Windows 7 System Requirements

[HardOCP News]

Looking over this list of system requirements for Windows 7, damn near anything on the market today will run Windows 7.

1 GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
1 GB of RAM (32-bit); 2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
16 GB of available disk space (32-bit); 20 GB of avaiable disk space (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

 

[ir0nw0lf]

Running Windows 7 and running well Windows 7 are two different things though. Someone out there will run it on the min hardware and then likely complain that it runs like dog crap LOL.

 

[Makenxero]

Running Windows 7 and running well Windows 7 are two different things though. Someone out there will run it on the min hardware and then likely complain that it runs like dog crap LOL.

I think point is that any recent computer is going to have more than enough horse power to run it.

 

[k1pp3r]

20 GB HDD space, wow, OS's are getting quite large arnt they?

 

[Vermillion]

Running Windows 7 and running well Windows 7 are two different things though. Someone out there will run it on the min hardware and then likely complain that it runs like dog crap LOL.

Yep.

Although we know Windows 7 runs on netbooks with the 1.6GHz Atom so these requirements aren't that far out of reach really which is impressive.

But if anybody does complain tell them to run WinXP Pro SP3 on the recommended 300MHz CPU and 128MB RAM and see what they say.

 

[Azhar]

Running Windows 7 and running well Windows 7 are two different things though. Someone out there will run it on the min hardware and then likely complain that it runs like dog crap LOL.

Yeah, I'm thinking Microsoft needs to bring up the minimum requirements, or at least post a decent recommended requirement, or else lawyers are going to be all over them again like they did during the "Vista Capable" fiasco.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Hell the only reason I have 2gigs of ram now is because I'm running a 32bit OS (3gigs just sounds so blah!) .... when this comes out, I'm going full 64 and throwing in billion gigs just because it can address it!!! Ok maybe that's overkill... but going straight to 8 doesn't seem too bad.

 

[jfreund]

20 GB HDD space, wow, OS's are getting quite large arnt they?

My Win7 beta install was 10 GB or so after I disabled virtual memory (SSD RAID0 with 6GB RAM). Haven't checked lately to see how much space it's taking. Of course, I have all my data on different drives, and isolate the OS.

 

[Ur_Mom]

Who the hell is going to put Win7 on a 1 GHz P3 with 1 GB of RAM anyway? Who owns those machines anymore? Not anyone who is going to fork out $150 for an OS... They are mostly older PC's that are good for one thing: internet and word processing (and Half-Life).

Those requirements are the minimum requirements. You can install and run Windows 7 on that machine. Every program in the industry has 'minimum requirements'. Why change what minimum means because some lawyer doesn't agree that it runs (which it does).

 

[UrielDagda]

20 GB HDD space, wow, OS's are getting quite large arnt they?

Well, hell.. I have Vista Home Premium 64bit installed on my C drive, with all my apps and games installed on another drive-- and it's using 53GB (and growing).

 

[seithon]

thats probably because Vista tends to duplicate alot of files so if you need to do a restore it can go back to em... its a bit of a pain like that.

 

[wfalcon]

Well, hell.. I have Vista Home Premium 64bit installed on my C drive, with all my apps and games installed on another drive-- and it's using 53GB (and growing).

No offense, but you've got something else on your C drive. Whether it's temporary files or lots of stuff in documents, I don't know. But, I've had my C drive limited to 40GB and put all installs on D and have never had a problem.

 

[Uncle]

Not anyone who is going to fork out $150 for an OS...

When was the last time you walked into Staples, your talking OEM.LOL You might find an upgrade if its on sale at that price, over $300 if its not.

 

[bigdogchris]

20 GB HDD space, wow, OS's are getting quite large arnt they?

Considering you can buy a 1,500GB HDD for $129, it's not a large amount at all. 20GB of Windows 7 takes up less disk space % than the 50MB Windows 95 took.

 

[supaspoon]

No offense, but you've got something else on your C drive. Whether it's temporary files or lots of stuff in documents, I don't know. But, I've had my C drive limited to 40GB and put all installs on D and have never had a problem.

That's still twice the size, so I think his point remains. I'm running 64ult as well, and the hd footprint is my only complaint.

 

[gtg465x]

20 GB HDD space, wow, OS's are getting quite large arnt they?

Main reasons...

1) To support 32-bit apps, 64-bit operating systems must contain both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of system files, plus 64-bit Windows includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of its programs.
2) The hibernation file is the size of your system memory.
3) The page file is often several gigabytes.
4) System Restore tends to use up a lot of space as it makes backups.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

7's requirements are slightly higher than Vista. Vista's min was an 800 MHz CPU and 512 MB RAM.

