In my first story on the unveiling of Windows 11, I remarked that the system requirements remained largely unchanged from Windows 10. Well, as it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Since the announcement, Microsoft has been incredibly obtuse and back-and-forth about the system requirements for Windows 11, and at this point, it seems like nobody has any clue anymore what’s true and what isn’t.
Windows 11 is arriving later this year as a free upgrade for Windows 10 users, but many are discovering that their hardware isn’t compatible. Microsoft has altered its minimum hardware requirements, and it’s the CPU changes that are most surprising here. Windows 11 will only officially support 8th Gen and newer Intel Core processors, alongside Apollo Lake and newer Pentium and Celeron processors.
[…]Windows 11 will also only officially support AMD Ryzen 2000 and newer processors, and 2nd Gen or newer EPYC chips.
That’s one hell of a hard cutoff, and one that seems entirely arbitrary. There’s nothing in Windows 11 that a first generation Ryzen or 6th or 7th generation Intel Core processor cannot handle, so why rule them out? A lot of people just assume Windows 11 will work on older processors than those listed, but there’s no confirmation from Microsoft that this is the case.
Aside from processor support, there’s another aspect that Microsoft is vague about: does Windows 11 require TPM 2.0 or TPM 1.2? Do you need a hardware TPM, or will a firmware TPM, available in about every modern x86 processor but turned off by default, suffice? Nobody seems to have the answers, and it’s leading to a lot of speculation ad uncertainty. The same applies to Secure Boot and UEFI – Microsoft lists both of them as requirements, but most news stories online just assume Microsoft doesn’t truly think of them as requirements, more as suggestions.
There’s a lot of uncertainty in the air here for Windows users.
Fun how you still have win32 support but not AMD64 from 5 years back ? Ain’t x86 x86 anymore ? What’s the justification then ? Spectre mitigation ? Better performance/watt of newer CPUs ?
Someday the software industry should really get their facts straight.
I think starting this point I’m gonna slowly drift backward toward pure minimalism.
Not going back to Atari ST though, that did the fucking job with just 8MHz and 4MB of RAM (regarding its limitations, of course).
But not that forced way forward toward something useless and stupid a “Creator Update” could’ve bring up without flipping the page of Windows 10.
There’s just so much going wrong down there.
And it’s not even about that Xth UI “revolution”.
Technology nowadays ain’t as fun and promising it once was.
It’s not vague or unclear! Your uninformed, so windows is running an android emulator. It’s not hard with wsl. That’s why they require newer processors, they want to have quality control. Like Apple with a bulldozer to their existing userbase. Like the building that collapsed in Miami Florida, anyone caught in the rubble is a casually.
Newer processor for “quality control” ? And what about deleting user files during a Windows 10 update, what a newer processor can help in that regard ? If they are into “quality control”, they’d better focus on something else than shoving an Android emulator down my throat when I don’t need it. I have all the Android hardware I need to run them. Instead to multiply the APIs, they should sure ensure the “quality control” of the existing API and UI. Fed up being their beta tester.
LMAO yeah during a global chip shortage when the BUDGET graphics cards are going for 400%+ over MSRP and millions upon millions are still reeling from the COVID shutdowns tell them they have to buy a new PC…this is gonna make Windows 8 look like XP and is gonna go over about as well as a big loud wet fart in a library, and nobody is gonna give a rat’s ass about having android phone crap designed for sub 7 inch screens on their 17 inch laptop.
But honestly nobody should be surprised as they have been stuck on the “every other release is trash and flops” since windows ME 21 years ago…say it with me, ME=Trash, XP=good, Vista=trash, Win 7=good, Win 8=trash, win 10=good now it looks like win 11= trash.
Oh and just FYI AMD just dropped support for MILLIONS of graphics cards that frankly still kick the crap out of anything you can get sub $300 so all those millions? won’t be taking Win 11 as they won’t have any drivers and that includes my wife who has a Ryzen 3 1200 with R9 280 which is frankly OP for what she uses her PC for and the grandkid on my hand me down FX-8320 which paired with an R9 380X blows through the eSports games she plays at over 60FPS without breaking a sweat…yet I’m supposed to toss both those PCs so MSFT can push a Mac ripoff with apps I can just get on my phone? GTFO of here MSFT, you’re drunk go sleep it off LOL.
