Updated: July 9, 2020 (October 31, 2011)
Charts & IllustrationsWindows 8 Preliminary Hardware Requirements
The hardware requirements for the Windows 8 Developer Preview seem similar to the requirements for Windows 7 but feature some important differences, particularly to support new Metro applications and Hyper-V. Efforts to reduce the memory requirements and the number of running OS processes in Windows 8 mean that the processor and RAM in most computers today should be sufficient. Key differences in the requirements for the Windows 8 Developer Preview are in the areas of monitor resolution and aspect ratio and multitouch support, which are important for running the new Metro applications. Microsoft has not yet provided hardware requirements for devices running ARM-based processors. Most requirements represent minimum, not optimal, requirements.
| Feature | Requirement | |
| x86 (32-bit) | x64 (64-bit) | |
| Processor Speed | 1GHz | 1GHz |
| RAM | 1GB | 2GB |
| Available Disk Space | 16GB | 20GB |
| Fast, Secure Boot | Unified Extensible Firmware | |
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