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50% of PCs won't run Windows Vista's new interface
According to a report just published by Jon Peddie Research (JPR), as many as 50% of PCs in use today lack the graphics horsepower to run the new Aero Glass graphical user interface that will appear in the Windows Vista operating system.
The claims are made on the basis that in 2005, 63% of PCs shipped worldwide included last-generation integrated graphics controllers that will not be powerful enough to run the advanced Vista interface. Integrated controllers have been more popular than add-in graphics boards since the end of 2004, partly because they enable system builders to hit lower price points.
'There are close to a billion PCs in use today, most of which are equipped with antiquated integrated graphics. Over 600 million PCs shipped in the last 3 years, and are still in service. These units are the ones that are most logical to upgrade with the new Vista operating system', says JPR.
Top-notch modern graphics cards will be needed to take full advantage of Vista, and JPR believes this will fuel a graphics card buying 'bubble' through most of 2007, but by 2008 integrated graphics should have caught up in performance levels.
Vista incorporates built-in benchmarking technology called WinSAT that assesses the system's hardware capabilities.If a PC is upgraded to run Vista, WinSAT will run at the first logon and determine whether it's able to run the Aero Glass interface. If it isn't, the system will suggest that the alternative Aero Express interface is used, which lacks many of the more advanced 3D features of Aero Glass.
Microsoft hasn't released detailed hardware requirements for Vista yet, but it suggests that a DirectX 9 graphics controller with at least 64MB of video Ram and support for the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) is needed.
You can compare the performance of dozens of the latest graphics cards on the Test Bed's results database.
Many, if not most of the computers released in the past couple of years have 64 MB graphics cards at the bare minimum. When Windows XP first came out, the system requirements were considered to be remarkably high, but almost any computer that was less than five years old at the time could install it. I have a copy of the beta, and I believe that the system requirements are supposed to be somewhere in the line of, at a bare minimum, 800 MHz - 1.2 GHz processor, probably 256 MB RAM minimum, maybe even 512 (even if it only forces you to have 256, you better have at least 512), you're going to need a DVD-ROM drive to install Vista, since it now comes on DVD, and you can bet that you'll be needing, at the bare minimum, a 32 MB graphics card.
Now, Microsoft has a lot of money, and they like to keep it that way, so it is overwhelmingly likely that just about any system manufactured since 2003-4 will be able to run the new system.
Let's just face it. Windows XP has been out for almost five years (and yet it still needs regular security updates... ugh), and people are dead bored with it. People with decent systems will want to make the upgrade. They will pay money to make the upgrade. Microsoft likes money. Go figure.
Most versions of Windows have been designed so that they will run on computers that were a couple of years old at the time of release. Even Windows XP, with it's NT core and it's fancy interface, was a little pickier, but still could run on pretty ancient systems. And it does. Vista may not be the fastest thing to run on your 3 year old machine, but it will most likely run.
Posted by Aaron Harpole | February 11, 2006 5:00 AM
Apparantly its going to require 800MB RAM, check this link out for proof http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=30128
Posted by Nick | March 9, 2006 6:54 PM
I have a 256 MB RAM PC qith a CPU clocked at 2.67 Ghz. I have Windows Vista Ultimate Beta 2. It is noticably slow buty it is quite good for common apps. The most memory consuming program is Media Centre. It takes quite a lot of time to start. But anyway, it still works! After all, its the beta!
Posted by MD | June 20, 2006 5:25 PM