Heading into the public release of Windows 7 Release Candidate, Microsoft has just released the finalized minimum requirements for the operating system. There’s barely been any change since the beta except that memory requirements for 64-bit have been slightly beefed up, and graphics device requirements have changed slightly. Here are the minimum requirements:

• 1GHz processor (32 or 64-bit)
• 1GB of RAM (32-bit); 2GB of RAM (64-bit)
• 16GB of available disk space (32-bit); 20GB of available disk space (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Anyone planning to run XP Mode should note that Microsoft has recommended a minimum requirement of 2GB of RAM and 15GB additional disk space for those users. As you may have noticed, the minimum requirements are exactly the same as Vista’s but are actually less demanding in today’s time. Many have also stated that Windows 7 runs much better than Vista using the same hardware.

Unlike Vista, the requirements will remain the same across all SKUs. In the past, users have told us in the comments and forums that computers with specs lower than the minimum requirements can still run Windows 7 fairly well.

If you have a question or need help with Windows 7 and hardware, feel free to discuss in our forums.

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. Read the rest at windows7center.com.