- elmicker
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Here's my two pence.
Runiteshark: stop being an absolute -blam!-tard of an obnoxious arrogant twat just because you can read specs that microsoft didn't write, but were written by a beta tester, microsoft have actually released very minimal information about Vista.
Let me explain why you may need to upgrade, hopefully in a more polite and accurate fashion than runiteshark attempted to.
In the past, all windows operating systems have used the onboard graphics for display, which means it doesnt have access to all the 3D processing power that all your games have access to in your graphics card. Vista changes this, it has access to your graphics card and so, can do everything your games can, from basic XP-Style display, to full AA + AF CS:source on your desktop. Now obviously, this will put more strain on your graphics card than XP does so no longer will you be able to run your pc to it's full potential with a very old graphics card. Chances are you'll only need something in the low end range (geforce 5 series), but preferably something along the lines of a geforce 6600, as that can use DX9. BUT, this is not a necessary upgrade, if your graphics card doesnt have the memory or speed to handle everything at once, Vista can roll-back its display to the way it did it with XP, so it may look slightly uglier, but it'll work. So if your pc is more than 4 years old, you may need a graphics upgrade.
Now, onto CPUs. Contrary to popular belief, a 64bit CPU will not be necessary, as vista will run in both 32 and 64 bit modes, with obviously the 64 bit mode being faster. This means that ifyou're running an early Pentium 4, or an Athlon XP, it will run, just not to its full potential, thought if you do have one of those, i heartily recommed you upgrade to an Athlon 64 processor, as they're easily affordable 64 bit processors, and they beat every intel equivalent into the ground.
RAM: 512mb is a must. 1gb is recommended, and anyting higher giving major performance boosts, even beyond 4gb as vista can now utilise large amounts of ram properly, unlike XP. I recommend having at least 1gb.
HD: anything above 80GB will do the job here, but i recommend having at least 120GB on a SATA connection, rather than the old IDE connection.
That's about it, basically, that was all to say: You probably don't have to upgrade, but vista will run a million times better if you do.