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Windows 10 has the same system requirements as Windows Vista
TheLizardbones
Member CommonPosts: 10,910
It's probably no secret that people are running applications that are ten years old or older on Windows machines, and a big problem for Microsoft is backwards compatibility. Being just about the only going OS vendor in the market makes this a fact of life for Microsoft.
Are we missing out though? What if the minimum requirements for Windows 10 was a dual core processor instead of a single core processor, a la Windows Vista? What if DirectX 10 was the minimum supported graphics library instead of DirectX 9? Would we be seeing a faster turn around on processor improvements? Would graphics cards get even better than they are now?
Do you think Microsoft is holding back on system requirements so the XBox franchise stays relevant?
Disclaimer - I saw this posted on Slashdot and thought it might be interesting to post here.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Comments
I don't think they should worry about keeping 10 year old systems up to date or new OS backwards compatible for that long. If you're running some old dinosaur then deal with it becoming out of date.
My dad still runs vista on his old computer. He just doesn't try and run anything new on it ( not that it would )
Then again how many people who buy the newest version of widows are actually grandma who has no clue what she's buying or why just the stupid box in the corner that my kids email me pictures on has an update and the guy in the store said I need it.
This is true, I agree.
But if you look at corporate software (not the stuff the average Joe gets pre-installed on their PC, but the stuff the big companies are actually running out in the industry).
That stuff is expensive. Software is an order of magnitude more expensive than the hardware. Dropping 5 digits for a single use license for a software suite is not unheard of, and is more common than I wish it where.
A lot of times, this software is tied to the original installation machine, so if the machine gets replaced, your software license is invalid.
The hardware is just a commodity item. By itself it doesn't do anything. It's the software that's valuable. And if your spending 10x the value of the hardware on software licensing, you want to make darn sure your getting your money out of it.
Hence the reason that the legacy requirements are so rediculous - that software is just too expensive to have to upgrade it every few years.
That is also the reason banks are running legacy applications in Fortran that are pushing 30+ years old - it works, and to replace them would be so expensive that it makes more sense to support the legacy app than to upgrade.
So, yeah, software legacy is the problem. But you aren't going to get corporations to buy off on that until the price of software comes down. SAAS/subscription models may help with that, although a lot of businesses are leary with the concept of "renting" their software (although really, if you read the license for purchases software, that's all your doing anyway), or of being pushed upgrades/updates when they aren't ready for it.
PC Games are being locked at 30fps to keep 'device parity'. The market has been more focused on 5" screens than virtual reality.
yes we are missing out.
VR headsets are annoying and do not apply to each and every game. Its a technology that has been tried over and over and over again for the past 20 years if not more (that's when i started caring). Oculus is over hyped atm but it won't change anything. It's basically a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with some extra software....
And for the record, my games run at 120 fps, get a better monitor.
Also Intel and other CPU vendors are stretching the physical limits for few years now. No, less support for legacy systems won't change a thing. After all, Dx11 is out for couple of years now iirc, how many titles do you see around rolling with it? Its limited tech to AAA titles. There are new games shipping with Dx9 still ...
If anything we need better graphics cards, faster RAM and storage memories and closer to the metal APIs (E.g. Mantle,Dx 12 are a good step forward) to utilize all this and STANDARDS
Also it bugs me so much that Microsoft were going to stop making new DirectX versions until Mantle got out and they quickly went back to the drawing board. They basically stopped innovating in favor of their flopping console while they are losing the PC market and their mobile OS, albeit great, is in no man's land...Its sad that we have to put up with this shit for the lack of better alternative.
GPUs should pack processing power not proprietary technologies to keep competition in check. And drivers should harness this processing power...
I wouldn't be upset if my gpu was running 400W hot but was capable of launching games at 4K at Ultra graphics and 120 fps.
I'm looking at the mobile developments and I want to cringe. Everybody licenses the same tech, there are bunch of manufacturers racing who would pack more transistors and still have decent battery life with blooming technology to link it all. The graphics in the latest offerings from Apple, LG, Samsung and Sony are stunning. Those embedded 5" sticks are not really more powerful than my 10 year old PC but they run Full HD and they run it well. My old PC can't do that. It's better at farming bitcoins i guess....It also makes up for a good router.
What do you hope to gain from higher system requirements? If a program runs fine on a 1 GHz processor, why would you want the company to slow it down and require a 2 GHz processor? If a program runs fine using 100 MB of memory, why would you want the company to bloat it to require 200 MB of memory?
