Windows 8 Minimum Hardware System Requirements

Windows 8 consumer preview has just been released and Microsoft has posted the system requirement for the same on official blog. The hardware requirements for Windows 8 is similar to Windows 7 and you can run it on 1 GB of RAM and 1 GHz processor. Here are the complete system requirements as posted by Microsoft-

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
• Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher

Further to run Metro style apps your screen should have a minimum resolution of 1024*768 and 1366*768 for snap feature.

Some other new features in Windows 8 requires new requirements which aren’t available in most of the PC’s right now. Here are those features-

• Secured Boot requires a new UEFI BIOS, which is not available broadly on PCs yet, but is starting to be made available. If your machine does have UEFI, you can enable it via BIOS settings.
• BitLocker does not require but performs more seamlessly if your PC has a Trusted Platform Module(TPM). Machines that have this sometimes require it to be enabled via BIOS settings. BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive that meets performance criteria evaluated at installation time.
• Hyper-V requires a 64-bit system with second level address translation (SLAT) capabilities and an additional 2 GB of RAM. You can also enable SLAT via a BIOS setting.
• Some games and other software require graphics capabilities compatible with DirectX 10 or higher (including some games available in the Consumer Preview and in the Windows Store.

Microsoft has also posted a set of PC’s on which they have been testing internally-

• HP Elitebook 2760p convertible (Note: This PC is 1280×800 and so does not support snap.)
• ASUS EP121 tablet (Note: his PC is 1280×800 and so does not support snap.)
• Dell Inspiron Duo convertible
• Lenovo x220t convertible
• 3M M2256PW 22” display (Note: The raised bezel can make it harder to swipe along the edges)
• Samsung Series 7 slate

Lastly the post reads that you can upgrade your Windows 7 to Windows 8 consumer preview, but there is no rolllback, and all those running Windows 8 developer preview can upgrade to Windows 8 consumer preview by just using the migrate option.