Digital Home Thoughts: Will Your Ancient PC Really Run Vista?

"Windows Vista turns out to be somewhat arbitrary in the way it assesses system performance. While there are significant visual differences between the AMD Sempron 3400+ and the Celeron D 352 systems when it comes to 3D capabilities, Microsoft's Vista Experience Index doesn't do justice to the AMD system. It is true that the AMD system cannot display transparency effects for AeroGlass due to the motherboard and chipset. But Vista's performance index only rates the PC with an overall system Experience Index of 1.0, while the system powered by the Intel 945G chipset and a Celeron D 352 reaches 3.0 points. The Celeron PC rates such a relatively high score because the Intel chipset has a more advanced 3D engine, but its 3D performance is still inadequate for gaming. The graphics score, which is the dominate score for the overall index, thus creates a rather misleading picture. The two systems are based on cheap integrated graphics that are not intended for gaming any way. The index hence doesn't reflect our everyday experience, and we recommend not basing a buying decision on it at this time (unless you're looking for the highest score)."



Yes your system will probably run Vista. If you have anything over a socket 478 P4 at 3Ghz and 1GB RAM, your machine will run Vista. If you have a video card made in the last 5 years you'll probably even get pretty AeroGlass effects. For the record, my system gets a 3.8 experience index from the Upgrade Advisor. I run a 478 P4 at 3.0Ghz with 1GB RAM, a Radeon 9600 Pro, a 36GB Raptor drive for the OS and about 700GB spread across 3 other drives. Not exactly 2007 hardware. And guess what? It runs Vista without a hitch (performance-wise). So, can your current machine run Vista? Very likely yes.

By the way, he mentions in the article that Vista upgrade DVDs are not bootable, which is just not true. It will certainly boot your system, it just won't install on a clean drive without wacky workarounds.