Windows7 Minimum Requirements

With the release of the RC (Release Candidate) versions of Windows7, Microsoft also revealed their claims as to the minimum hardware specification required to run the new operating system. Seasoned veterans of the Windows OS will naturally take this with a degree of cynicism, as Microsoft has a solid reputation for making outrageous claims regarding the minimal hardware requirements needed to run its Windows systems, along the lines of, "See you don't even have to upgrade your hardware..a lot."

The company claims that Windows7 will run much better on (at least) the same equipment, compared to Windows Vista. Given Vista's atrocious track record of running poorly on fairly decent hardware - a feature which seriously impeded its market uptake - Microsoft needed to pull a serious rabbit out of its arse to get users to take its new OS seriously.

Here are the official Microsoft minimum specifications for Windows7..

1 GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
1 GB of RAM (32-bit); 2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
16 GB of available disk space (32-bit); 20 GB of available disk space (64-bit
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Interestingly, given the increasing pace of new computer uptake there will be many users who do not possess machines of such a low specification. However this may be fortuitous given the experience of attempting to perform any task on a system which only meets Microsoft's minimum requirements. On this note, here is a table indicating the history of previous claims with earlier versions of Windows..

Windows Minimum Claimed Hardware Specifications

So for the first time the hardware specifications have not been significantly increased for a successive version of this operating system. Most users will be using hardware of a much higher capability to run Windows7, but it will be interesting to see what level of system will provide a satisfactory degree of performance for users of Microsoft's latest flagship OS.

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Kommentare (2)

Windows Specs

I've managed to run Win7 with a gig of RAM. It seems less memory hungry than vista. You need more if you want to run lots of programs.

#1 - Sturgis - 05.12.2009 - 10:10

i heard it uses graphics card a lot more than xp for UI rendering, reducing CPU load

#2 - nEEd - 13.04.2010 - 21:41


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