You can say what you want about Vista, but anyone who actually uses it knows it runs just fine on Atom systems. I think its funny to see people talking about 7's great performance compared to Vista when they're nearly identical.

 

[wiseoracle]

Just to put this out...

Most people with an old system with the specs listed for minimum requirements, probably isn't going to go out and buy Win7. Most likely they will still be using 2000/XP. No one wants to put money in an old system.

Computers are cheap enough, most likely someone is going to buy it with Win7.

The people who would be buying Win7, are going to have owned a system from the last 3 years. Dual core, 1-2GB RAM, 250GB HD, Geforce 6+ series or Radeon 3400+ series.

 

[Bigbacon]

I ran vista ultimate on a 1.7 p4 and 512mb of ram and it was perfectly fine for 90% of things you would use a slow and old PC for.

 

[InorganicMatter]

Running Windows 7 and running well Windows 7 are two different things though. Someone out there will run it on the min hardware and then likely complain that it runs like dog crap LOL.

While the Vista requirements were definitely stretched thin, that really isn't the case with 7. I've got it on a Dell Mini 9 Netbook, and it runs faster than XP and Ubuntu.

 

[R0N1]

Those requirements were in the range of expectations and slightly above Vista's. But 20Gb for installation sounds quite much, though that was for the 64-bit version.

 

[JimmiG]

Windows XP system requirements:
Processor: 233 MHz
RAM: 64MB
Disk space: 1.5GB
Graphics: Super VGA, 800x600

Windows Vista:
Processor: 800 MHz
RAM: 512MB
Disk space: 15GB
Graphics: 32MB DirectX9 capable

So Win7 still "heavier" than Vista, although not by much. The difference in hardware requirements between XP and Vista is massive by comparison, and one can certainly understand the criticism Vista received for its steep hardware requirements when it was released.

My Netbook will not be capable of running Windows7 - I've only got an 8GB SSD and 512MB RAM. Upgrading to 1.5GB of RAM is easy and cheap, but doing something about the storage is a little more tricky. TinyXP only uses a fraction of the 8GB SSD though and it does everything I need.

 

[supaspoon]

Those requirements were in the range of expectations and slightly above Vista's. But 20Gb for installation sounds quite much, though that was for the 64-bit version.

Yeah I think we really need to emphasize that last part. Coming from Ult64, I see a 20g footprint as a great thing. I know, as pointed out, that huge hd's are cheap these days, but honestly who the hell installs their os/app's on a 5200rpm 1.5tb drive? That just seems stupid to me. I've always just gone w/ a smaller high speed c: and larger slower d: for storage. /shrug.

 

[gwarren007]

I think that Windows Application Requirements should include a FSB requirement.
1ghz Athlon/Duron (200fsb), Or
1.3ghz pentium 4 (400fsb)

A 1ghz requirement for a Cpu is too vague, you can get a 1ghz Celeron:
http://www.starmicro.net/detail.aspx?ID=32

that runs on a 100mhz bus, but I wouldn't choose to do that.
For comparison you could run a Celeron 420 (1.6ghz. 800fsb, 8 multi) and just run it with a multi of 5, and you have a 1ghz machine that will run circles around the celeron.

So in conclusion, I would say they need to clarify, 1ghz processor-200fsb minimum

 

[htphm42]

20gb * 10c/gb = $2

It's not that big of a requirement if you look at it this way .

 

[gamz247]

The difference in hardware requirements between XP and Vista is massive by comparison, and one can certainly understand the criticism Vista received for its steep hardware requirements when it was released.

Windows XP was released in late 2001. Windows Vista was released for retail sale in early 2007. The difference is only steep when you don't take into account the gap between releases.

 

[Joe Average]

I clean installation of Windows 7 RC Build 7100 x86 on a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz w/HT, a 120GB drive, with 1.5GB of RAM just last night garnered a full installation size (checked after I got to the Desktop) at 7.15GB. After hitting Windows Update for the almost obligatory Defender Update, only one other update existed, an updated audio driver for the onboard SoundMAX craptastic audio chip.

After that, the installation - meaning everything on the drive (it was one partition) showed 7.32GB - and with a full compliment of hardware driver support meaning Device Manager was solid and without errors, I turned off Hibernation support which gave me 1.5GB of drive space back, checked it again a few moments later and had 5.9GB almost precisely.

