Windows 7 minumum spec on domain

[cookie_monster]

Hi all, I can see a few threads on here regarding this issue but it's mainly regarding stand alones and netbooks. I'm wondering what spec people are running Windows 7 on.

I'm thinking to the future and at the point i'd like to move to Windows 7 i'll still have at least two rooms of older PC's (3GHz P4s, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb graphics card). These are mainly used for internet and office so nothing heavy I know we would have turn all of the pretty stuff off.

 

Anyone running Win 7 on PC's of this age on a domain?

 

Cheers.

[SYNACK]

You won't need to turn the pretty stuff off, we are running it in a primary school on Celleron 1.8ghz and above machines with 1.25GB ram and above. They are not quick but they wern't on XP or Vista either and most only have integrated graphics so no Aero. Having aero on though makes them more responcive to the user and can drop the system memory usage by offloading to the GPU.

 

If your pcs have hyperthreading I would make sure that it is on as this has huge benifits in the usable speed with both Vista and 7 that were never apparent in XP. If they have alright chipsets and hyperthreading support they should behave reasonably well. If you have any spare ram lying around though it does help them by allowing more stuff to be cached.

[wiwo]

I'm running W7 pro on domain computers with similar specs and had no problems so far. W7 Ent requires larger disk space so i figured W7 pro was the way to go on older machines.

[cookie_monster]

Would the same spec machines with 64Mb VGA cards be ok or am I pushing my luck at that?

 

I might have to dig one out and give it a try.

[SYNACK]

Would the same spec machines with 64Mb VGA cards be ok or am I pushing my luck at that?

 

I might have to dig one out and give it a try.

 

Should be fine, if the cards aren't DX9 compatible then it will not do aero but otherwise should work ok. If they are DX9 then aero should run fine on 64mb too.

 

However as always the best way to know is to test it on your specific boxes as some hardware performs better than others chipsets especially.

[cookie_monster]

Should be fine, if the cards aren't DX9 compatible then it will not do aero but otherwise should work ok. If they are DX9 then aero should run fine on 64mb too.

 

However as always the best way to know is to test it on your specific boxes as some hardware performs better than others chipsets especially.

 

 

They have Intel D915GVWB boards I think i'll be lucky but i'll give it a try, they might just have to stay XP.

[IanT]

I ran Windows 7 on a P4 -2.4Ghz with 512Mb of RAM. Ran well

[cookie_monster]

I ran Windows 7 on a P4 -2.4Ghz with 512Mb of RAM. Ran well

 

 

Hmmm food for thought there, how much graphics RAM?

 

It seems to run well on my Atom netbook but that has a better graphics card.

[pritchardavid]

For Intel Graphics Chipsets your find you have to have a 945G Chipset or later

 

Which is annoying has we have 64 student laptops that have early chipsets than that, Oh well no Aero for them

[IanT]

Hmmm food for thought there, how much graphics RAM?

 

It seems to run well on my Atom netbook but that has a better graphics card.

 

128Mb (AGP)

[msnriggs]

We have been running it on some old 845GERG motherboards with 512 of RAM and that was an acceptable experience, we put 1GB in and it was far better. BTW, for those of you with and 845 video chipset, you can mod the 865 driver inf with the right hardware ID and it installs beautifully. I have noticed the biggest performance limiter on older hardware is RAM and generic drivers.

[enjay]

Those specs will be fine. I ran it on a P4 2.8GHz with 512MB RAM and onboard VGA. The board couldn't handle all the pretty features (live previews when you hover over task bar) and wouldn't go widescreen, but that was it.

 

I had thought it was 1GB RAM but found out recently when I had the lid off that my test PC was only 512!

[apeo]

I take it no one intends on running xp mode?

[msnriggs]

I still have yet to find a reason to run XP mode. I find that impressive since I am employed in K-12 and we own some very old versions of industry software. Has anyone had a need to run XP mode yet for some of their specific apps?

[cookie_monster]

Nothing on our software list in limited testing. I think allot of large companies will be planning to use it for all those intranets and apps that were written specifically for IE6.

[AndyR]

I'm running the pre-release version on my Fujitsu Amilo Pro V3515 laptop. It's got a 1.6 GHz Dual Core pentium chip and 700MB of memory. The S3 graphics card gave it problems when it came to drivers, but I just found a copy of them rather than used the ones windows recommended that didn't work. Otherwise all has been pretty fine with it, except an anti-virus program that wasn't W7 compatible and slowed it down to a crawl. I was running it on 512MB when started and it handled that fine, the upgrade hasn't made a huge difference.

 

As for XP mode, only program I've found that doesn't work with Win7 so far is Sherston's Tizzy's Toybox, the original version. The SE version is fine. In fact a lot of the old Sherston titles work better now as they don't have that pallette problem that used to leave the graphics messed up if you didn't disable it.

[pritchardavid]

you can mod the 865 driver inf with the right hardware ID and it installs beautifully. I have noticed the biggest performance limiter on older hardware is RAM and generic drivers.

 

Intresting

 

Would this work for the 915gm chipset?