoft?
You pay the hardware cost.
I can't wait until the corporations see that every secretary in the office has to have 2GB of RAM - or they have to support 2000 and XP themselves after "end of life" - which will be about five minutes after Vista ships, since Gates may be an asshole, but he's not stupid.
I can't wait to see the minimum disk space, too. Forget about putting Vista on a Bart's PE flash drive...even if you have a 4GB one.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
64 megs for Windows XP? I don't think so. I recently bought a computer with Windows XP. I uninstalled all of the crap programs that came with it, and even before I installed antivirus and anti-ad software, Windows XP was sucking up 160 MB of the 256 MB installed.
Opening up a web browser, an email client and running antivirus software brought the memory requirements up to 240 MB - effectively using almost all available memory.
Don't tell me XP isn't a memory hog. 512 MB is a minimum requirement for this OS which is 3+ years old, to avoid memory mapping to the hard drive. So a new Windows OS to be released 4-5 years later is going to require 2 GB? Thats probably a conservative estimate, not a bloated one.
Funny how MacOS X has managed just fine on a 32meg card for the past couple of years... even Tiger.
Microsoft is trying to tell us that rendering a Windows desktop requires more 3d memory capacity than the PS2 uses for something like Gran Turismo 4? That their own X box has 1/4 the capacity needed to render a Windows desktop?
Pfft..
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
i'm serious about this.
with a website explaining vista's DRM stuff.
explaining how its ungodly system requirements are totally insane.
and we need a good web graphic button that is eye pleasing and catching. nothing overly zealous like the windows logo with a circle and bar (that's a good way to preach to only the converted).