Windows 7 system requirements

Effluo

Hi everyone, was wondering if there's much of an improvement with windows 7 over vista in terms of hardware needs?

We all know how ram hungry vista is and i was wondering how windows 7 shapes up....

Cheers

tman

Official system specs are still the same (1GHz processor and 1GB ram)

I can't notice all that much of a difference... It uses up just under 1GB of ram with no apps open, which is about the same as Vista (Home Premium 32 bit vs Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit)
It isn't any quicker imo, but definitely isn't any more bloated.

I'd say still steer clear of it unless you have 2GB+

melekalikimaka

runs a little better than vista for me on a lappy with a t7250, 2bg ram and nvidia 8400m gt.

I'm not sure if it runs any better than Vista or if it's just a placebo effect; the fact that what you're running doesn't have Vista plastered on it makes it feel quicker in your mind. Just a thought.

Capt'n Midnight

tman wrote: »

Official system specs are still the same (1GHz processor and 1GB ram)

I can't notice all that much of a difference... It uses up just under 1GB of ram with no apps open, which is about the same as Vista (Home Premium 32 bit vs Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit)
It isn't any quicker imo, but definitely isn't any more bloated.

I'd say still steer clear of it unless you have 2GB+

Unlike versions of windows XP and earlier Vista and Windows 7 expand to fill any free space, and will release it back when programs ask for it. Makes it run a little faster than constantly unloading and reloading modules and probably helps stability too. To see how much RAM the OS really uses you would have to have a lot of apps open and then you may see what it's minimum requirements are.

Firefox is another memory hog that uses whatever ram is available rather than stealing it.

death1234567

tman wrote: »

I'd say still steer clear of it unless you have 2GB+

+1.

Voodu Child

Karsini wrote: »

I'm not sure if it runs any better than Vista or if it's just a placebo effect; the fact that what you're running doesn't have Vista plastered on it makes it feel quicker in your mind. Just a thought.

Don't forget also that a new OS installation always feels quicker than an old one anyway. That certainly accounts for a lot of peoples initial perception that Win 7 is faster than Vista, they are moving from their old Vista install to a fresh install of 7 with no bloatware or fragmentation, so of course it will seem faster. Personally I have used it plenty and it is a nice OS, adds some improvements and fixes some problems, but on the whole is more or less the same as Vista. That is not a bad thing; Vista is a great OS.

SouperComputer

Clean installed Win7 and vista onto a VM with 512MB of RAM allocated, host machine is running a 1.8Ghz Core2Duo (not sure what model off hand). Windows7 is absolutley useable, Vista is not, takes much longer to boot to a useabale desktop and. I turned off the eye candy on both, even then Win7 is still noticably ahead in bootup time and overall peformance/responsiveness.

If you think you need 2GB to run Windows7 acceptably, I suggest you look more deeply into how memory management works with their respective kernels, and look at BSD/OSX while you are at it. Vista and Win7 are very different to XP in the way they manage memory.

cpu-dude

SouperComputer wrote: »

Clean installed Win7 and vista onto a VM with 512MB of RAM allocated, host machine is running a 1.8Ghz Core2Duo (not sure what model off hand). Windows7 is absolutley useable, Vista is not, takes much longer to boot to a useabale desktop and. I turned off the eye candy on both, even then Win7 is still noticably ahead in bootup time and overall peformance/responsiveness.

If you think you need 2GB to run Windows7 acceptably, I suggest you look more deeply into how memory management works with their respective kernels, and look at BSD/OSX while you are at it. Vista and Win7 are very different to XP in the way they manage memory.

Couldn't agree more, I dual boot Vista and Win 7 on my Samsung NC10 (at this point with 1GB of RAM) and Win 7 ran as clean as a whistle while Vista, with eye candy off, ran like a snail.

1GB is fine for Windows 7 but more is always better - 2GB seems to be the default now.

Effluo

cpu-dude wrote: »

Couldn't agree more, I dual boot Vista and Win 7 on my Samsung NC10 (at this point with 1GB of RAM) and Win 7 ran as clean as a whistle while Vista, with eye candy off, ran like a snail.

1GB is fine for Windows 7 but more is always better - 2GB seems to be the default now.

Windows 7 runs well on a netbook? :O

Could this finally be the end of xp??
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

Effluo

Effluo wrote: »

Windows 7 runs well on a netbook? :O

Could this finally be the end of xp??
ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

Nah, because there's people like me who prefer XP's interface.