I got curious if Windows 7 will work on a Pentium 3 system. Turns out it works fine, provided you can find supported expansion cards.
My system barely met the minimum requirements of 1GB of RAM and 1GHz+ 32-bit CPU:
- ASUS P3B-F v1.04 motherboard;
- Tualatin Celeron 1400MHz with Coppermine adapter and a generic slotket;
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP video card;
- 1GB of RAM (4 x 256MB PC133 SDRAM);
- Sound Blaster 128 PCI;
- RTL8139 NIC;
- beige AOpen ATX case with 300 Watt Zalman ATX power supply.
I had to replace parts that worked great in Windows 98 SE and Windows XP, but are unsupported in Windows 7:
- ATI Radeon 9200 128MB low-profile, passive cooled AGP video card;
- Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA;
- Intel 10/100 Pro NIC.
Computer is a bit sluggish but usable.
Here are the Windows 7 hardware scores:
