Windows 11’s List of Supported CPUs Is Missing Processors That Were Released Only Four Years Ago

Tsing

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Microsoft has published a list of Intel and AMD processors that are officially supported by the next version of its popular operating system, Windows 11. The list of supported CPUs has actually shocked many enthusiasts who plan to upgrade, as it’s missing a ton of popular chips that were released only a few years ago. These include early Ryzen chips, early Threadripper chips, and all Intel CPUs released prior to Coffee Lake (e.g., 6th and 7th Gen Core processors). It isn’t clear whether Microsoft will add older CPUs to its Windows 11 support list at a later date, but this could be another headache on top of the operating system’s mandatory TPM (Trusted Platform Module) requirement—apparently, users will need a motherboard with a TPM 2.0 (soft floor) or 1.2 (hard floor) module installed in order to run the new OS...

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Meh, it’s only a kick in the nuts if they also discontinued security updates for 10 at the same time. By the time all of the kinks are worked out a lot of people will have upgraded.
 
Yeah… Win10 still gets support for another 3 or 4 years. Plenty of time to move forward.

And four years only seems young because it’s still Skylake - it’s the security platform they are trying to get people to upgrade, not necessarily for power.
 
I guess my Sandy Bridge is going to have to tough it out a bit longer. Still on the fence as to whether I’m going the M1+ or AMD apu route.
 
Yeah… Win10 still gets support for another 3 or 4 years. Plenty of time to move forward.
No, not really. I might have accepted that 10 years ago, but nowadays you don't upgrade twice a year. My main rig cpu is already 2 years old, and I don't have any inclination to upgrade it for at least 2 more years. Not to mention secondary systems, that I have zero reason to upgrade as the system is already overkill for the task.

But since Windows 11 will be subscription based, and/or ad-supported (pay to remove ads and unlock enthusiast features like control panel access) it is not an upgrade path I'll likely take anyway.
 
D*mn, none of my pcs are windows 11 compatible LoL. And from work maybe 2 or 3.

MS is axing millions of fully working, perfectly fine PCs/laptops with this.

I have installed windows 10 on even core2duo pcs probably 12yo or more.

I hoped for at least SandyBridge and up would be supported but not even having 1st gen Threadripper is ridiculous.
 
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I’ve been having the discussion with others that one of the biggest problems with windows in general is unreasonable insistence on backwards compatibility. My understanding is that win 10 eol will be the end of 2025, which means skylake will be 10 years old at that point. If you can’t be bothered to upgrade once every 10 years, it’s probably time to move to an i device / chrome book as your primary computing device, or start picking your favorite Linux distro now.

There are likely plenty of reasons to be annoyed with Microsoft for Win 11, but not supporting 10 year old hardware at the cut over to win 11 shouldn’t be one of them.
 
I ask again, as I did in the video card article, what is " supported" really?
It really feels like a license to do even less, which is very very near complete zero already.... but seriously, unless you actively pay someone, you know business style, what the heck is ' support' for an end user? ... In an IT world where updates break things every other time regardless of ' support' and to get crap troubleshooted you have to go to a forum or some such, and pray enough others have the same issue for it to maybe, juuuust maybe it will be looked at, what is support?
Very slightly less than zero I guess (?).
 
I ask again, as I did in the video card article, what is " supported" really?
It really feels like a license to do even less, which is very very near complete zero already.... but seriously, unless you actively pay someone, you know business style, what the heck is ' support' for an end user? ... In an IT world where updates break things every other time regardless of ' support' and to get crap troubleshooted you have to go to a forum or some such, and pray enough others have the same issue for it to maybe, juuuust maybe it will be looked at, what is support?
Very slightly less than zero I guess (?).
In what world does windows update break “normal” PCs?

i just looked up my old APU build. I purchased it on Black Friday 2015. I installed win 7 and used the free upgrade to win 10, and used it daily until roughly Feb this year. As I was decommissioning the system, I marveled at how the system was stable with no issues for roughly 5 years. The only maintenance I ever needed to do with it was top off the water on the custom loop made of left over components from my 2003 loop about 1/year.

i don’t even remember the system blue screening, let alone getting bricked from an update.
 
So I was trying to figure out exactly why they had chose 8th gen as the breakpoint.

I honestly can't. 9th gen included hardware fixes for some vulnerabilities, so that would have made some sense.

But 6th/7th/8th generations were all... Skylake, better iGPU, and sometimes we broke the socket because we could.

So, I still argue there should be some cutoff for backwards compatibility based on security, not so much performance. But I can't see much evidence of that here, I have to admit. Maybe there were changes in chipset on the Intel side (Coffee did jump to a new socket), or maybe it has more to do with mobile side (Whiskey Lake). On the AMD side, I can't see much rational for supporting Zen+ and not Zen though...
 
I’ve been having the discussion with others that one of the biggest problems with windows in general is unreasonable insistence on backwards compatibility. My understanding is that win 10 eol will be the end of 2025, which means skylake will be 10 years old at that point. If you can’t be bothered to upgrade once every 10 years, it’s probably time to move to an i device / chrome book as your primary computing device, or start picking your favorite Linux distro now.

