"A Tech Strategist within Microsoft, Nigel Page, has gone on record to discuss the hardware requirements for Windows Vista, due out next Christmas.

What he's said is kind of shocking.

System breakdown

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.

CPU: Threading is the main target for Vista. Currently, very little of Windows XP is threaded - the target is to make Vista perform far better on dual-core and multi-core processors.

RAM: 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.

HDD: SATA is definitely the way forward for Vista, due, Microsoft tells us, to Native Command Queueing. 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 if that's a more efficient route for the hard drive head to take over the disk. This leads to far faster completion times. NCQ is supported on SATA2 drives, so expect them to start becoming the standard sooner rather than later. Microsoft thinks that these features will provide SCSI-level performance.

Bus: 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.

Display: Prepare to feel the red mist of rage - no current TFT monitor out there is going to support high definition playback in Vista. You may already have heard rumblings about this, but here it is. To play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content you need a HDCP compatible monitor. Why? Because these formats use HDCP to encrypt a video signal as it travels along a digital connection to an output device, to prevent people copying it. If you have just standard DVI or even an analogue output, you're going to see HD scaled down to a far-less-than-HD resolution for viewing - which $uck$. 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. Yay.

Thoughts

Amusingly, Page admits that there are no monitors out there that will do HDCP, and that this is a problem. Frankly, it's the consumer's problem, however, according to him. "It's up to you [the users] to say, 'Where's my HDCP?'"

I'm more inclined to say to Hollywood 'Hey, STFU' to be honest.

One of the major problems is that Hollywood knows that Microsoft dominates the operating system sphere, and so it can arm-wrestle MS into working with it. If there was more competition, Hollywood would have to be a little more cautious about what it tries to get away with.

We come back to the age-old problem. Content is being forced onto us that is, to all extents and purposes, crippled. It's not like any of this stuff is actually going to make any difference - we're still going to have dodgy films on the net, probably in no less quantity than we have now - so why would be pay to be screwed, when we can just get an uncrippled version for free?

But, that's a little off topic. In terms of the hardware stuff, it seems obvious that hardware makers are rubbing their hands in glee. It's been hard to persuade people to upgrade their WinXP boxes, since they can handle pretty much anything thrown at them, unless you're a gamer. Graphics companies are going to be selling a bucket-load more GPUs, since now practically every system sold for Vista is going to need one. It's no coincidence that Nvidia is re-introducing onboard graphics for its motherboards very soon.

2GB of RAM for high-end systems is pretty chunky, and it could be that we start to see RAM prices go up as suddenly, a big percentage of systems are being built with 4 times the current requirement. If you thought SATA2 had been slow to take off, expect every new enthusiast chipset to have it built in next year, and for drive makers to start shifting over to it quick - if they're not building a huge number of NCQ drives by the middle of next year, they risk missing out on loads of orders come Vista." - bit-tech.net

I don't know about you, but from what I've heard about Vista (from a company I already don't like) it can kiss my a**...

Well this is once again proof of M$ strategy ... make the OS require better hardware so you have buy a new computer to use it. or at least new hardware. But again, like all previous version, nothing will change ... it will be as crappy as ever.

Personally, I'm done with M$, not buying anything from them ever.

Only one possible problem, which might not be a problem ... it might be hard to run games on Linux that are meant for Windows, but I've heard that it can be done without too much trouble. Either way, as soon as PS3 comes out, no more M$ for me ever again, hahahah. I wont need a computer once it comes out. The only reason I bought an XBox over PS2 is because PS2 is very much like PS1 especially in graphics quality. Some people say gameplay is more important than graphics, but I think they are equally weighted.

Oh, almost forgot, if AGP does not work well on Vista, why bother playing games on it with PCI Express (quite fast compared to AGP). (Note: I was wrong before I edited this post, it was early in the morning come on, PCI is way slower than AGP, but PCI Express is faster than AGP, my bad)

Not a big surprise. Keep in mind by the time Vista hits the shelves 5GHZ CPU will be the bottom end and 1GB graphic cards will be considered entry-level.
Looking at the VISTA beta it's becoming more like MAC oSX all the time. Well... they do say IMITATION IS best form of flattery.

Texmex, don't know why you got the idea that PCIXpress (X16) is slower. It's double the bandwidth of AGP 8X. Think of it as budding technology.
Right now few games take advantage of this bandwidth so basically it's running about the same speed as AGP.

Meanwhile PCI Express 1x/4x/8x will replace the white PCI expansion ports on your mobo. My new board has 3 PCI-X.

Oops ... hehe ... I was thinking of normal PCI, yeah PCI Express is actually quite fast ... I dunno what I was thinkin, I wrote it this morning so I must have been 1/2 asleep. Sorry about that, but I'm still not getting Vista (By morning I mean time after I woke up, not like 6 am, more like 10 am or 11)

here ... I will fix my error ...

No worries. Just me being too much of a "computer geek" again.. I do tend to ramble at times.
Hmmm... double shot of espresso sometimes works for me

BTW, here's a screenshot for VISTA 9 (build 5219):

Here is the URL to view the demo:

http://media.spikedhumor.com/2772/windows_vista.wmv

As always... Microsoft has their eye candy and it looks good... it looks a lot like the Mac- Tiger- OS X. It looks nice, but do I really want to use that many system resources JUST to run the OS? I did like the auto thumbnail when you scroll over the tabs though. They could have made it more efficient if it wasn't updated in real time...

TOPIC MERGED

Well, now we know why it will be such a resource hog

Does look promising.

VISTA’S TRUE SYSTEM requirements are still in flux, but if you aim for a machine with these specs,
you should be in great shape when the operating system does roll out:

- 2GB of RAM
- 64-bit CPU PCI (3 GHZ or higher)
- Express graphics board with 128MB of RAM
- SATA hard drive with NCQ
- Monitor that supports the HDCP copy protection standard required for playback of high-def content

Credit: PCWorld, December 2005 issue