The Death of Windows 10

[pablolie]

Is it true that newer W11 releases won’t run on older CPU anymore because of the lack of certain CPU instruction sets? And there will be no workaround for it?

I have i7-6800k and holding back because of the above.

I think the instruction set issue is for AMD processors. I would venture you are perfectly good with that

 

[AnalogSteph]

Windows 11, version 24H2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A x86-64-v2 CPU supporting SSE4.2 and POPCNT CPU instructions is now required, otherwise the Windows kernel is unbootable.[9]

Notably, this covers Intel Nehalem and AMD Bulldozer and newer architectures. In other words, first-gen Core i in socket 1366 and 1156 and newer for Team Blue, or the FX series up for Team Red. A 6800K is Broadwell-E, so years newer than those. The ones missing out would be AMD Phenom II or Intel Core 2 Duo / Quad. These barely run Windows 10 OK, so it's debatable whether you would even want to use 11.

 

[restorer-john]

Windows 11, version 24H2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Notably, this covers Intel Nehalem and AMD Bulldozer and newer architectures. In other words, first-gen Core i in socket 1366 and 1156 and newer for Team Blue, or the FX series up for Team Red. A 6800K is Broadwell-E, so years newer than those.

So the upshot is even 3rd and 4th gen "i" processors are good to go?

 

[dualazmak]

The ones missing out would be AMD Phenom II or Intel Core 2 Duo / Quad. These barely run Windows 10 OK, so it's debatable whether you would even want to use 11.

As I shared in my above post #634 (details here), Windows 11 Pro is working perfectly fine even on my very much outdated PC of Intel Core2Quad 9500 CPU on Asus P5Q Deluxe motherboard (no TPM), MEM 32 GB, ATI FirePro V4800 (FireGL) graphic board, two of EIZO EV2750 monitor (2560x2=5120 x 1440 desktop 60 Hz fps); having the registry already modified.

Spoiler

6. Edit the registry as follows (maybe, I did not need all of them, though);
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup]
”AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig]
"BypassTPMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassSecureBootCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassRAMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassCPUCheck"=dword:00000001

Today, I am actually writing this post using it; no problem at all for web surfing and mailing purposes as well as rather heavy PowerPoint Word Excel works!

Only the onboard Marvel Yukon GB network controller has driver incompatibility issue on Windows 11 Pro, so I have installed cheap Intel GB ET Dual Port network adaptor card which is working perfectly.

 

[Petrushka]

As I shared in my above post #634 (details here), Windows 11 Pro working perfectly fine even on my very much outdated PC of Intel Core2Quad 9500 CPU on Asus P5Q Deluxe motherboard (no TPM), MEM 32 GB, ATI FirePro V4800 (FireGL) graphic board, two of EIZO EV2750 monitor (2560x2=5120 x 1440 desktop 60 Hz fps); having the registry already modified.

Spoiler

6. Edit the registry as follows (maybe, I did not need all of them, though);
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup]
”AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\LabConfig]
"BypassTPMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassSecureBootCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassRAMCheck"=dword:00000001
"BypassCPUCheck"=dword:00000001

Today, I actually writing this post using it; no problem at all for web surfing and mailing purposes as well as rather heavy PowerPoint Word Exce Photoshop works!

I have a sneaking suspicion that MS will chicken out and allow W 11 to run on older computers.

 

[EJ3]

My CPU and SSD have had Windows 7, Vista, 8.1 and 10.
Only upgrades have been more and faster RAM and GPU. It still plays new released games without problems. Now it purposely is locked out from further upgrades and it annoys me.

7, 8.1 & 10 here.

 

[boxerfan88]

Windows 11, version 24H2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Notably, this covers Intel Nehalem and AMD Bulldozer and newer architectures. In other words, first-gen Core i in socket 1366 and 1156 and newer for Team Blue, or the FX series up for Team Red. A 6800K is Broadwell-E, so years newer than those.

That’s great!

 

[chelgrian]

Is it true that newer W11 releases won’t run on older CPU anymore because of the lack of certain CPU instruction sets? And there will be no workaround for it?