There are likely plenty of reasons to be annoyed with Microsoft for Win 11, but not supporting 10 year old hardware at the cut over to win 11 shouldn’t be one of them.
You are kidding right? The x86 platform is built on compatibility that's why it is so successful, because I can run software from 1991 just as well as software from 2021 on the same system.
It's not about how old a system is. If it is still suitable for the task, why should it be relegated to a landfill when it's still usable? This is consumerism on steroids. We should strive to maximize the life span of everything, not throw them out because MS can save a bit in development costs if they cut support for a bunch of perfectly good PCs.
In what world does windows update break “normal” PCs?
What world? Have you been in a coma for the past 5 years? because only then I can excuse this blatant denial of reality. How many people had their systems in an infinite update -> fail ->update loop? Or worse the incident were ms even had to redact an update as it was deleting users documents?
The update loop happened to me on one of my computers as well it kept restarting but always returning with updating failed when it tried to install 20h2.
i just looked up my old APU build. I purchased it on Black Friday 2015. I installed win 7 and used the free upgrade to win 10, and used it daily until roughly Feb this year. As I was decommissioning the system, I marveled at how the system was stable with no issues for roughly 5 years. The only maintenance I ever needed to do with it was top off the water on the custom loop made of left over components from my 2003 loop about 1/year.

i don’t even remember the system blue screening, let alone getting bricked from an update.
Yes, your sample size of one is very impressive. I installed dozens of PCs where Windows 10 didn't cause problems.
 
In what world does windows update break “normal” PCs?

i just looked up my old APU build. I purchased it on Black Friday 2015. I installed win 7 and used the free upgrade to win 10, and used it daily until roughly Feb this year. As I was decommissioning the system, I marveled at how the system was stable with no issues for roughly 5 years. The only maintenance I ever needed to do with it was top off the water on the custom loop made of left over components from my 2003 loop about 1/year.

i don’t even remember the system blue screening, let alone getting bricked from an update.
I did have an update that crashed completely my w10 computer, as in dead. I figured it out after a day or 2. Another messed up sleep, another messed up shutting down, I think both went away by now surely dumb uodate luck, but I stopped caring about those a while ago, as after seeing my computer die after an update, I was like meh, it still works. Yes windows can mess things no problem. Other programs constantly updating until broken, on top of this reverting gets a little harder bit by bit, as is not having available an old version, things like that... This update obsession is creating all kinds of problems, i see this at work as well, and that surely is more curated. The general IT environment of always updating, often it seems for updates sake has questionable merits in my opinion.
 
You are kidding right? The x86 platform is built on compatibility that's why it is so successful, because I can run software from 1991 just as well as software from 2021 on the same system.
It's not about how old a system is. If it is still suitable for the task, why should it be relegated to a landfill when it's still usable? This is consumerism on steroids. We should strive to maximize the life span of everything, not throw them out because MS can save a bit in development costs if they cut support for a bunch of perfectly good PCs.

What world? Have you been in a coma for the past 5 years? because only then I can excuse this blatant denial of reality. How many people had their systems in an infinite update -> fail ->update loop? Or worse the incident were ms even had to redact an update as it was deleting users documents?
The update loop happened to me on one of my computers as well it kept restarting but always returning with updating failed when it tried to install 20h2.

Yes, your sample size of one is very impressive. I installed dozens of PCs where Windows 10 didn't cause problems.
I also installed hundreds of PCs since Win98 and I can say that Windows 7/10 are the ones that has given me less trouble.
 
I also installed hundreds of PCs since Win98 and I can say that Windows 7/10 are the ones that has given me less trouble.
The issues with 10 all come from forced updates that interrupts your work, changes functionality, and occasionally cause deeper issues, like the reboot loop or documents going missing. The question wasn't how often it happens, the entire issue's existence was questioned.
 
The issues with 10 all come from forced updates that interrupts your work, changes functionality, and occasionally cause deeper issues, like the reboot loop or documents going missing. The question wasn't how often it happens, the entire issue's existence was questioned.
You know you can schedule updates, right? From what I’ve seen, the problems come from people not treating windows like an appliance. 4 win 10 machines at home, not a single update issue. Over 200 retail win10 pro machines at my last job, used basically as thin clients (only software installed office, chrome, and Citrix client), no issues.

I know issues have existed for a subset of the install base, but I’ve only seen those issues with a few friends who go and make a bunch of “tweaks” to the OS.
 
First the announcement from AMD though about dropping support on just 6 year old cards, and now this....
 
You know you can schedule updates, right? From what I’ve seen, the problems come from people not treating windows like an appliance. 4 win 10 machines at home, not a single update issue. Over 200 retail win10 pro machines at my last job, used basically as thin clients (only software installed office, chrome, and Citrix client), no issues.

I know issues have existed for a subset of the install base, but I’ve only seen those issues with a few friends who go and make a bunch of “tweaks” to the OS.
Of course you have no issues if its only used as a client and not as an actual workstation. I have lost days of work numerous times on my workstations due to w10 rebooting during the weekend while I was away from the computer. The scheduling of updates was only added in 19h2 I think, before that it would reboot randomly without consent. And even after that if you don't schedule the update within a certain time frame it will no longer give you an option to put it off. And this with the professional version not even the measly home variant.

Yes a subset of users who actually install more than 3 softwares on their computer and would use it as a power user. Not even Windows95 had issues if you only put office on it and only had it on from 9-5.
 
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