At this point, Microsoft looks like they are trying to replicate the Macintosh clone model (back when Macintosh clones were a thing), where they will allow third-party manufacturers to use their OS but the systems have to meet tight specifications and they can arbitrarily cut systems off from future OS upgrades on a whim.
This is a departure from the old Microsoft model, where any system that could boot the OS was happily accepted. I mean, even Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 doesn’t meet the Windows 11 requirements (if you are getting vibes of Apple’s own systems being arbitrarily cut off from the newest OS release, you are not alone).
My guess is that Microsoft is shifting their “monetization strategy” from fictional online services revenue to fictional hardware sales revenue (after all, Microsoft has had a bad case of Apple envy since 2007 or so).
Come Windows 12, with lots of goodwill needlessly destroyed and Chromebooks killing it in the low-end, they will finally come to their senses and say “You know what? Selling upgrade licenses isn’t that bad of a monetization strategy after all”. In the meantime, let’s hope the artificial requirements they keep throwing our way are easy to get around.
I’m not so sure – yet another “all new app store”, forcing Home users to get Microsoft accounts, and requiring TPM (for remote attestation); could be construed as an attempt to shift to an “extract 30% out of app sales” revenue stream.
Allowing third-party payment processors is a major capitulation with regards to their strategy of monetization via online services. Simply put, Microsoft’s dream of getting a cut from every copy of Photoshop sold is dead. But I stand corrected, they are not shifting from online services entirely. My guess is that they are now opting for a strategy that involves a mix of online services and hardware sales. And by “hardware sales” I don’t just mean their own Surface line but licensing revenue from third-party manufacturers selling systems with Windows pre-installed.
This is why I am personally getting Apple vibes: I can’t stop thinking that artificial requirements are used to arbitrarily cut off systems from OS upgrades so that sales of new systems are encouraged, because that’s where the money is.
Compare and contrast with Windows 10, where a 32-bit CPU and 1GB of RAM were listed as the “minimum requirements” as to encourage literally everyone with a (half-)functioning PC to jump onto the online services wagon of Windows 10 (whether those users actually used any of those online services is another question).
In summary….That’s because they have Nadella at the helm. He is nothing more that a new too. Notice windows went macos with updates? Notice how it went free as in update. Next is arm, then hardware lockout. How many arm vendors have open firmware..??? Revenue is no longer windows, it’s office and company. So why keep selling windows license….. Embrace Linux….it’s pretty clear.
Jesus. Some of you have no clue…
Are you really trying to compare Windows 11 needing TPM 2.0 and a specific x86 ISA level to the Mac Clones of the 90s.
What?
It’s not about ISA.
It’s about arm giving everyone the chance to lock the bootloader. In a honesty, Arm devices are usually single use, locked hardware, throw away and custom. Arm is turning into the redhead stepchild. It’s impossible to justify locking up an x86 system, but they tried with uefi and secure boot.
I admit I am not afraid to make bold comparisons, because I like to think “strategically”. In the past, Microsoft welcomed any system that could boot the new version of their OS because their main source of revenue was upgrade licenses. Now, they are giving out upgrades for free and suddenly appear to be inexplicably picky about hardware. I mean, when Windows 10 supported 32-bit CPUs with 1GB of RAM but now they cut off 7-th gen Intel processors and 1st gen Ryzens and also require the user to dig into the EFI settings and enable TPM and whatnot, it’s clear the strategy has changed. The old MacOS licensing model is the closest that comes to mind.
They are not inexplicably picky about HW. They want to standardize their platform around a specific security architecture, and they want to try to move their future platforms away from meltdown/spectre.
Windows licenses haven’t been the main source of revenue for Microsoft in a long time.
Comparing it to the Mac Clones from the 90s makes no sense. It’s like you are to relate things to something you are familiar with.