So, for those making statements that Windows 7 needs 20GB or it's quite large, you're mistaken. And given that a chunk of that 5.9GB was also part of the page file the total drive usage was even less:

Using systeminfo from a Command Prompt showed the page file had 751MB in use, so... let's round down and say the installation itself used basically 5GB of actual drive space.

That's nearly half what OSX consumes on a clean installation... and Ubuntu 9.04 ain't too far behind either.

I also had it installed on a Toshiba Tablet PC from 2004 the other day, a Pentium M 1.3 GHz, 1GB of DDR 333, 160GB 5400 rpm drive, and it worked absolutely beautifully. RAM usage at the Desktop after 2-3 reboots so it settles in showed about 350MB of RAM usage, not too much at all and certainly less than Vista.

If you'd just look at this as a bug/performance fix, it would quell a lot of the crap talk, it really would. Apple admits Snow Leopard will be a bug/performance fix for Leopard (because it sorely needed/needs it, even after 7 and very soon 8 major updates to keep it functional in less than 2 years of release (Oct 2007) and what, Vista is older and just at SP2 now... go figure.

Why is when Microsoft has basically pulled off a miracle and made the best OS they've ever even dreamed of and made it fast, lean, and awesome, that people can't do anything but hammer them with idiotic commentary and jeer 'em for it... yet when Apple does the same thing - they fix the broken shit they pawned off on people - they get cheered for it?

I'll never figure that one out... unless of course we come to the simple conclusion that people are really fucking stupid, but that's a given...

 

[Impulse]

Who the hell is going to put Win7 on a 1 GHz P3 with 1 GB of RAM anyway? Who owns those machines anymore? Not anyone who is going to fork out $150 for an OS... They are mostly older PC's that are good for one thing: internet and word processing (and Half-Life). Those requirements are the minimum requirements. You can install and run Windows 7 on that machine. Every program in the industry has 'minimum requirements'. Why change what minimum means because some lawyer doesn't agree that it runs (which it does).

One word: netbooks.

To be fair though, if you tweak Vista a bit it'll run swimmingly well on any netbook w/1GB of RAM or more, Windows 7 just configures itself better out of the box to run on such systems.

I disagree w/some of the comments though, given all the good PR that Windows 7 is generating (and all the comments about how it runs so much better on old hardware), I think there's a lot of potential for many more average consumers to buy and install it as an upgrade on older systems, compared to Vista (or XP or mostly any other past Windows release).

 

[Joe Average]

Oh, and for the record, on a similar base machine, the x64 edition of Windows 7 RC Build 7100... 6.7GB installation given the 2GB of RAM in the machine, 545MB of page file in use, Hibernation disabled, measured after Windows Update (no drivers needed, Windows 7 had them all covered the first time out, with just the Defender update).

20GB my ass...

 

[SamuraiInBlack]

Well shit.

My mom's definitely gonna need a new computer now.

-stares at gutted HP-

....fuck, there goes my tax return. LOL

 

[Joe Average]

AND... just as the final stab...

Those space usage measurements above are for... <drumroll please> Windows 7 Ultimate which is everything including the kitchen sink. When Windows 7 Home whatever is available, and Windows 7 Professional also, we can expect maybe .5 to 1.5GB of difference, somewhere in there, of less space required based on Ultimate having everything including the kitchen sink.

And don't get me started on the potential of using vLite to gut it out...

 

[Impulse]

Why is when Microsoft has basically pulled off a miracle and made the best OS they've ever even dreamed of and made it fast, lean, and awesome, that people can't do anything but hammer them with idiotic commentary and jeer 'em for it... yet when Apple does the same thing - they fix the broken shit they pawned off on people - they get cheered for it?

I'll never figure that one out... unless of course we come to the simple conclusion that people are really fucking stupid, but that's a given...

We all know there's one thing Apple does better than Microsoft, always has... PR. Plain and simple. Plus they have the underdog thing going for them (to an extent). Microsoft has actually done worse in this regard in recent years than they did way back w/Win 95/98, etc; but they now seem to have realized how grave an error that was.

 

[k1pp3r]

So, for those making statements that Windows 7 needs 20GB or it's quite large, you're mistaken. And given that a chunk of that 5.9GB was also part of the page file the total drive usage was even less:

Sorry for quoting Microsoft there, i guess they are mistaken about their own OS.

Their FAQ says 16 GB, soooo sorry

 

[wiseoracle]

AND... just as the final stab...

