Bulky System Requirements for Windows Vista 615
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.
Almost admissable proof of monopoly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Blizzard could make an operating system that had lower sysreqs and decent graphics capabilities. And people would love it for saying, "Zug Zug."
Hopefully it's a nail in their home-desktop coffins that suddenly you can't put their OS on a machine that costs 600$, but somehow I doubt it. Xbox 360 for what most people currently use a home PC for, Vista for everything else.
Thank you Captain Obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, these seem to be optimal, not minimum requirements, and from the article "minimum system requirements for Windows Vista will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest." So, I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that your average system today will work fine with Vista, but you won't have all the bells and whistles.
Finally, the '512 MByte is "heaps" for a 32-bit system. For a 64-bit system, however, "you're going to want 2 gigs of DDR3 RAM."' is off. If you are happy with 512, you'll be happy with 1GB. If you play lots of games, you most likely have 1GB now and you'll be happy with 2gb. And if you play EverQuest 2, you'll be happy with about 20gb, but it will still skip in places and you can't use the ultra-high resolution.
No reason to deviate... (Score:4, Interesting)
But the capital expenses associated with this "upgrade" is needless and ridiculous even if we weren't planning to migrate to Linux.
I can see three things happening (Score:4, Interesting)
1)GNU/Linux goes mainstream faster
2)Macs go mainstream
3)Both 1+2
Released Next Christmas......Right (Score:5, Interesting)
MS will never play fair, why should they start now (even though they are required to by law).
Hahaha! (Score:5, Interesting)
Businesses already have almost -no- incentive to switch to Vista. Now, instead of just buying expensive licences, they have to upgrade the graphics cards on their vanilla work PCs??
Has someone at MS gone patently nuts?
Yes, I know you will say "Microsoft will pull support for XP, and thus force everyone to upgrade." Maybe. But I think there will be backlash here.
And if you think that Vista is going to be exclusively for consumers, please tell me how Dell will provide $400 dollar machines with such beefy video cards!! It defies logic!
This is madness! Madness I say!
Ya, so? (Score:3, Interesting)
256mb of vram should be enough for anyone.
Talk to me in 10 years and tell me then if you think that thats stupid.
A few things (Score:5, Interesting)
As of the beta 1, the unoptimized version works kick ass on an 1800XP, 512MB DDR & Radeon 9700. Unless you want to use crap like "Aero Glass" you won't need a high end vid card. Personally speaking, I'm still worried about the DRM monitor requirements and I am also a bit uninterested since so many features (i.e. anything I really cared about as a windork) were dropped from the upcoming release.
There couldn't be a larger piece of disinformation circulating the net right now.
Re:Almost admissable proof of monopoly. (Score:2, Interesting)
I think people getting ready to do some M$ bashing should look into the past and go over microsoft's releases. When they released NT, windows 95, 98, 2000, xp they always went for the median hardware configuration of the upcoming 6 to 10 years. That is part of the reason you could run windows XP on a 32MB Pentium-II (I've done it, and it chugs along just fine, enough to run a browser for surfing and playing flash games).
From the article: 2GB is the ideal configuration for 64-bit Vista, we're told. Vista 32-bit will work ideally at 1GB, and minimum 512. However, since 64-bit is handling data chunks that are double the size, you'll need double the memory, hence the 2GB. Nigel mentions DDR3 - which is a little odd, since the roadmap for DDR3, on Intel gear at least, doesn't really kick in until 2007. Unlike Linux, windows is not under released constantly for free, so M$ releases snapshots of Windows: in 95, 97, 98, 99, 2000 etc. Such foresight is good in many ways, I mean how many features that Vista has are currently available in Linux distros? Maybe we don't need them, or maybe Linux developers haven't developed such good relations with hardware companies yet.
