Whats the lowest spec for Win 7 with regardless of MS's recommendations

[AngelfireUk83]

I have a INTEL Pentium4 D660 3.60GHZ old system lying around it has 2GB DDR RAM 160GB SATA HDD and I was looking at adding a 8600GT to it for dedicated graphics since anything higher maybe would be a bottleneck. But I wouldn't mind a DX11 card so any recommendations there would be great just for video playback etc without too much of a bottleneck.

I plan on just giving to a friend as she as a very old laptop XP Mobile one and only uses it for general use e-mails etc just wondering it will be enough for Win 7 32bit Ultimate as XP's support will be gone completely soon. She is very computer savvy too and has worked with VISTA etc in the past the PC is complete just need to know what can I do with it.

 

[EarthDog]

You dont remotely need a DX11 capable GPU for video playback.

Not sure I would put it on a P4... but try it.

 

[c627627]

...as XP's support will be gone completely soon.

Tell all your friends and cousins that this is incorrect. Support will last for two more years by which time maybe even Windows 8 SP1 will be out.

No need for Win7 to hog down your old system. Use Windows XP until well into 2014.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

Tell all your friends and cousins that this is incorrect. Support will last for two more years by which time maybe even Windows 8 SP1 will be out.

No need for Win7 to hog down your old system. Use Windows XP until well into 2014.

In my experience (and this is just my anecdotal experience), Windows 7 works faster on the same hardware than Windows XP. Even at 512MB of RAM. Programs that lagged horribly in XP ran like greased lightning in 7.

I honestly believe 7 is just that much better at memory utilization and optimization.

 

[Supertrucker]

My old opteron 165 (dual core, 1.8ghz) with 2 gigs of ddr1, feels smoother to me on win7 than it did on xp. My sister uses it as an email/browser/mp3 machine. Honestly, if it had sata3 and a sata3 ssd in it(it has my first ssd, a jmicron model /shudder), im not sure i would be able to tell the difference between my computer now and that one, unless i launched a game or some kind of video editing software, things like that.

 

[trekky]

i know some1 who uses windows 95 (ikr)