Those space usage measurements above are for... <drumroll please> Windows 7 Ultimate which is everything including the kitchen sink. When Windows 7 Home whatever is available, and Windows 7 Professional also, we can expect maybe .5 to 1.5GB of difference, somewhere in there, of less space required based on Ultimate having everything including the kitchen sink.

And don't get me started on the potential of using vLite to gut it out...

I don't think you'll need vlite for this one. You can remove or add features in Win7.

 

[ajira99]

While the Vista requirements were definitely stretched thin, that really isn't the case with 7. I've got it on a Dell Mini 9 Netbook, and it runs faster than XP and Ubuntu.

Same here, although I haven't benchmarked it yet. I installed it on my Dell Mini 9 (2GB RAM) on the original 8GB SSD. I think that I have about 500MB free after installing Windows 7 Ultimate.

 

[Vercinaigh]

i would like to add the 20GB, is not a requirement of physical space taken. but of AVAILABLE space in general. for example, try installing it to less then a 20GB HDD. i bet you it refuses to install.

I guess they're reasoning is anything smaller and it's not worth your time installing it, though for some 20Gb is more then enough like on netbooks and the like.

Remember these specs for a OS, are not like specs for a program, they are parameters for ease of use for other things outside the os. I've seen Vista run on a 333Mhz CPU, ran fine, until you put a few programs to it.

Point I'm making is specs for a OS are not the same as specs for a application. applications don't consider other apps running at the same time. OS's specs consider other variables along with the OS. A OS with no programs is a waste indeed

 

[Impulse]

Sorry for quoting Microsoft there, i guess they are mistaken about their own OS. Their FAQ says 16 GB, soooo sorry

That's a pretty ironic bit of sarcasm after seeing the quote in your sig... Joe's just giving you a counter point useful for the advanced user. MS errs on the side of caution for the average user who probably doesn't even know what the swap file is, why Hibernation consumes disk space or how to reduce the amount of space System Restore gobbles up over time.

Many knowledgeable users will be able to get Windows 7 running on netbooks w/small-ish SSDs after a bit of tweaking though., but 8GB SSDs are probably borderlline either way unless you're keeping all your docs/music on an SDHC card (to which there are several advantages anyway).

 

[Joe Average]

Sorry for quoting Microsoft there, i guess they are mistaken about their own OS.

Their FAQ says 16 GB, soooo sorry

That "amount" is to get it installed on the given machine because it copies the contents of the installation media to the drive (basically 2.5GB or so for the x86 version, 3.2GB for the x64 version), it then extracts the file from the WIM image (which is like extracting files from a ZIP or RAR archive, meaning those files suddenly get twice as large on average) so now you're looking at 2.5-3.2GB first then 5-7GB additional, now you've got 7.5 to 10GB of stuff on the same partition, and then it sets things up the way it needs to, expands more files as required, does the installation, etc etc...

When it's done it'll delete the original 2.5-3.2GB of WIM content/other files and you're left with the installation minus all the temporary files generated during the installation and then it's done.

You can verify this after everything ends by running an application that will show you the drive layout and data structure of the drive (like a defragger, just not the default one). You'll see that at the beginning of the drive there are some system files, then there will be this huge gap of empty space - that's where the 2.5-3.2GB of content was copying from the installation media to the hard drive which gets deleted when the installation is done (hence you now see a big huge gap of free space when it gets removed).

After that you'll see a big chunk of solid files sitting there, then empty space towards to the end of the given partition.

Easy enough to prove to yourself... over time Windows 7 will automagically defrag the drive and move those files towards the beginning of the drive/partition where they're accessed the fastest, even if you decide to start dumping your own data or applications in that big chunk of free space. That's all part of the tuning Windows 7 (and Vista) does as part of Superfetch and prefetching and the automagic defragmenting that happens...

As long as you leave it alone, of course.

 

[k1pp3r]

That's a pretty ironic bit of sarcasm after seeing the quote in your sig... Joe's just giving you a counter point useful for the advanced user. MS errs on the side of caution for the average user who probably doesn't even know what the swap file is, why Hibernation consumes disk space or how to reduce the amount of space System Restore gobbles up over time.

Lol, why thank you, i'm just given Joe hell cause i know he will explain more with real world results. Which i do appriciate Joe!

 

[MrLonghair]

Haven't plugged the RC in but 7077 requires 8-9 gigabytes of space to install. This here's no doubt the full ultimate "everything ever and all language packs" size.

My Netbook will not be capable of running Windows7

It's because of netbooks that W7 isn't strictly x64 only.