|
Queensland (Australia) - A Microsoft strategist told attendees of the TechEd 2005 conference on the Gold Coast last week that Windows Vista's new display driver model may compel users to upgrade to a PC with 2 GByte of DDR3 SDRAM and a graphics card with at least 256 MByte memory, according to Australian PC enthusiast publication APC Magazine.
In a transcript reportedly taken from TechEd, Nigel Page, a strategist with Microsoft Australia, told a small crowd gathered at his presentation that Vista's new Longhorn Display Driver Model (LDDM) will replace the existing GDI display model with a mostly 3D vector-graphics system. Such a system is known to be in the works. This system, reads the transcript, will require more work from the graphics processing unit (GPU) and, as a result, a faster bi-directional bus with the CPU.
To accomplish this, the transcript quotes Page as stating, "The GPU will need a plenty of room to operate in Vista. The more memory you put on a video card, the better, really. We want the least dumping back to main memory because that's slower than graphics. If you have 128 MByte, that's good; if you have 256 MByte, that's better; but I expect that video card memory will go up a lot when Longhorn is released."
As for system RAM, Page reportedly said, 512 MByte is "heaps" for a 32-bit system. For a 64-bit system, however, "you're going to want 2 gigs of DDR3 RAM." The transcript states that Page explained 64-bit users will need to double their memory because units of memory are naturally double the size. "If you try to make do with what you've got," the transcript adds, "you'll see less performance. But RAM is now so cheap, it's hardly an issue."
What might become an issue - though Page apparently didn't mention it - is that low-voltage DDR3 technology is at least 8 to 10 months away from sampling and at least 16 months away from commercial availability, as we reported here two weeks ago. The Vista operating system itself is expected to be released a few months sooner.
The complete transcript of the proceedings appeared here. (APC Magazine via NineMSN)
Spokespersons for Microsoft US contacted by Tom's Hardware Guide declined to address Page's reported remarks directly. The spokesperson, however, told us, "minimum system requirements for Windows Vista will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest." The few requirements that Microsoft can officially confirm are limited to "a modern Intel Pentium- or AMD Athlon-based PC" with 512 MByte of RAM and a dedicated graphics card with DirectX 9.0 support.
We wondered, if Microsoft is truly suggesting that a Vista computer be endowed with DDR3 RAM and as much as 256 MByte of video RAM, whether such a system would fall outside the realm of a PC that will qualify for Intel's recently announced Viiv entertainment PC platform. Yesterday, an Intel spokesperson told us that Viiv hardware requirements for the first quarter of next year basically consist of a Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, or Yonah-based system, based on a motherboard with the 945 Express, 955X Express, or Calistoga chipset, as well as an Intel-branded network connection. No memory requirements for system or video RAM, or for any part of the graphics hardware, were specified in the most recent list Intel provided to us.
The subject of how Vista's LDDM will change the hardware components, requirements, and behavior of 2006 computers will be one of the subjects explored in-depth next week at Microsoft's Professional Developers' Conference in Los Angeles. Tom's Hardware Guide will report from the conference, which will open its doors on Sunday, September 11.
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050908_100000.html
|