Now, for the XBox 360 issue, you should know (if you are interested in further scrutiny) that it uses IBM Power PC [xbox.com] chips (similar to those used in Apple G5). Add a couple of perks to that architecture and remove some and it seems that 360 isn't that badly priced at all. I'd like to see the people trashing 360 show similar zeal in ridiculing the PS3 which ironically isn't all that different (except for its cell architecture) and could be priced in the same bracket as the 360.
Please continue wanking...
Windows 2000 forever! (Score:5, Interesting)
There just isn't enough new in Longhorn/Vista to justify the buy. Where's the return on investment here? Why buy a new computer for everybody in your call center? Hello?
There's nothing wrong with rendering the entire user interface in the GPU. Softimage was doing that under NT 4 in 1997, using OpenGL. It was clunky back then, but it's worked fine for years. Multiple windows tend to run slowly in OpenGL on Windows, but that's because of a common bug that allows only one window to update per refresh. Buffer swapping needs to be better worked out for the multiple window case. But all of this requires relatively minor improvements.
HDCP the new enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
Now slashdotters, it is our mission to raise the awareness on these HDCP monitors. They are the new Palladium, the new NGSCB, the new (circuit city) divx.
I am feeling the red mist of rage!
Macintosh will be the viable "store bought" rig to recommend friends and relatives purchase. And for use, we will need to get Linux working with HD-DVD and Blu-ray in short order!
Re:Heard this before (Score:5, Interesting)
They want the Aero rendering to be considered fast and snappy. And, oh, it will possibly be so, but only on the right hardware. If they put the official requirements too low, it would just be said that the new interface is so full of eyecandy that it can't perform.
What's really interesting here is what they manage to pull of on laptops, together with ATI and Nvidia. Will the power management for graphics chips make sense, even when 3D mode doesn't equal "battery sucking gaming mode"? The (public) slides from Microsoft even from the very first mentioning of Longhorn's 3D UI stressed this aspect. It will be interesting to see the solution. If a Mactel box will provide a sleek UI with a charge keeping the machine powered for twice as long, that'll be a very real selling point.
Artificially Growing Demand (Score:3, Interesting)
When the quality and quantity of supply stabilizes to exactly meet demand, something "terrible" happens. Manufacturers can compete on only 1 "feature": price. The price plummets, and the profit per machine is about $10.00.
Along comes Microsoft with a special deal (for the manufacturers): We will artificially build demand for more and newer hardware into the next operating system, and you manufacturers increase the kickback, per system, to $150 for the coffers of Microsoft.
A Fist Full of Errors! (Score:5, Interesting)
Hurl chunks is more like it when I see the bill.
However, since 64-bit is handling data chunks that are double the size, you'll need double the memory, hence the 2GB.
You've got to be kidding with this statement. Does this person even understand the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit processors? I don't think so.
NCQ allows for out of order completions - that is, if Vista needs tasks 1,2,3,4 and 5 done, it can do them in the order 2,5,3,4,1
Excuse me, but Vista isn't the one doing the reordering of hard drive accesses. NCQ is done in the controller and drive itself.
NCQ is supported on SATA2 drives
And selected SATA-1 drives.
AGP is 'not optimal' for Vista. Because of the fact that graphics cards may have to utilise main system memory for some rendering tasks, a fast, bi-direction bus is needed - that's PCI express.
Will there be an AGP system left that can meet the rest of the Vista requirements? And I thought AGP had an option to use system memory in the specification as well.
no current TFT monitor out there is going to support high definition playback in Vista.
What if they release Vista, and nobody bought? If the consumers finally said We've had enough of this sh|t?
This isn't really Microsoft's fault - HDCP is something that content makers, in their eternal wisdom, have decided is necessary to stop us all watching pirated movies.
Oh yes it is Microsoft's fault. Without Microsoft enabling this the whole concept would be DOA. And Trusted Computing isn't even mentioned.
Tell me again, please. What is the compelling reason to upgrade to Vista?
Re:Heard this before (Score:2, Interesting)
One may ask "why use OS X on a machine that was never meant to run it?" This is Slashdot, right?
