Windows compatibility with Phenom

[frodotheturtle]

So someone gave me an old system (actually my first non macOS system) and it didn't have any drives in it. Luckily i had an old drive lying around but it dosent have an operating system installed. The system has an AMD Phenom X6 1055t installed in a ASRock 890GM Pro3 board and 16gb of Ram and i've been told this system can only go to windows 7. Is this true and if it is why?

[VIVO-US]

That system should work with Windows 10.  The drivers only go up to Windows 7, but those will usually work fine installed to Win10.  I've done that plenty of times with old AMD systems, some with CPUs and other parts even older than the one you have.

 

You can try installing Windows 10 without a key and see how things work.  If there are problems, you can replace it with Windows 7 at any time.

[Eigenvektor]

Probably because there are no Windows 10 drivers for the board's components. Windows 7 drivers should work.

 

I've got a laptop that originally came with Windows Vista and another one that came with Windows 7, and both run Windows 10 just fine.

[Valkyrie Lenneth]

win10 is backward compatible btw

 

BUT NOT WITH ALL DRIVERS,  it MOSTLY IS

[minibois]

My AMD Athlon X2 255 (Same socket/platform and around the same age) was able to run Windows 10 just fine. (about as 'just fine' a 2010 dual core CPU could get.. but ya know).

[frodotheturtle]

Just now, minibois said:

My AMD Athlon X2 255 (Same socket/platform and around the same age) was able to run Windows 10 just fine. (about as 'just fine' a 2010 dual core CPU could get.. but ya know).

When i first booted into BIOS and saw the speck list i was shocked it didn't natively support Windows 10. Its kinda funny because i don't own a computer newer then 2013 and my daily drivers an 09 mac pro.

[Mira Yurizaki]

When Microsoft says they won't support Windows on older hardware, it just means they won't provide you with help if you're running that Windows on said hardware. It doesn't mean the hardware won't actually run Windows unless Windows is actually using a hardware feature that got standardized. Such as the case with Windows 8.1 when Microsoft required that the CPU support the CMPXCHG16b instruction (which I believe is only a problem on processors older than Phenom II and second generation Core 2)

 

As far as driver support goes, drivers for older versions of Windows can work with newer ones to an extent. Otherwise, unless it's actually needed for something, I wouldn't worry about it.

[Eigenvektor]

4 minutes ago, frodotheturtle said:

When i first booted into BIOS and saw the speck list i was shocked it didn't natively support Windows 10. Its kinda funny because i don't own a computer newer then 2013 and my daily drivers an 09 mac pro.

You mean Windows 10, which came out in 2015, doesn't officially support your hardware, which came out in 2009. The hardware can't change anything about it, it's not like you can design hardware to be "forward compatible". It's the OS and/or drivers that need to be backwards compatible.

 

Windows itself should run fine, as long as the CPU is x86 and/or supports 64 bit. As I said above, the problem is whether there are still drivers for such old hardware. Apple has very few components, so naturally they can provide support and drivers for older hardware, but Windows runs on a TON of different devices. If you want to blame anyone, blame the hardware manufacturers for not providing drivers for longer periods of time.

[frodotheturtle]

On 11/18/2019 at 12:51 PM, Eigenvektor said:

You mean Windows 10, which came out in 2015, doesn't officially support your hardware, which came out in 2009. The hardware can't change anything about it, it's not like you can design hardware to be "forward compatible". It's the OS and/or drivers that need to be backwards compatible.

 

Windows itself should run fine, as long as the CPU is x86 and/or supports 64 bit. As I said above, the problem is whether there are still drivers for such old hardware. Apple has very few components, so naturally they can provide support and drivers for older hardware, but Windows runs on a TON of different devices. If you want to blame anyone, blame the hardware manufacturers for not providing drivers for longer periods of time.

well its more the fact that the drivers don't exist rather then the hardware but none the less i got it going now. thanks y'all for the help as its my first pc and may be the start of my switch from macOS. After my battle with macOS just to make a install usb for windows (ended up just making a linux drive then using that to make the windows drive) i feel i might just stay with windows instead of switching back and forth.