14 DAY TRIAL // With the availability of the Release Candidate for Windows 7, Microsoft has also made public the system requirements for the operating system. The good news? Users who have already moved to a Windows Vista-tailored machine will not need to upgrade their hardware yet again just to accommodate Windows 7. In fact, the system requirements for the next iteration of Windows are roughly the same as for its precursor, with Beta testers indicating that Windows 7 outperforms Windows Vista on the same hardware.
Without further ado, the System Requirements for Windows 7 are “1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor; 1 GB of RAM (32-bit)/2 GB of RAM (64-bit); 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit)/20 GB (64-bit); DirectX 9 graphics device with Windows Display Driver Model 1.0 or higher driver,” according to Microsoft.
The Redmond company emphasizes that the system requirements presented above represent the bare minimum required to run Windows 7. Want more performance from your Windows 7? Then you will simply have to add on top of the minimum hardware configuration required to run the operating system. Unlike Vista, Windows 7's Windows Experience Index goes all the way up to 7.9, a score ready to reflect the horsepower of machines with multi-core processors, solid state disks, high-end graphics cards, and 4+ GB of system memory.
What is important to note is the fact that if the system requirements are good enough for the Release Candidate of Windows 7 they are good enough for the RTM. Microsoft will not change the minimum hardware configuration for Windows 7 between RC and release to manufacturing. At the same time, the system requirements presented are valid for all editions of Win7, be them low-end or high-end SKUs.