Here's What You Need to Use Windows XP Home Edition
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PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required;* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
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128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
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1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*
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Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution video adapter and monitor
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CD-ROM or DVD drive
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Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
although 64 is the min and 128 is recommended... i believe i said 256 for SP2, considering all the CRAP it adds to a system. 128 on SP1 maybe, but ive worked as a comp tech and 128 on sp2 always had problems with speed and ability.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home ... sreqs.mspx
Although I HATE microsoft products, if your to use XP, SP1 or SP2, I would recommend 1GHz or better processor, 256mb ram, basic on board/3d graphics card, nothing spectacular, as a miniumum. if you want all the pretty stuff they put on there that wastes ram, i say 1.8GHz and 512mb or better with a fair 3d card...
Honestly, I feel bad for windows users.
http://www.dvhardware.net/article6056.html - one of many that say about the same thing with windows vista... 512mb or more, newer intel or amd processor, 3d card with DirectX 9.0 built in.... Now, although i have all of the above in a server box, this system outruns my server when i use longhorn or even xp pro. the server im speaking of is meant for file serving and is in my garage, but is used for local access only. i tried it under longhorn, 2000 pro and xp pro, its 1gb ram, amd athlon xp 3200 and a nice little geforce 6800 (soon to be on this system, i may switch the systems completely). this sytem, tested on a wired connection to a laptop, transfered at 6.2mb/s, the other, on 2000 pro got 4mb/s, xp pro was about 5.2 and longhorn was at 3.8..... i did it on 3 *nix system to the laptop as well, and all were 9-15mb/s each... running n 160gb sata...
image rendering, using blender, it was about 20 seconds to 6 minutes longer then on here, using the same image file, fairly small. took about 30 seconds here... it did it in 5-10 seconds on the 3 nix systems.
but with vistas requirements/recommendations being so high, it sucks to be windows. given, i believe the minimum for vista is actually 128mb or 256mb, but its legacy mode as they call it. meaning no graphics, none of the other happy crap at all, just a basic basic os... i can get you one on *nix that will need 1/10th that amount and run just as well as vista will.
as it sits, i have this system running gentoo 2006.0, my fileserver running gentoo 2006.0 and occassionally debian sid. i top at 80 fps here (due to my moniter limitations at this setting), i top at 80 on the other as well. but according to my tests, i can get 300fps on this, 600fps on my file server, but only 160 at max of all the windows systems
off to school though, hopefully not to fall asleep though
-pyr0
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