Nope. I don’t buy the Spectre boogeyman. Firmware mitigations exist, and no viable exploit exists either. This is forced scrappage of still-functioning systems.
The mitigations for those exploits take a toll in performance. They want to have a common baseline for their new version of the OS. It’s fascinating how you feel that to be “far fetched,” and yet the comparison to the mac clones of the 90s makes perfect “sense” to you.
Microsoft is a profit corporation. If your system is so old that it is not supported by their latest OS revision, and you lack the disposable income to upgrade, this is a clear indication you’re not their target market.
So my 6th generation Intel Core i-7 6700HQ with 4 cores and 2.8GHz is “not enough” for a make up update , Windows 10.whatever, but all the other specs i need are in my notebook, all of them even TPM 2.0, but my CPU is “old”
Old but enough to play most games (paired with a GTX 1070) . Reallity is i don’t need to upgrade until a few years ago, not my operating system of course. So i think this is not going to be for a long time, someday is probable MSFT is going to see the low adoption number and change some of these fake rules (fake because none of them are really important for an operating system to work, only the 64 bits part and, of course RAM and Disk)
Every processor from the last 7/8 years can work with it, they simply want us to pay a new Windows Tax in new hardware, the “free upgrade” part is not really for everyone. I can stick with W10 for a while, and then go back to Linux. Pretty much 90% of my work is done over a browser or a code editor. Nobody really needs Windows right now.
Just download 2019 LTSC. It is supported until 2029. You also avoid all the bloat,
Microsoft want W11 to have an optimum user experience – not a five minute boot process and thrashing disks like the absolutely hopeless Windows 7 netbooks sold a decade ago. If they lose some existing users so be it.
Dude if you think a Ryzen 1600AF or 6th gen Core i7 with NVME is “thrashing” can I have some of what you are smoking? Because it must be kickin. Hell my wife is on a Ryzen 3 1200 and the granddaughter on my hand me down FX-8320 both with SSDs and 16Gb of RAM and it literally takes longer for their FB pages to load in than it does going from cold boot to desktop.
And LTSC? Dude seriously you have GOT to be high if you expect millions to pay a monthly service fee just to use windows…do you happen to work in Redmond?
Try reading before commenting. Otherwise you come across as a complete idiot.
I was talking about wildly optimistic minimum requirements for Windows TEN – 1GHz dual CPU and 1GB RAM. for 32 bit. That is early 2000s hardware.
Millions of absolutely shitty netbooks – 1GHz mobile CPUs with 1GB of RAM – were sold with Windows 7. They could barely even web browse without having a heart attack. MS don’t want a repeat of that fiasco.
LTSC is a free ‘trial’ download that never expires. MS don’t give a shit if it is only used for private use. In fact they would rather you used pirated Windows than ‘communist’ Linux.
BTW Windows 10 EOL is September 2025. It may be extended. So no need to panic.
Bruh do you even HAVE a netbook? Have you TRIED it with Win 10? because guess what Sparky…I got one, an AMD E350 given to me by my late father that I upgraded with 8Gb of RAM and an SSD and guess what? Runs Win 10 perfectly fine, in fact I still use it on service calls for testing Wifi issues and checking security cams.
But you can throw as many matches on as many strawmen as ya want, don’t change the fact you just said with a straight face that people should buy LTSC which is a monthly rental just to get support on Windows and again if you think a CPU like a 6th gen Core i7 or a Ryzen 1xxx is “thrashing” anything or isn’t frankly seriously OP for even gaming? Dude you have got to be either high or working at Redmond.
BTW just to show how completely stupid and bullshit the Win 11 reqs are please enjoy this lovely video of an i7 4770 VS 1600af playing the popular titles with what was before the cryptoscum made GPUs insane a $100 GPU…and they are easily getting 100FPS+ on most titles so ya can’t even argue that they need those insane reqs for gaming as even gaming these now no longer supported chips kick ass..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwOnKhCce28
@bassbeat,
It is pretty obvious to anyone with two working brains cells that 8GB or RAM and an SSD will solve the trashing problem. So it is a totally idiotic to compare it with the ‘standard’ 1GB and spinning HD that most netbooks were sold with.