Is there anything that Windows 10, or for that matter Vista, should have been doing, but couldn't because the hardware wasn't powerful enough? To the contrary, one of the things that got Vista a bad reputation is that it was a resource hog. Windows 7 could do the same stuff while putting less strain on hardware, and that was one of the things that made it a better OS.
Which PC games are being locked at 30fps? I have not personally experienced this yet.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Wait what? Windows is used by a billion people all over the world, xbox by what, 50 million? Xbox is like a freaking toy compared to the windows business.
Plus how the hell would that help xbox anyway, windows PCs already blow it out of the water.
It is pretty simple actually. They learned a hard lesson with Vista. Do not make OSs that runs poorly on underpowered hardware considering the majority buys cheap PCs.
I've heard of some city departments that order pc's and re-image with windows xp. One, because they no longer sale large orders of pc's with xp. Two, cause a lot of their software was designed to run on xp. They don't want to spend the money to upgrade all that software. That's probably why Microsoft said they will continue to support xp in certain cases.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Have the posted the system requirements? Otherwise your whole title is completely misleading.
Just remember that MS software development is largely Enterprise driven ... not personal household or even gaming driven (Considering they are moving more away from gaming than developing it). The ratio of business pcs compared to home is in the magnitude of 10s if not 100s to 1. As others mentioned software licensing for businesses is incredibly costly and is where the $$$s are for MS. Angry your Windows license costs $200? Well try 10 times that for the entry cost of multi-user business licenses.
I still see applications at work developed in the 90's. Most enterprise pcs have only recently migrated to Win 7. Most applications used by businesses are 2-5 versions behind the current version on the market. All applications have to go through testing and packaged for deployment if managed through SCCM client. Java, oracle, MS offices suite and even IE are rarely the most recent as they all must go through UAT testing along with all security updates. This takes time and money. To simply upgrade a universal printer driver to a newer version takes months of testing and planning to ensure implementation does not impact the network negatively. Even the most minor updates can cause massive problems due to compatibility problems with all the various applications (which can number in the thousands as each business unit has their own needs).
The home computer user is a drop in the bucket for them and is not the driving force behind the vast majority of their business and production decisions.
You stay sassy!
Very true. I don't see many large corporations going through the whole upgrade process to Windows 10 when most just went through the mass ordeal of switching from XP to 7. The migration of thousands of PCs from one OS to another is an extremely costly and labor intensive project and can take months to a year plus for a larger environments. This does not even begin to touch upon driver and application support from third party vendors.
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I dont see the issue here. Vista was such a hog because of all the eye candy it introduced (which is why people had problems with it).
The operating system should not be the thing hogging all your system resources, thats what games and applications are for, the operating system is there to make everything easy for you to work with.
Seems like someone is pulling for whatever they can to try and make microsoft look bad ? Im not sure pointing out the operating system isnt hogging more resources slowing everything else down is the way to do this......
This whole thread is why people need to support Linux.
Because Linux doesn't have any legacy issues (*cough* Xwindows *cough*)
Eh? PC's and their games are handling 1080p @60fps since 2009. Only very few and very bad console ports are locked at 30fps.
Well, everything I can say is that Windows Vista was so eye-candy that if you were playing top-end games you were risking your CPU in a serious way. Mine got burn'd and the machine was dead. I was playing FarCry at high settings. I don't know the reasons but the FACT happened to me.
And for Windows 10, well, I hope it runs smoothly in my new laptop. That's all I need.
For the Linux issue, yes, it would be great to have a Great Linux matching all the gaming needs, someone will make one someday, maybe some of us... Who knows? If you want it, make it (I would help you), but usually I do use Linux for different purposes than gaming.
Thanks!
It is a question of fangs.
I have some news for all of you and you're not going to like it very much so you'd better sit down before reading it...
We as Gamers are not the main demographic that computers are built for anymore and haven't been for at least the last 5 years. The main demographic that Microsoft is trying to reach is... Grandma playing Farmville 2!
I know it's hard to accept but there it is.
Bren
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beat();
}
I think their #1 market is actually business users. It's where most of the money comes from.
Their doing a great job with that. The only reason the business world moved from Windows XP was because they were basically left with no other choice when they ended support for it. The new Start Screen in Windows 8 was definitely not conceived with the business world in mind. Everything in the Windows 8 Start interface was designed to make it easier for grandma to post photos to Facebook and get to Farmville 2 easier.
Windows 10 does however look like it's a move back in the right direction. Their #1 market may be the business world but they seemed to forget all about that after Windows 7.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}