Published in PC Hardware

New Intel and AMD chips will only support Windows 10

by on31 August 2016


Update or nothing new

Buried in the announcement of the new Kaby Lake (seventh-generation) processors and a rash of incoming notebooks set to use them is the confirmation that it will have a Windows 10 future.

To be fair, Microsoft has been warning people for ages that Kaby Lake will not run on anything older than Windows 10, but Vole is also warning punters that AMD's incoming Zen chip will be going the same way.

Microsoft said that as new silicon generations are introduced, they need the latest Windows platform for support. This will allow Microsoft to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon.

What is interesting, however, is that Microsoft has secured some agreement with all the main chip makers to follow this line.

AMD said its CPU roadmap was "fully aligned with Microsoft's software strategy", and Intel clarified: "No, Intel will not be updating Win 7/8 drivers for 7th Gen Intel Core [Kaby Lake] per Microsoft's support policy change."

So the days of you using Windows 7 or 8 and being able to run a cutting edge PC are over. It looks like Vole has made great diplomatic efforts to avoid a reprise of the Windows XP debacle.

Last modified on 31 August 2016
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