I might as well claim my dual 1000MHz P3 with 2GB of ECC RAM and SCSI RAID was standard PC hardware in 2001.
Thom, could you clarify the summary? The more stringent requirements are only for PC’s to be able to wear the badge of, ‘Designed for WIndows 11’. Any device that could run Windows 10 will be able to run 11, albeit with possibly reduced functionality.
You don’t want facts getting in the way of clickbait headlines.
Apparently Intel wasn’t too happy with the totally unrealistic minimum requirements of Windows 7 and 10. Computer store staff would tell people to not even consider those garbage Atom powered W10 budget laptops. (1.6GHz Atom with 2GB RAM and 32GB EMMC ),
Is it not the whole point of a new version to bump up the minimum requirements?
It would be weird to do that inside the W10 cycle – they have no good system in place to say: from now on you won’t get functional updates any more, but you will get security updates. Yet they can’t continue full functional updates to systems with the minimal W10 requirements forever. So the obvious way forward is to create a new major version with updated requirements.
Rather the new features typically require new hardware that isn’t in older models. Supposedly this has a lot to do with a large increase in firmware attacks, so TPM 2.0 modules and speculative execution (Spectre) bug fixes in newer CPUs are likely to be the main reason for the version bump.
Bingo!
Furthermore, Microsoft wants security and x86 level parity across their consumer windows platforms (11 for desktop and Xbox). To prune the store backend complexity.
This feels sensible to me. Part of the reason XP was such a disaster to deprecate was it encompassed machines that were 20+ years old. Microsoft ended up taking the flack for users not upgrading during that period.
With windows 10/11 becoming rolling releases, they Need a way or point to stop supporting older machines. Or they risk repeating history.
Exactly. Backwards compatibility is hard and expensive. By deprecating older systems they can simplify a lot of things. For example when writing SIMD code to target AVX as the minimum and to forget about the previous mess that it’s MMX/SSE2/3, take for granted that all the processors support the virtualization instructions, etc
You need to be able to tell the difference between good portable good and kruft. Writig good portable code which is happy with different platforms or versions is trivial. It is really really trivial if you design this in from the start. Well designed and functional code doesn’t magically rot. It doesn’t become more unreliable. It doesn’t become harder to maintain. If you have design and coded things properly at the beginning you can mostly leave it alone.
There is a difference between this and “bloat” caused by bad design descisions, feature creep, and bad code.
Most of Windows or the DDK wraps lower level and historical code. Using MMX/SSE2/3 as an argument really is a stretch! It’s also the mentality which brought is the much hated and useless “flat design”. As for simplifying things you’re talking like someone who is happy spending your money or other people’s money on the latest shiny thing, or thinking like an accountant. The world doesn’t work like that.
Some random manager trying to look tough and a wet behind the ears Microsoft coder wanting to throw my computers on the scrapheap because they are not up to the task of their own jobs even when they have a market monopoly position and billions in revenue need to wake up. I am not paying for their mistakes or outsourced costs. If Microsoft or Intel or any other IHV wants to push this in my mind they can be held to account by regulators or lawyers or, simply, lose business.
Carry on using Windows 10 then. By the sounds of it, by the time Win10 is out of support, your hardware would be so woefully outdated you should donate it to a museum.
Yeah, so much so people will wonder how we ever managed to be productive with that kind of crap. Stunning !
I’ve got an Athlon 4000+ desktop floating around. It weigh about 15Kg. It’s slower than a Raspberry Pi. infinitely noisier and about 20x the power consumption .But it can barely play 720p video.
Neither does a Raspberry Pi without its GPU. Decoding in full software is very demanding for any CPU. But Epyc.
The desktop actually has a 512MB Nvidia GPU. It is still as slow as treacle. To get Raspberry Pi 4 resolution (4K @30Hz) you would need to add an Nvidia 1030.
