windows 8 Refining the recommended system requirements for Windows 8 - ars

[Guest LilBambi]

Refining the recommended system requirements for Windows 8 - arstechnica

Microsoft's listed requirements fall short for daily use.

 

 

Does this aging PC have what it takes to run Windows 8 well?

 

Microsoft’s official line for Windows 8 is that it has been designed to run on all hardware that is capable of running Windows 7. Thanks to thorough optimization efforts by Microsoft and the continued availability of a 32-bit version, this is largely true—Microsoft’s official system requirements for the new operating system are identical to those of Windows 7.

Those minimum system requirements only tell part of the story, though, and there’s a wide gap between a system that can run Windows 8 and a system that can run it well, particularly when it comes to Metro and Metro apps. We’ll go through all of Microsoft’s requirements one by one and tell you what you’reactually going to want to use to run Windows 8.

 

MUCH more in the article.

 

In the article they mention at there are some PIIIs that actually are rated at 1Ghz but you wouldn't want to put yourself through the world of hurt to try to make it happen.

 

Good point. To me, it is more a combo of items that have to meet the minimum specs. Like Windows 7, the graphics card is very important as is RAM and the CPU. Read on to investigate.

 

However, the article also states that Windows 8 is actually LESS forgiving than Windows 7 on shortcomings with the graphics card.

 

What do you think? Is the article realistic?

Edited October 25, 2012 by LilBambi

[Guest LilBambi]

So, it looks like my HP Slimline s3200n running Vista would work for an upgrade to Windows 8.

 

I know it would need to have a memory upgrade as it currently has only 1GB RAM but can go to 4GB RAM:

 

• 
  Dual channel memory architecture (1 DIMM per channel)
  

• 
  Two 240-pin DDR2 DIMM sockets
  

• 
  Supported DIMM types:
  
  • 
    PC2-4200 (533 MHz)
    
  • 
    PC2-5300 (667 MHz)
    
  • 
    PC2-6400 (800 MHz)
    

• 
  Single or double-sided DIMMs
  

• 
  Non-ECC memory only, unbuffered
  

• 
  Supports 2GB DDR2 DIMMs
  

• 
  Supports up to 4 GB* (2 x 2 GB)
  * 32 bit PCs cannot address a full 4.0 GB of memory.
  

 

The built-in video card, albeit not super great, is not a bad card. GeForce 6150 SE (It does NOT support DirectX 10 at all, but it does supports DirectX 9 and Shader 3.0 Support) But the real question is: with WDDM 1.0 driver or better? I don't know, it doesn't say. But this Google search on the video card and WDDM 1.0 or better seems to imply yes.

 

The hard drive is pretty decent sized. The Windows partition is set to 64 GB.