Windows Vista: Beta 2 Preview

System Requirements and More

Not surprisingly, as it has been several years since the last release of Windows, Microsoft has let Vista grow into the expanded memory and processing power of newer computers. Microsoft has divided up the system requirements for Vista into two groups: a minimum requirement to run Vista at all, and an expanded requirement to use some of the more advanced features (mainly the full Aero features).

Basic

• 800mhz Processor
• 512MB RAM
• DX9 "capable" GPU with 32MB video memory
• 20GB HD

Expanded

• 1ghz Processor
• 1GB RAM
• DX9 PS2.0 GPU with 128MB video memory
• 40GB HD

It's worth noting that by finally moving to a GPU-accelerated desktop, the video requirements are the most increased of all. To balance this out with the abilities of low-end hardware, Vista will come with several different desktop modes that require various amounts of video functionality.

Click to enlarge

With the new Aero interface, GPU acceleration of some kind is required to use it. For high-end systems with PS2.0 support and the power to run the desktop compositing engine backend required to use Aero, it will be available in its full glory including scaling effects, transparency, rotation, and other graphical manipulations that are best done on a GPU. Aero is pretty hard on a computer's GPU, as each window means a new polygon and texture to store in memory, so even though a system may support PS2.0 it may still not have the memory or rendering performance to effectively run it; users with modern discrete graphics cards shouldn't have anything to worry about, but IGP users might. For those users who are right on the border, some of the advanced effects such as transparency can be disabled, which will improve performance slightly. Because of some compatibility issues with Aero, it is sometimes automatically disabled and switched out for Basic if Windows detects a program that it knows has a problem with the advanced features of Aero. Users of those programs who want to use the advanced features will need to track down updates to these programs in order to get proper Aero support. For anyone with knowledge of Mac OS X Tiger, some of the parallels here with Quartz Extreme should be pretty apparent.

Click to enlarge

For those systems that can't offer any real GPU acceleration at all, Vista is capable of also dropping back down one to two interfaces that use just the GDI+ functionality, and are intended to replicate XP and 2000 abilities respectively. Basic is intended to be the XP-like rendering mode for Vista, and while it currently uses a Vista-styled theme, this theme is going to be replaced for the shipping version. Classic will be the 2000-like mode using the 2000 interface style and rendering features. Because neither of these modes use the compositing engine, they drop the GPU requirements significantly (down to practically those of Windows XP/2000), but in the process lose the benefits of using a fully accelerated desktop rendering system and bring back the drawbacks of GDI+, such as higher CPU usage in some situations.

There will also be some differences in Vista based on whether the x86 or x64 version is being used. As Mac users may know by now, Microsoft has only implemented support for the new EFI standard in the x64 version, opting not to bother with the x86 version. The fact of the matter is that unless you're a Mac user, you're probably not even using an EFI-based system, so it's not going to be much of a problem; any new system that ships with EFI will ship with a 64-bit processor, and of course will require an x64 version of Vista.

Of greater importance though is the difference in how drivers are handled. The x64 version will by default be locked down to only accept kernel mode drivers which have been signed, and while this can be bypassed by tweaking Vista a bit, it's not a very easy thing to do at the moment and there is no guarantee it will stay this way. Ultimately, Microsoft sees this as a move towards ensuring better drivers, but as we've seen with WHQL certified video drivers, there are a lot of things that can slip through the cracks of Microsoft's testing. It is also not clear, even within Microsoft, whether developers who need to write kernel mode drivers (drivers which effectively have full, unadulterated, operating system level access to the hardware) will be allowed to sign their drivers using 3rd parties like Verisign. Giving developers this option would offer support without WHQL tests, but would almost defeat the purpose of the requirement (which is to ensure the integrity of the system).

If only a Microsoft signature is to be allowed, hardware manufacturers will be at the mercy of Microsoft, who may not sign legally questionable devices such as DVD emulators, but at the same time may also not sign malware such as the overambitious anti-piracy toolkit StarForce or Sony's CD rootkit. In general we're concerned that with the other Digital Rights Management technologies going into Vista such as HDCP, Microsoft is going to lean towards the side of only avoiding signing obvious malware and software that sits on the "fair use" side of the IP/copyright fence (while still signing items like StarForce). However, we won't really know what kind of a stance Microsoft is going to take until Vista ships. At any rate, we hope they leave in the ability to disable driver checking, even if it's only something technical savvy users are capable of doing.

Also, Vista x64 is implementing a couple of security features not found on the x86 version. Vista x64 will load critical system files at random offsets in the memory, versus the current method of using a predetermined location every time. The idea here is that by using offsets, certain classes of attacks such as buffer overflows will fail since they will not know where the component they want to affect resides. Vista x64 will also have a new feature designed to prevent malicious software from modifying the kernel (a requirement for implementing a rootkit), although the full details on how this works are light at this time.

Lastly, driver support for Vista seems to be pretty good considering it's still in a beta state. With a common base between the x86 and x64 versions, unlike XP where the x64 version was actually running on top of the Windows 2003 Server kernel, the x64 driver situation seems much improved, with most companies having released drivers for both versions and done so simultaneously. Other than for video drivers, which are a special case (more on that later), the driver structure hasn't changed too much between XP and Vista; we've heard numerous reports of XP networking drivers being used with Vista, for example, so driver support should be pretty good when Vista launches.