Hefty Hardware Requirements For Windows Vista

Hardware vendors are going to love the news that Windows Vista is going to need very beefy hardware to run well. At Microsoft's TechEd conference 2005, Nigel Page - a strategist with Microsoft Australia - told APC that Vista would work best on a PCI Express video card with more than 256MB RAM, 2GB of DDR3 memory and a S-ATA 2 hard drive.

"In a 32 bit environment, half a gig of RAM is heaps. It's going to fly. For 64 bit you're going to want 2 gigs of DDR3 RAM. If you move from 32 to 64 bit, you basically need to at least double your memory. 2 gigs in 64 bit is the equivalent of a gig of RAM on a 32bit machine. That's because you're dealing with chunks that are twice the size… if you try to make do with what you've got you'll see less performance. But RAM is now so cheap, it's hardly an issue.", he said.

Page went on, "in terms of disks, you're really going to want S-ATA 2 hard drives with NCQ capability, because it gives the OS the ability to get on with stuff while disk tasks complete. All the tier 1 and tier 2 vendors can provide this capability today. Thirdly, the graphics card and system bus is essential. PCI Express x16 is going to be very important. Any of today's 3D GPUs will be fine… we're not waiting for some mystical monster that may or may not come out. But they need to have 128MB of RAM on it. If they've only got 64 don't panic.", he concluded.

What this all means is that, besides Vista will run on lower end machines, to really benefit from the new OS you will need a top notch PC with high end hardware. I wonder if Microsoft ships Vista with a rebate coupon for the new hardware?