[Update: MS Backpedals] 1 7th Gen Intel CPU Supported by Windows 11, NO 1st Gen Ryzen to be added. Older hardware will not be blocked from Windows 11

[BondiBlue]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

The core 2 office machines live on once more

At this rate I don't know if those things will ever completely go away. I can't use them as daily machines anymore, but I know plenty of people who still get along just fine with them. 

[emosun]

Just now, BondiBlue said:

At this rate I don't know if those things will ever completely go away. I can't use them as daily machines anymore, but I know plenty of people who still get along just fine with them. 

They're perfect for anti web based gaming. get those launchers outta here lol

[Skiiwee29]

@sounds I have merged your thread into the already existing thread for the topic around Windows 11 being allowed on older hardware. 

[TetraSky]

A clean install bypass the TPM restriction ??? That sounds ridiculous.
If anything, doing a clean install for a whole new OS is typically recommended anyway, since it often breaks a lot of things during the upgrade process or after with settings being all wrong because they didn't convert properly...

So what was the point of the TPM restriction to begin with!?

[Salv8 (sam)]

3 hours ago, poochyena said:

windows 11 doesn't offer any good reason to upgrade from 10 anyways, so, meh.

i'm sticking with enterprise ltsc untill 2029 then i might move to linux.

the grass really be looking greener over there as of recent.

[jaslion]

18 minutes ago, RTX 3090 said:

With a SSD, and a £7 CPU upgrade (core 2 quad Q6600), they actually aren't too bad of a machine, and handle word, youtube etc just fine. I even managed to get some basic video editing done on it. 

Main issue is their gpu. They are a pain without any kinda of gpu acceleration especially going on the internet. Other than that they are fine. I mean we are still using modern systems on windows with current cpu's that are less powerful than a core 2 e8400.

[BondiBlue]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Main issue is their gpu. They are a pain without any kinda of gpu acceleration especially going on the internet. Other than that they are fine. I mean we are still using modern systems on windows with current cpu's that are less powerful than a core 2 e8400.

Why wouldn't a Core 2 Duo system have proper graphics acceleration?

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, BondiBlue said:

Why wouldn't a Core 2 Duo system have proper graphics acceleration?

The gma graphics aren't supported in windows 10. Hence they don't accelerate anything

[BondiBlue]

Just now, jaslion said:

The gma graphics aren't supported in windows 10. Hence they don't accelerate anything

It's been a couple years since I ran Windows 10 on a C2D system with integrated graphics, but the iGPU drivers most certainly worked fine. 

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, BondiBlue said:

It's been a couple years since I ran Windows 10 on a C2D system with integrated graphics, but the iGPU drivers most certainly worked fine. 

There is only the microsoft basic display adapter driver. It's legit not supported. They graphics cannot accelerate anything.

[BondiBlue]

Just now, jaslion said:

There is only the microsoft basic display adapter driver. It's legit not supported. They graphics cannot accelerate anything.

No, I was using the Intel driver, not the default basic display adapter driver. It worked fine, and I was running dual monitors on one of the systems. Supported or not supported, it most certainly worked. 

[nurax1337]

"(We) plan to re-release the PC Health Check app for general availability in the coming weeks"

A Windows-Insider preview version is available here: https://aka.ms/GetPCHealthCheckInsiders

This URL might work for the direct download (without logging in) - not sure though, 64-Bit: https://aka.ms/GetPCHealthCheckInsidersX64

Edited August 27, 2021 by nurax1337

[Blademaster91]

Good that MS isn't going to block people from installing Windows 11 on anything older than Intel 8th gen or Ryzen 2000, although no support for Ryzen 1st gen is so dumb. And preventing people from upgrading from windows 10 to windows 11 still means theres going to be a lot of e-waste.

[Middcore]

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=97128,97496

Compare. How is that CPU supported by not an i7-7700?

 

It's in a product Microsoft still sells so it would have been awkward not to support it. That's it. That's the entire reason. It has nothing to do with the actual capabilities of either chip. 

[Middcore]

6 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

It's in a product Microsoft still sells so it would have been awkward not to support it. That's it. That's the entire reason. It has nothing to do with the actual capabilities of either chip. 

 

Side note: it's embarrassing Microsoft is still selling a machine with a Kaby Lake chip in it in 2021. 

[KaitouX]

1 hour ago, Chris Pratt said:

I'd hardly call this flip-flopping. It was already expected. Microsoft has never outright blocked you from installing an OS version. They may tell you it's unsupported (and it will be unsupported) but they let you continue anyways. People got all in a huff simply because the unofficial pre-alpha ISO didn't give you an option to continue. That never meant anything.

The unofficial ISO installed, the Insider build didn't as far as I know.

Microsoft said that they would block the workaround that was used to install it on older systems, and I think they were pretty clear that the intention was that official release ISOs wouldn't install on those systems.

[GoodBytes]

31 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

It's in a product Microsoft still sells so it would have been awkward not to support it. That's it. That's the entire reason. It has nothing to do with the actual capabilities of either chip. 

I need to double check on what I am about to say, but I believe the specific CPU in the Surface Studio being sold has the hardware acceleration for the security features used by Windows 11. It was the only one 7tg gen CPU or if I am wrong, one of the few specific models that had it. 

[StDragon]

12 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I need to double check on what I am about to say, but I believe the specific CPU in the Surface Studio being sold has the hardware acceleration for the security features used by Windows 11. It was the only one 7tg gen CPU or if I am wrong, one of the few specific models that had it. 

MBEC is included in 7th gen (verified to also be on the i7-7700; hence my previous post). It's also why 1st gen ZEN was excluded as it doesn't contain MBEC hardware extension for accelerated VBS.