I have i7-6800k and holding back because of the above.

24H2 requires the POPCNT instruction which was first introduced in Nahalem in 2008.

 

[chelgrian]

I have a sneaking suspicion that MS will chicken out and allow W 11 to run on older computers.

Right now the W11 logo requirements mandate a processor with a feature called mode based access control which allows virtualisation based security to be used without a performance impact. As many of the commentators have found you can install using processors which don’t have this feature but you don’t get the security feature and you get repeated warnings about the processor being unsupported.

MS are not going to relax these requirements however I also doubt they will make them technically mandatory before the next major version of Windows with a new set of logo requirements.

You can tell what the direction of travel is by looking at the server versions of Windows and what they support as MS can push those customers forward more quickly. Upcoming versions of Windows Server require a system that supports virtualisation based security and will not install without it.

 

[rdenney]

What about an HP Z420 with an E5-16xx Xeon processor? This computer has abundant power for my needs but replacing it with something that meet Adobe’s latest requirements (don’t get me started) would be really expensive. It’s not officially Win11-compatible. Adobe is also wanting CPU instructions for its AI stuff (that I didn’t ask for and don’t want) that this processor doesn’t have, so I’m holding back on updating Photoshop. I’ve already had to spend several hundred on a new graphics card that I didn’t need to keep Adobe happy, but I can stand pat with this version of Photoshop for a long time.

But upgrading it to Win11 will help put off the inevitable.

Rick “tired of the gamer philosophy at commercial software houses” Denney

 

[AnalogSteph]

What about an HP Z420 with an E5-16xx Xeon processor?

That's Sandy Bridge, easily new enough. You want about 16 gigs of RAM for Win11 minimum, which I guess you have, and the more cores / threads the merrier.

As I shared in my above post #634 (details here), Windows 11 Pro is working perfectly fine even on my very much outdated PC of Intel Core2Quad 9500 CPU on Asus P5Q Deluxe motherboard (no TPM), MEM 32 GB, ATI FirePro V4800 (FireGL) graphic board, two of EIZO EV2750 monitor (2560x2=5120 x 1440 desktop 60 Hz fps); having the registry already modified.

Well yes, you can do that, but...

My parents used to run 10 on a Q9550 with 6 gigs of DDR2, a 2 TB MX500 and a GT610 driving an Eizo EV2430 1920x1200 monitor, so really not a bad (office) system for what it was. It worked OK. Their current i3-12100 (MSI B760 board, 2x8 gigs DDR4 @2933-15-17-17, WD SN570 500G as a system drive + the old MX500 for data) was a major, instantly noticeable upgrade though. No wonder, the CPU is almost 3 times as fast even single-threaded, not to mention cache / memory performance (despite the iGPU). The new rig uses a fair bit less power, too, about 16 W idle after some optimization, and it's completely inaudible unless substantially loaded which almost never happens.

Modern entry-level CPUs make old Core 2 era platforms look like an increasing less attractive proposition. Even the little N100 SoC is faster!

Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 vs i3-14100 vs AMD Ryzen 5 8600G vs N100 vs 300 [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

www.cpubenchmark.net

 

[pablolie]

...
Modern entry-level CPUs make old Core 2 era platforms look like an increasing less attractive proposition. Even the little N100 SoC is faster!

Moores Law has died for several years though. I barely noticed a performance Improvement last time I upgraded my CPU.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I have an old Dell laptop Core2 Duo that just won't die. Even with a lightweight linux it is not real speedy. It works, but the cheapest Windows laptop is obviously much better. Definitely at that point I don't see a reason to keep things going. A newer machine is a better choice. Even for people with desktops I think the cheap I3 or I5 laptops for $300 or so are a better choice often. Run the laptop in clamshell mode, and you'll be good for a few years. It isn't zero cost, but not too much for something you keep 5 years or more. If you run it much it would nearly pay for itself in saved electrical costs over 5 years.

I have the tendency to keep stuff going as it seems a waste to dump it for reasons like Windows 11. But really take a step back and often you aren't really helping yourself all that much. It is worthwhile for someone who has a machine that missed being eligible for Win 11 by a year or two. For 10 year old machines I'm not sure I see it as worthwhile. Moore's law has slowed, but peripherals and other things haven't and 10 years is enough CPU's are quite a bit better even on the low end.

