Windows 7 System Requirements

January 11, 2009 · Filed Under Windows 7 

It looks like one of the biggest gripes that people had against Vista was the fact it was very resource intensive.  I am a firm believer that this was a misconception on the part of many based on the way that Vista handled memory differently then XP did.  As unfair as it may be though perception is the reality and I believe Microsoft has seen that even if it is unfair.  As of this writing for the Beta build 7000 the requirements are:

  • 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
  • 1 GB of system memory
  • 16 GB of available disk space
  • Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
  • DVD-R/W Drive
  • Internet access (to download the Beta and get updates)

Those are very similar to what was recommended for Vista and we know what kind of outcry went out in the world over performance even if it was slightly off mark.  So I wanted to see out of the box what the memory footprint was for each OS, nothing too scientific, just right after install I went into Task Manager and grabbed a shot of what the memory was at.  First up is Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, again right after basic install:

vista-resources

As you can see it is sitting ~471MB, which is at 43% of available memory.  Not too bad…

Lets see what Windows 7 Ultimate install is at right after startup :

windows-7-resources

Windows 7 is at ~295MB so that is at 25% of available memory which is a pretty significant difference from Vista without any tweaking.  It looks like at least so far into this Beta build 7000 they have indeed listened to the Vista criticism and responded. While I don’t think the Vista build was ever that sluggish on my laptop, I won’t complain about a slimmer operating system.

You should go ahead and give it a try!

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One Response to “Windows 7 System Requirements”

  1. Max on May 24th, 2009 9:21 pm

    I think WIndows low hardware requirement will give it necessary kick start to dominate OS market.

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