 

FYI, AMD calls their implementation GMET; but it's the same thing.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/why-windows-11-has-such-strict-hardware-requirements-according-to-microsoft/

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, StDragon said:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compare.html?productIds=97128,97496

Compare. How is that CPU supported by not an i7-7700?

Oh that's simple, one is in a Microsoft device and one is not 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, StDragon said:

MBEC is included in 7th gen (verified to also be on the i7-7700; hence my previous post). It's also why 1st gen ZEN was excluded as it doesn't contain MBEC hardware extension for accelerated VBS.

 

FYI, AMD calls their implementation GMET; but it's the same thing.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/why-windows-11-has-such-strict-hardware-requirements-according-to-microsoft/

Yep it's in 7th Gen but not 7th Gen K SKUs from memory

[Spotty]

2 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

What? The Surface RT has never had official support for Windows 10. It still runs Windows RT.

Ah, I did not know that. I thought all those old surface devices were shipped with windows 8. I'm not familiar with windows RT OS at all. 

[BondiBlue]

4 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Ah, I did not know that. I thought all those old surface devices were shipped with windows 8. I'm not familiar with windows RT OS at all. 

It's Windows RT, but it shares the Windows 8/8.1 UI. 

[Albal_156]

8 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Summary

Microsoft has completed their review of Intel and AMD processors, and has added one 7th Gen Intel CPU, but no 1st Gen AMD Ryzen.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

Pretty upset at their conclusions but Microsoft seems extremely set on specific CPU features. Regardless, it appears that if you want upgrade anyway you can do a CLEAN WIPE and NEW INSTALL of Windows 11. Granted, they only told businesses this and aren't telling consumers, but that's good to know. At the very least, Microsoft is finally re-releasing the PC Health Check app.

 

Sources

CNBC

The Verge (quote source)

Microsoft Blog

Zen+ CPUs are gonna go up in price more than they have already as more people buy them for Windows 11 upgrades lol.

[adarw]

8 hours ago, poochyena said:

windows 11 doesn't offer any good reason to upgrade from 10 anyways, so, meh.

other than being able to use android apps its quite useless to me atleast, but we have emulators so i guess its fine.

[GoodBytes]

4 hours ago, Spotty said:

Ah, I did not know that. I thought all those old surface devices were shipped with windows 8. I'm not familiar with windows RT OS at all. 

At a technical stance Windows 8 RT was Microsoft port of Windows 8 to ARM. It's Microsoft first attempt on its full fledge OS to bring this x86-64 made OS to ARM. Past attempts, were stuff like its Embedded lines of OSs, which weren't a port of the  Windows as we know it. For example, like Windows Embedded Compact 7, as the name would suggest you think it is Win7 but it isn't. It was its own OS, but shared a lot of its APIs from the latest version of Windows of the time (Windows 7 in this case). The OS is closer in line to Windows Mobile/Phone OS's. So for example, Windows 10 Mobile, was Windows 10 in name only. Yes, it has UWP support, yes, all the built-in apps of Windows 10 where on Windows 10 Mobile because they were UWP apps, its file structure is very close as well, the core is the same, but the OS itself has nothing to do with Windows 10. It has a lot of differences (aside from the GUI) that was custom built for the mobile world.

 

Picture of Windows Embedded Compact 7

As we can see, it doesn't look like Windows 7, nor XP with Classic theme... despite having some resemblances.
 

While Windows 8 RT, at a technical level, was an impressive feat. It still had many limitations, including being CPU limited to specific set of ARM based CPUs. And the x86 translator layer was extremely primitive. For example, it took a long time for Office to be offered on the Surface RT due to numerous delays. In fact, Windows 8.1 RT is when Office appeared for the OS (and came built-in, and free license for it). The device was locked in for UWP apps only aside of Office. It was locked down as the OS was supposedly free, and Microsoft wanted to make money from Store app purchases. But I think that was more of a "perfect fit" type of situation as it was jailbroken, and we quickly discovered the limitation of this x86-64 translation layer, and is poor performance. No wonder it was locked down. That said, being opened would have helped ARM based apps to be made, and devices like the Surface RT was inexpensive for devs to get and get started with. Today, a dev has to get a Surface Pro X to get started to port their app to Windows 10 on ARM, which isn't good news in trying to get support. That is why a lot of dev had their eyes on Qualcomm Dev Kit, but sadly they never shared any info on pricing or availability, and specs aren't really known either. It was supposed to be a low cost NUC form factor type of device.

 

So anyway, to complete the story, Windows 10 on ARM as we saw, came out much later, and has had a lot more time to cook in the oven, and many things were reworked. Now, the OS is a lot more open to ARM based CPUs. Basically, it now works, if I am not mistaken, with any modern ARM based SoCs (basically, anything at or newer than a Snapdragon 810/806), it just needs the drivers, of course. The OS is open like normal Windows, you can download and install any apps you wants. VLC was the first app that make a native Windows 10 on ARM version of their app, you can go on their website, and just download it and install it, like any apps under normal Windows 10.

 

And its translator layer has evolved over time. Win10 on ARM at release with a lot of changes from Win8RT. It was faster, and works on anything you throw at it in x86. Today, it now provides x86-64 support, and with Win11 now supports hybrid x86-64 / ARM64 mixed apps. In other words, you can have an app compiled for ARM64, but can load x86-64 components, including libraries (dll files). Office highlights this under Windows 11 on ARM, where you can now run the ARM64 version of Office, and load x86-64 made extension apparently (I think you need to be on the Insider version of Office with Windows 11 to test it out), which was a limitation in the past. 

 

But anyways, back to Windows 8/8.1 RT. It was Win8 for ARM essentially, but it limited and locked down (which didn't help anything) and it flopped, not helped with Windows 8 being an OS that didn't resonate well with consumers.