Perhaps I chose a bad example. Windows has to run programs from 20 years ago (except the ones that make no sense like antivirus) but it doesn´t have to run in hardware from 20 years ago.
Windows XP was released in 2001. Are you really saying that it supported PCs made in 1981 (20 years prior to 2001)? The original IBM PC 5150 came out in that year!
The minimum requirements of XP required a Pentium MMX 233 MHz CPU, which were released in 1997. That is only 4 years before XP was released.
It 100% ran on lower spec than that because I used to :p
I used 20 years as an off-hand (as I’m sure you knew) But yes, even if we take 2021-1997. XP is Still in use under extended licences for over 20 years. The NHS in the UK and the US military are just to examples of where XP (embedded in particular) is still in active use in equipment.
Windows XP also shipped on machines running late model Core2’s. Sure, 20 years is an exaggeration, but that was easily 10 years worth of hardware changes, in an era where we went from 233MHz single core 32-bit processors to 64-bit quad core’s running at 3GHz
My old Athlon 4000+ was insanely fast on XP and Windows 2000. I took it out of storage and installed Windows 10. It would barely run.
@Brisvegas: Windows 10 barely runs on that Athlon 4000+ because of the immense telemetry overhead. I have a 2nd gen Atom based netbook that shipped with Windows 7 and ran it surprisingly well, and it is even faster with OpenBSD. I installed Windows 10 on it for kicks and found it so slow it was literally unusable (clicking on the Start button and waiting 30+ seconds for it to render, touchscreen stopped working for long periods, etc). I looked at my router logs and saw that the netbook was thrashing the network with requests to Microsoft owned domains, with spikes in traffic coinciding with the device lurching to a halt. The underpowered hardware exposed just how much telemetry and tracking goes on in Windows 10 compared to Windows 7. More powerful machines won’t reveal this in such a direct, tangible fashion as they are able to handle the massive overhead, but when the device in question is barely more powerful than the router it’s attached to, Microsoft’s data slurping rears its ugly head.
@Morgan.
I also used tried 32 bit Ubuntu. It was still slow but used less resources. FreeBSD was reasonable. Haiku was very fast but did nothing useful.
When you can buy a used laptop that is 4x as fast and uses 1/10the the energy for <$50 there is really no point retaining old hardware.
The lowest spec I used on XP was a Pentium 900 mobile. It was extremely slow. Even a 1Gz Athlon A (the fastest consumer CPU at the time) wasn’t particularly good. It only became fast on Core 2 or equivalent with at least 4GB of RAM. .
I guess they are just testing waters and reaction and the final release will run on most systems with x86-64 CPUs released in the past decade regardless.
I’m glad they’ve upped the storage requirement to 64GB and RAM to 4GB. That has been long overdue.
I just don’t understand why Windows takes up so much space. I bet 20% of that space is taken up by stuff that doesn’t actually get used, and another 40% with stuff you’ll only see used in edge cases
Clippy ?
Maybe because Windows supports software written for the past 26 years unlike other “lean” OSes.
Jokes aside WinSxS is the largest directory for a fresh Windows installation.
And even this is barely usable minimum.
In my experience in 3rd world countries, everyone still uses older hardware. Lots & lots of Win7, but nowadays, Win10 is very widely used, as it runs just fine on older PCs. So if Win11 doesn’t run on those 2nd & 3rd gen i5’s, I foresee Win10 being the new WinXP.
In an odd way, i think that’s what Microsoft were hoping for.
Microsoft is still trying to copy Apple’s play. Microsoft wants tighter control, lock-in and is dead set implementing an “all new” app store. Who can blame them looking at Google Play, Apple’s App Store and Steam store. Unfortunately, you can always count on Microsoft having incompent management…Always. – Microsoft Windows 11 “lipstick on a pig” Edition.
The lack of development/innovation this past decade is solely down to management stupidity.”Optimum user experience” and “greater security” are merely marketing drivel to push for rebooting revenue streams and improving product monetization.
However, Microsoft is not only to blame for the stagnating status quo. Hardware manufactorers have also been lethargic when it comes to product development.