 

[Petrushka]

I have an old Dell laptop Core2 Duo that just won't die. Even with a lightweight linux it is not real speedy. It works, but the cheapest Windows laptop is obviously much better. Definitely at that point I don't see a reason to keep things going. A newer machine is a better choice. Even for people with desktops I think the cheap I3 or I5 laptops for $300 or so are a better choice often. Run the laptop in clamshell mode, and you'll be good for a few years. It isn't zero cost, but not too much for something you keep 5 years or more. If you run it much it would nearly pay for itself in saved electrical costs over 5 years.

I have the tendency to keep stuff going as it seems a waste to dump it for reasons like Windows 11. But really take a step back and often you aren't really helping yourself all that much. It is worthwhile for someone who has a machine that missed being eligible for Win 11 by a year or two. For 10 year old machines I'm not sure I see it as worthwhile. Moore's law has slowed, but peripherals and other things haven't and 10 years is enough CPU's are quite a bit better even on the low end.

I have an I3 SFF. I would recommend at least an I5. I cannot play movies on the I3. Too slow. Probably depends on the video processor.

 

[Sal1950]

Modern entry-level CPUs make old Core 2 era platforms look like an increasing less attractive proposition. Even the little N100 SoC is faster!
Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 vs i3-14100 vs AMD Ryzen 5 8600G vs N100 vs 300 [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

I guess they might when using a benchmarking app or even a very demanding cpu intensive program.
OTOH, I HAD to replace the Q9550 - 8gb DDR2 1066 system I built in 2008 that was killed by lightning 2 years back.
I built a nice little system with a Core i7-2700k and 64 gb DDR5 5600
To be honest, running a Linux OS and all SSD in both, I didn't notice any big speed improvements in day to day computing ?
The only issue I ever had with the old box was streaming 4k movies & video files to my AVR but the new box has a much upgraded video card so ???

 

[Blumlein 88]

I have an I3 SFF. I would recommend at least an I5. I cannot play movies on the I3. Too slow. Probably depends on the video processor.

I'm not sure what the SFF refers to. I don't think current I3s will have any problem with video and yes it might be more of a GPU issue. There are some on sale $300 I3 laptops with full HD screens and they'll do any video fine. Now maybe not for high frame rate gaming, but for showing movies no problem. As far as that goes I have an old I3 from 2015 (I think Sandy bridge?) which I used until a year ago. It supplied video to my projector in 60 hz 1920x1080 no sweat using the motherboard video card for years. I put a cheap PCIe video card in it when I switched to 4k. Again CPU was not a bottleneck. I was using Linux on it the whole time, but Windows would have done it as well.

 

[rdenney]

I have an old Dell laptop Core2 Duo that just won't die. Even with a lightweight linux it is not real speedy. It works, but the cheapest Windows laptop is obviously much better. Definitely at that point I don't see a reason to keep things going. A newer machine is a better choice. Even for people with desktops I think the cheap I3 or I5 laptops for $300 or so are a better choice often. Run the laptop in clamshell mode, and you'll be good for a few years. It isn't zero cost, but not too much for something you keep 5 years or more. If you run it much it would nearly pay for itself in saved electrical costs over 5 years.

I have the tendency to keep stuff going as it seems a waste to dump it for reasons like Windows 11. But really take a step back and often you aren't really helping yourself all that much. It is worthwhile for someone who has a machine that missed being eligible for Win 11 by a year or two. For 10 year old machines I'm not sure I see it as worthwhile. Moore's law has slowed, but peripherals and other things haven't and 10 years is enough CPU's are quite a bit better even on the low end.

That’s why I switched to the Xeon computer in the first place. It wasn’t new when I bought it. I’ve replaced the boot drive with a 512-GB SSD, and all the data is on a 8-TB SATA hard disk. I installed 64 GB of the required (and expensive) ECC RAM.