Re:256MB of video memory? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the O/S uses 256 MB of graphic RAM how much of that will get released by the O/S when I want to run a really high resolution game?
HL 2 looked fairly good on 128 MB (what I have now). I wonder if they are purposely bloating the req speculatively or if this is the ideal just to run the O/S. *shudder*
Oh and who wants to bet on the number of companies that will buy these insane-o high powered systems to run Vista because XP won't be supported at that point. JOY!
I'm not even going to get into the rest "Where's my HDCP?"... trust me I won't ask that I'll be saying "Where is my capability to fairly copy works that I own!"
Actually, this will probably be good for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, most Slashdotters would read that and say:
"bloated software."
The average non-techie computer user will think:
"wow!"
When seeing these silly requirements for Vista (oh, what a stupid stupid stupid name!), most Slashdotters are thinking:
"Incompetent idiots."
The average non-techie computer user will think:
"wow!"
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:256MB of video memory? (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows 95 had the same requirements of Quake 1. Need to generalize this??!
Re:HDCP the new enemy (Score:2, Interesting)
Does it use a CRT?
Nice, clean ANALOG RGB signals MUST be presented to the CRT cathodes before the tube can present an image.
And there are beautiful horizontal and vertical sync signals available at the deflection yoke.
Isn't this like selling some business a ten-foot thick steel door to protect the front of his business, while ignoring the cardboard wall next to it?
It makes a helluva lot of money for the steel door vendor, but does the businessman no good at all, matter of fact, its just a hinderance for his paying customers, no hinderance at all for the thief, who simply cuts through the cardboard wall.
This is the kind of "protection" one sells to the corporate tie-guy, not what you sell to people knowledgeable in the field.
Perhaps I'm missing something (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this make sense to anyone? It sounds like he thinks the memory footprint of all applications will double just because the address size has. Or perhaps this is just what they're going to tell users when the next version of MS Word occupies 200 megs of RAM.
Games at Work! (Score:2, Interesting)
At least it won't be surfing the web that will kill productivity.
Re:A Fist Full of Errors! (Score:1, Interesting)
A "long" in C is now 64-bit in width on a LP64 64-bit machine. Previously it was usually 32-bit.
A pointer is now 64-bit in width, whereas before it was only 32-bit in width.
So some common data types do double in size.
Re:256mb? (Score:3, Interesting)
One reason why - how is game performance going to be affected by the O/S requiring 256M of the GPU memory? How much does it release when you launch D3? How much *more* vid ram would you have by running linux?
Maybe it's a step for linux to be "the" viable gaming product. If you're seeing a 30fps increase just because you're using a different O/S, I think a lot of gamers will take a second look (of course it's the chicken and egg problem still)
Here is how requirements worl/ (Score:0, Interesting)
Recommended Requirements: Needed to get the thing working.
Re:Almost admissable proof of monopoly. (Score:5, Interesting)
vectors (Score:1, Interesting)
(Had I my way, no web page would ever, ever be allowed to use "pixels" for anything. Period. No exceptions.)
Re:Almost admissable proof of monopoly. (Score:5, Interesting)
It really boggles the mind sometimes. I frequent all sorts of geek news sites and gaming sites. Why is Slashdot so obsessed with the Xbox platform? I mean, ok, it's made by Microsoft, and therefore it's an automatic topic of discussion because computer geeks care a great deal more about Microsoft than Sony or Nintendo. But, let's be honest here, Microsoft's console had negligible impact on the gaming market, much less the computer geekary audience as a whole. Why do the Slashdot horde continually bring up this second tier gaming platform as if the Xbox is synonymous with console gaming? It ain't, PS2 is. And a year from now, PS3 will be.
Hopefully I won't be modded down too bad for this, but just in case, let me end on this: I do not own either a PS2 or an Xbox.
Re:Almost admissable proof of monopoly. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Almost admissable proof of monopoly. (Score:3, Interesting)