System requirements

System requirements for Windows XP Home Edition and Professional are as follows:

Minimum Recommended Processor 233 MHz At least 300 MHz Memory 64 MB of RAM At least 128 MB of RAM Video adapter and monitor Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution Hard drive disk free space 1.5 GB or higher additional 661 MB for Service Pack 1 and 1a additional 1.8 GB for Service Pack 2 and additional 900 MB for Service Pack 3 Optical drive CD-ROM drive (Only to install from CD-ROM media) Input devices Keyboard, Microsoft Mouse or a compatible pointing device Sound Sound card and Speakers or headphones ^1 Even though this is Microsoft's stated minimum processor speed for Windows XP, it is possible to install and run the operating system on early IA-32 processors such as a P5 Pentium without MMX instructions. Windows XP is not compatible with processors older than Pentium (such as 486) because it requires CMPXCHG8B instructions. ^2 A Microsoft TechNet paper from Summer 2001 (before Windows XP's actual release), states that: "A computer with 64 MB of RAM will have sufficient resources to run Windows XP and a few applications with moderate memory requirements." (Emphasis added.) These were said to be office productivity applications, e-mail programs, and web browsers (of the time). With such a configuration, user interface enhancements and fast user switching are turned off by default. For comparable workloads, 64 MB of RAM was then regarded as providing an equal or better user experience on Windows XP with similar settings than it would with Windows ME on the same hardware. In a later section of the paper, superior performance over Windows ME was noted with 128 MB of RAM or more, and with computers that exceed the minimum hardware requirements.

System requirements for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition are as follows:

Processor: x86-64 processor; Memory: At least 256 MB of RAM; Video adapter and monitor: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution; Hard drive disk free space: At least 1.5 GB; Optical drive: CD-ROM drive; Input devices: Keyboard; Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device; Sound: Sound card; Speakers or headphones; Drivers for sound card, GPU of video card, wired LAN card, etc. must be designed for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

System requirements for Windows XP 64-Bit Edition are as follows:

Processor: Intel Itanium 733 MHz (Recommended: Intel Itanium 800 MHz or better); Memory: At least 1 GB of RAM; Video adapter and monitor: Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution; Hard drive disk free space: At least 6 GB; Optical drive: CD-ROM drive; Input devices: Keyboard; Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device; Sound: Sound card; Speakers or headphones; Drivers for sound card, GPU of video card, wired LAN card, etc. must be designed for Windows XP 64-Bit Edition. Physical memory limits

Maximum limits on physical memory (RAM) that Windows XP can address vary depending on both the Windows version and between 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The following table specifies the maximum physical memory limits supported:

Physical memory limits in each Windows XP edition Version Maximum RAM supported Windows XP Professional 4 GB Windows XP Home Edition Windows XP Media Center Edition Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Windows XP Starter Edition 512 MB Windows XP Professional x64 Edition 128 GB Processor limits

The maximum total number of logical processors in a PC that Windows XP supports is: 32 for 32-bit; 64 for 64-bit.

The maximum number of physical processors in a PC that Windows XP supports: is 2 for Professional; and 1 for the Home Edition.