Hardware and Operating System Requirements
This topic describes the operating systems that fully support XNA Game Studio, and the computing hardware you need to use XNA Game Studio.
Supported Operating Systems
The following operating systems fully support XNA Game Studio.
| Operating system | Supported versions |
|---|---|
| Windows XP (see remarks below) |
|
| Windows Vista |
|
| Windows 7 |
|
Remarks
- Microsoft Windows Phone SDK does not support Windows XP.
- Windows Vista requires, at a minimum, Service Pack 2.
- Although XNA Game Studio itself is available only in English, it is supported under any of the available language settings on Windows.
- Administrator permissions are not required to run XNA Game Studio, but they are to install it. For Windows 7 and Windows Vista, elevated administrator permissions are required.
Hardware Requirements
To run XNA Framework games on a computer running a Windows operating system, you need a graphics card that supports, at a minimum, Shader Model 1.1 and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend using a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0, which is required by some samples and starter kits.
To execute and debug XNA Framework games for Windows Phone with the Windows Phone emulator, you need a graphics card that supports, at minimum, DirectX 10, with a supporting WDDM 1.1 driver.
Ensure your graphics card is using the latest driver. Check with your hardware vendor or access Microsoft Update to find the latest version of a driver.
To develop XNA Framework games for Xbox 360, you need a hard drive installed on your Xbox 360 console.
Other hardware requirements for XNA Game Studio are identical to those for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. For information about Microsoft Windows Phone SDK requirements, see the Microsoft Windows Phone SDK documentation.