What kind of hardware improvement you need to run Office or browse the web ? Speaking about gaming rigs then ? I don’t know if you follow the tech news, but AMD is better than Intel now… Guess they did their homework right.
The answer is simple and the verge has it wrong and it critical to work out what going on here.
https://www.techarp.com/guides/complete-meltdown-spectre-cpu-list/2/
Not all Ryzen 2000 processor are supported. The AMD Ryzen 5 2400G and AMD Ryzen 5 2200G are not.
What I can take about Microsoft Min CPU requirements provided you need a x86-64-v3 in CPU micro-architecture levels that does not suffer from spectre/meltdown because Windows 11 does not have the extra code to fix those problems. Yes that draws the line exactly where Microsoft has put it. Yes it a soft cpu limit because there are cpus that support x86-64-v3 in CPU micro-architecture levels that are vulnerable to spectre/meltdown so the code will run but be unsafe.
There is a problem here AMD recommends doing the spectre v1 and spectre v2 protections even on the newer CPUs that don’t have the spectre fault. So windows 11 is disobeying AMD recommendation here hopefully those who take up windows 11 don’t find out that this recommendation is because spectre v1/v2 protections are preventing some other non disclosed bug. This is not the first time Microsoft has disobeyed AMD or Intel instructions on this stuff the last time users did end up quite badly burnt.
Yes it would make sense if the line was at x86-64-v3 in CPU micro-architecture levels instead of where it is. AMD and Intel have agree where you should split your cpus with CPU micro-architecture levels and do security recommendations to this since 2020.
The Windows 11 cut off is unfortunately not arbitrary and worst does not align with where AMD or Intel as CPU vendors say it should be.
I can also understand Microsoft being vague they don’t want to public admit that some of the reason why Windows 11 is faster in some benchmarks is that Windows 11 does not have the security mitigations ARM, AMD and Intel recommend.
There’s so much drivel in this comment it’s painful to read. There are no OoOE CPUs under the Sun which are not affected by the Spectre vulnerabilities.
Here, Ryzen 5000 CPU:
# grep -R . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Mitigation: Full AMD retpoline, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP: always-on, RSB filling
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/itlb_multihit:Not affected
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/mds:Not affected
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/l1tf:Not affected
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spec_store_bypass:Mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/tsx_async_abort:Not affected
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v1:Mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/srbds:Not affected
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/meltdown:Not affected
That’s because the 2400G and 2200G APUs are not 2nd Gen Ryzen products, they are based on 1st Gen Ryzen. The same is true for each new generation of Ryzen APUs; the 3xxxG APU series is based on the 2nd Gen Ryzen 2xxx CPU series. Blame AMD for this confusing naming scheme, they aren’t as bad as Intel for inexplicable CPU naming conventions, but they could do better.
There’s no mention of minimum CPU requirements — just RAM, storage, EUFI, and TPM 2.0.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/windows-11-requirements
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/windows-processor-requirements
This above is where you find the CPU
garyd Microsoft does not put them in the in the most straight forwards place.
https://download.microsoft.com/download/7/8/8/788bf5ab-0751-4928-a22c-dffdc23c27f2/Minimum%20Hardware%20Requirements%20for%20Windows%2011.pdf
This here is the true requirements and being on the CPU lists is under “REQUIRED: Must include/implement the component” so its not optional. If you your CPU is not on the list for windows 11 you don’t meed the requirements for Windows 11 end of story.
–Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with two or more cores on a compatible 64-bit processor or system on a chip (SoC).–
On that link you gave is this. Note the “compatible 64-bit processor” is a link that leads to the
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/windows-processor-requirements
Again not optional the CPU you wish to use must be on the list.
I’ll be surprised if they enforce this as I’ve run Windows 10 on much older CPUs than listed for those builds — besides, it’s not as if Windows 10 will be EOL when 11 is available for general release.
