With Vista you can run any video card, you just won't get to use new features like aero. For example, I am running one of my PCs essentially as a media server with a 4MB (yes thats MB not GB) Rendition 2100 video card. I don't do anything other than maybe installing updates or looking at logs, so a better video card simply isn't needed. With W7 the minimum reqs seem to suggest that an aero compatible video card (DX9 with 128MB) is the absolute minimum that is supported. Is anybody running W7 with a really old video card or one that is well below the suggested minimum reqs? Basically, I am just looking for confirmation that I can run the same old video cards on W7 that I currently have on Vista & XP. At the moment I don't have access to a PC that I can use for testing or I would test it myself.
Well it runs ok in virtual machines, which as a rule emulate some ancient crappy video adapter. You should be fine.