But my peripherals are old and special, and supporting them is part of the problem. I have two Eizo hardware-calibrated monitors that are each about a decade old. But they are perfect for what I do. Believe me, for doing photo work for printing, wider gamuts are not useful but perfect uniformity and color accuracy is. So, I need support for display port and DVI, which the much newer and fancier video card I installed to keep Photoshop happy supports. The computer had the 16-lane PCI slot that card needed.

I need to support Fierwire for a very old Nikon 9000ED film scanner, which is irreplaceable. The software that runs it is Vuescan, and that is still sustainable. I do that with a PCI card with two Firewire and three USB-3 ports. The Epson P900 printer uses Ethernet and the (also old and irreplaceable, but Viescan-supported) Epson V750 flatbed scanner uses USB. Thank goodness I no longer need SCSI—that film scanner finally died.

Everything else is also USB or network-attached.

A new PC might only support USB-C—laptops are that way—but I have shopped so I don’t know. That would require me to find a way to adapt USB-C to Firewire. Are PCI slots still provided? I’m assuming so, so I don’t know what the peripheral issues would be.

Being able to upgrade it to Win11 will sustain it for a good while.

Rick “remembering when requirements fulfillment defined sustainability, not upgradeitis either from users or software houses” Denney

 

[Blumlein 88]

That’s why I switched to the Xeon computer in the first place. It wasn’t new when I bought it. I’ve replaced the boot drive with a 512-GB SSD, and all the data is on a 8-TB SATA hard disk. I installed 64 GB of the required (and expensive) ECC RAM.

But my peripherals are old and special, and supporting them is part of the problem. I have two Eizo hardware-calibrated monitors that are each about a decade old. But they are perfect for what I do. Believe me, for doing photo work for printing, wider gamuts are not useful but perfect uniformity and color accuracy is. So, I need support for display port and DVI, which the much newer and fancier video card I installed to keep Photoshop happy supports. The computer had the 16-lane PCI slot that card needed.

I need to support Fierwire for a very old Nikon 9000ED film scanner, which is irreplaceable. The software that runs it is Vuescan, and that is still sustainable. I do that with a PCI card with two Firewire and three USB-3 ports. The Epson P900 printer uses Ethernet and the (also old and irreplaceable, but Viescan-supported) Epson V750 flatbed scanner uses USB. Thank goodness I no longer need SCSI—that film scanner finally died.

Everything else is also USB or network-attached.

A new PC might only support USB-C—laptops are that way—but I have shopped so I don’t know. That would require me to find a way to adapt USB-C to Firewire. Are PCI slots still provided? I’m assuming so, so I don’t know what the peripheral issues would be.

Being able to upgrade it to Win11 will sustain it for a good while.

Rick “remembering when requirements fulfillment defined sustainability, not upgradeitis either from users or software houses” Denney

Depends upon what you want to do. You can get adapters to Display port and DVI for USB C. I've used both and they work fine. Cost is usually $15 per adapter. I don't think you can get USB C adapters for Firewire. On a Mac you can do Thunderbolt 3 or 4 to Thunderbolt 2 and there are Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire adapters. I used a Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire for an audio interface with no issues. There are cards for Firewire like you have, but I have no idea how Windows 11 supports that. I don't see anything that would be a big issue for you other than Firewire.

PS some googling indicates Win 11 does support Firewire PCI cards, but you may have to do some set up initially for that to work. So if Win 11 will go on your machine it will probably work okay.

 

[Salt]

Btw Win can be run in a VM under Linux

 

[chelgrian]

I'm not sure what the SFF refers to. I don't think current I3s will have any problem with video and yes it might be more of a GPU issue. There are some on sale $300 I3 laptops with full HD screens and they'll do any video fine. Now maybe not for high frame rate gaming, but for showing movies no problem. As far as that goes I have an old I3 from 2015 (I think Sandy bridge?) which I used until a year ago. It supplied video to my projector in 60 hz 1920x1080 no sweat using the motherboard video card for years. I put a cheap PCIe video card in it when I switched to 4k. Again CPU was not a bottleneck. I was using Linux on it the whole time, but Windows would have done it as well.

SFF means Small Form Factor, anything microATX and down.