–I’ll be surprised if they enforce this as I’ve run Windows 10 on much older CPUs than listed for those builds–
This is more dangerous than it first appears. The known CPU defects in the CPU not support by Windows 10 officially are not fixed for not supported CPUs as in CPUs not on the list. This does lead to some of the cases of people using CPU not on the list having crashes that people using on the list will not. This does also lead to lower security. Yes if something goes wrong and you are not using a supported CPU you are the one responsible for the failure.
garyd something important to remember when windows 10 was released in 2015 we were told windows 10 would be the last.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows
Yes the next was meant to be software a a service. As in something you could pay so much to year for it to be maintained.
October 14th, 2025 being marked as Windows 10 end of life now is wrong because when it was sold in 2015 it was not meant to go end of life ever. Some ways Microsoft should be done for false marketing over this.
Microsoft provided workarounds in Windows for the Pentium FDIV bug so supporting older CPU’s and mitigating issues isn’t without precedent. Microsoft have £136 Billion of cash and investments so it’s not as if they cannot afford to pay for mitigations.
Intel did know about the security design errors prior to manufacture so it is not as if they are without liability. Intel could always spend some of their $31 Billion cash mountain on providing new CPU’s for old sockets for free.
Why should we not only subsidise their mistakes but give them more cash so they can profit even more from this?
No, there are neither stability nor security issues — my Ivy Bridge i5 CPU isn’t on the list for 21H1 and it runs just fine.
HollyB
–Intel did know about the security design errors prior to manufacture so it is not as if they are without liability. Intel could always spend some of their $31 Billion cash mountain on providing new CPU’s for old sockets for free.–
$31 billion is not as much cash money as it first appears for Intel. That complete $31 billion can be consumed in construction of one new fab. This has happened in the past when fab construction has taken a wrong turn. Intel is not exactly that flush for cash because making silicon is quite expensive process.
Intel and AMD do both attempt to provide guidance to operation system makers due to the reality both of them normally cannot afford to provide replacements. So we need the operation system makers to follow Intel/AMD direction or argue with Intel/AMD for a change in direction.
–Microsoft provided workarounds in Windows for the Pentium FDIV bug so supporting older CPU’s and mitigating issues isn’t without precedent.–
This here is only half the story. The reality is intel developers developed that workaround to fix to FDIV bug and provided to Microsoft. Microsoft did not pay for that development time Intel did. Same is true with spectre and meltdown workarounds that AMD and Intel paid for the development of them for windows and linux and freebsd and mac os. Intel and AMD may not be providing new chips but they have been providing developer time to resolve the problems so every works without costing the major OS makers very much at all.
Do note with Windows 11 Microsoft has not broken support at Microarchitecture levels that AMD and Intel has come up with. If Microsoft was doing full x86-64-v3 this would support all Rizen chips from amd and would still have the spectre and meltdown work arounds. So the windows 11 list of support processes does not match how AMD and Intel both provide direction for support and assistance in implementation. Yes cut at x86-64-v3 would still leave you out in the cold with a really old system HollyB but it would be still in alignment with CPU vendor guidance.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=spectre-meltdown-2&num=11
What would be the reason why Microsoft would want to disobey the direction simple the spectre/meltdown…/”older cpu” workarounds have performance cost. So there are a few cases where Windows 11 is show as faster than Windows 10 when look closer its just that the mitigations are missing . Please note neither AMD or Intel recommend that you implement a OS with those mitigations missing so their might be other CPU faults there that these mitigations are preventing. This is something that it should be like Linux where the mitigations are on by default because the CPU vendor recommends it with a possible option for a person who understands the risks to turn the mitigations off to gain the performance.
HollyB yes I know it can annoying that you stuff is not support. It a lot more of a worry to me when I know what Microsoft is doing with Windows 11 is basically wild wild west of making unique system that could possible hit CPU defects that none of the other Intel/AMD/ARM using OSs it going to hit because the other operating systems are obeying the CPU vendors guidance.
