Processor

• Vista Premium requires a minimum of a 1 GHz Intel-compatible processor. Some processors that fulfill this requirement include the Intel Xeon and Core 2 lines. High processing speed is important because Vista Premium performs many tasks simultaneously, such as running security software and rendering desktop windows.
  
  

RAM

• PCs need to have at least one gigabyte (GB) of RAM for Vista Premium to run. RAM acts as the computer's short-term memory.
  
  

Graphics

• Vista is a very graphics-intensive system. The windows in this operating system are rendered to look like translucent glass, and multiple windows can be displayed in a 3-D cascade format. To handle these kinds of graphics, Vista Premium requires a video adapter card with a DirectX 9.0-capable graphical processor. This adapter card must also have 128 megabytes (MB) of graphics memory.
  
  

Disk Space

• Premium-Ready PCs should have at minimum a 40 GB hard drive, with at least 15 GB of space still free.
  
  

Considerations

• Though these specifications will create a Vista Premium-Ready PC, they will not provide the optimum experience for the user. In particular, computers used for processor-intensive tasks, like animation or sound editing, will seem to underperform.