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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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....
(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.