Lot of ways I see this as benchmark cheating. Poorly done benchmark cheating that could have major end user security risks. CPU vendors providing guidance to OS vendors is nothing new. Bad things do tend to happen when OS vendors decide to either disobey or disregard CPU vendor provided guidance.
garyd –No, there are neither stability nor security issues — my Ivy Bridge i5 CPU isn’t on the list for 21H1 and it runs just fine.–
Ivy Bridge i5 to run with proper security there is 4 mitigations that are missing from Windows 10 21H1. There was a slight performance uplift in places with Windows 10 21H1 that comes from those mitigations being removed. Sorry just because something runs does not mean its secure or functioning completely correctly.
garyd can you now see why it dangerous for people like you who are not up on what mitigations should be there. That Ivy Bridge i5 you are effectively walking around with the pants around you ankles and you are totally not aware that is the case.
Yes Microsoft removing CPU off the list they don’t kindly tell people we have removed X cpu and we have remove the mitigations for users of that cpu for a little more speed.
Please describe the security issues to me in terms that a cyber security engineer can understand.
To me the hardware requirements seem pretty clear. The problem is the incompetent reporting that is bringing pointles questions that already have been answered. Other dumb people don’t understand that media is not the source of facts, they are merely a proxy of information and reporting their own interpretation of it. Ignore the media and instead only focus on Microsoft’s official documentation for technical requirements.
A wonderful comment with 0% useful information.
Not exactly, the ending sentence tell everything one should know : “only focus on Microsoft’s official documentation for technical requirements”
Provided said documentation is relevant and accurate.
HOW TO CHECK FOR COMPATIBILITY – On the https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11 page there is a link to PC HEALTH CHECK Application from Microsoft. This application will also tell you IF your PC IS or IS NOT compatible with Windows 11. It turned out I had to enable TPM in BIOS before I got the green tick of compatible!
The Application is in a blue box headed “Check for compatibility”, or you can directly get the App from this link https://aka.ms/GetPCHealthCheckApp
At the end of the day the end user is paying for the Wintel alliance’s mistakes and management wheezes. In an employment context this is why unions were invented and why courts exist to resolve disputes. From my position and lost of other people including people still working in or working with IT professionally, and small and fairly sizable buisenesses the response has been fairly cool. There is also the matter of regulation and abuse of market power and collusion.
There’s far too many people making excuses for the Wintel alliance. It’s not for them whether they be wet behind the ears or running the very latest shiny computer to push their noses into the affairs of people who dissent, or get behind other peoples computers being thrown on the scrapheap.
My computers are perfectly capable of running business class software with room to spare. Any modern OS is functional enough and runs well. For someone to push “corporate made law” and arbitrary cut off points to cover for their own mistakes and collusion in my face is not going to win me over nor is it going to make me spend money to reward them.
America pretty much destroyed the European computer industry then the phone industry and by this destroyed the European chip manufacturing industry. Yes, Europe used to supply 40% of the worlds chips until the collapse of the phone industry ripped the guts out of R&D and manufacture.
I think Microsoft and Intel have crossed a line and it’s time for a hard divorce.
Then what are you going to do ? x86, arm and risc-v are USA based now. What is the EU left with ? Divorcing from what ? What are the viable options available ?
It’s above my pay grade but this automatic assumption the US are our friends in all things has to end. I know plenty of Americans hate the monoculture too. The UK has its share of quislings along with pro-Russian quislings in Poland and Hungary. To keep things sane this probably comes down to the politicians and diplomats and regulators in the EU. Nobody wants a trade war or nationalism but I can live with cutting the cord.
“pro-Russian quislings in Poland”
Irony is that current Polish government is quite rusofobic.
RISC-V is technically based in Switzerland.
That doesn’t change the fact that the Foundation that rebased to Switzerland in late 2019 is not fabricating chips.
That also doesn’t change the fact that RISC-V is based in Switzerland.
I wonder why my Skylake CPU is not supported. Were there any significant changes made for 8th gen? Intel is still iterating upon the *lake family.
Yes. 8th generation Core changed the microarchitecture to mitigate security attacks via speculation and SMT (meltdown, etc).
I think they also fixed a lot of the transactional memory bugs.