We help you determine whether your current PC can run Vista and which version of the operating system best suits your needs.
Vista’s new Aero Glass interface is very impressive, but it loses its lustre if it cripples your PC. We’ve given several PCs the Vista treatment to discover what you really need to run the next generation of Windows.
For the full Vista Premium experience — including Aero at 1280 x 1024 or above — Microsoft recommends a 1GHz CPU, 1GB of memory and a 128MB Direct X9 graphics card with a WDDM driver and pixel Shader 2 support. To be absolutely certain of the minimum requirements, we began with exactly that: a 1GHz Athlon Thunderbird CPU, 1GB of DDR RAM and a 128MB graphics card — in this case, an Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT.
While we managed to get Vista running smoothly on this rig, the system froze when we tried to play video with Aero enabled. Yet once we disabled Aero, the video played smoothly. So the absolute minimum specifications really are borderline when it comes to using Vista for anything more than Internet browsing.
However, it’s unlikely many people will seriously consider running Vista on such an old PC, and the news is better if we skip forward a few years. We built a new desktop system based on a 2.53GHz Celeron D 326. Sticking with 1GB of RAM we tried a variety of graphics solutions.
Amazingly, with Intel’s integrated 64MB GMA950 we had absolutely no problems at all: we ran video while running several other programs, and even successfully viewed the Flip 3D task-switcher and Live Preview. Admittedly the video stuttered a little in these more advanced views, but as a preview it was perfectly acceptable.
Stepping up, we found every DirectX9 card we tried with 128MB of memory ran Aero without a hitch. You’d certainly benefit from a slightly faster CPU, as Vista was a tiny bit sluggish, but it was more than fast enough for basic daily use.
So if you want to use Vista to its full potential, we’d recommend a modern yet inexpensive processor like a Sempron or Celeron as a minimum, 1GB of memory and a 128MB card, which, to its credit, is pretty much as Microsoft specified.
The truth about Windows Vista
Under the skin
Security and encryption
Networking, IPv6 and beyond
Out of the box
Versions and requirements
What Vista might have been