cpu's only support win 10

They make the CPU how they want, then only release supporting drivers for new versions of Windows. People will likely find some workarounds to keep dragging Windows 7 through the year 2017 and beyond
 
Meh, they say they won't have updated drivers but there will be workarounds. Had a fun time getting 7 back onto a Braswell laptop that didn't have an 8 key embedded in the bios just so we could upgrade it to 10. Dell's links to drivers were all wrong - it was an xHCI driver deep in their deployment CAB.
 
What about future AMD CPU's, Zen? Are they also not 'supporting' previous versions of Windows?
 
I think CPU "supported operating systems" is overblown.

What will happen is the CPU's will use a generic CPU driver and just won't support new CPU features, most of which are not utilized in applications for years after release anyways.
 
I'm not sure how they do it, but we had problems installing 7 on the latest Intel NUC systems with i5/i7 CPU's but the i3 versions seem to work fine. We got as far as cloning the M.2 drive and putting it into the i5 system, but when it ran Windows update, it would no longer boot properly and we had to clone it again and again. We are basically putting Linux on the i5/i7 units and 7 on the i3 units right now. We worked on them for weeks trying the most popular solutions from google searches, but still had issues. Weird.
 
ob1 said:
I'm not sure how they do it, but we had problems installing 7 on the latest Intel NUC systems with i5/i7 CPU's but the i3 versions seem to work fine. We got as far as cloning the M.2 drive and putting it into the i5 system, but when it ran Windows update, it would no longer boot properly and we had to clone it again and again. We are basically putting Linux on the i5/i7 units and 7 on the i3 units right now. We worked on them for weeks trying the most popular solutions from google searches, but still had issues. Weird.
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Where was the 7 install hanging up on the i5/i7? Just curious because a lot of people still prefer 7 and I do my best to oblige...
 
Well, we wanted it to work also, because we have a program that will not run on 10 at all due to some security thing. Anyway, it will just blue screen and searching the seemingly random error codes from them didn't turn up anything relevant. I will screen capture it next time and post it here.
 
bigdogchris said:
I think CPU "supported operating systems" is overblown.

What will happen is the CPU's will use a generic CPU driver and just won't support new CPU features, most of which are not utilized in applications for years after release anyways.
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The thing that won't be supported will be things like the new 4K subprocessing portions, any new power management features or new instruction sets. Those won't have drivers in Win 7, not due to it being incompatible, but because Intel, AMD and specifically Microsoft have colluded among themselves that they will purposely force obsolescence onto the Win 7 OS.
 
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PliotronX said:
Where was the 7 install hanging up on the i5/i7? Just curious because a lot of people still prefer 7 and I do my best to oblige...
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So to follow up on this, it just hangs during boot at the starting windows screen and never moves forward. Safe mode does the same thing. The weird thing is if we install 7 on one of the i3 units, move the SSD over to an i5/i7 unit, it appears to work fine, until the system updates or reboots, where it hangs indefinitely. I had never seen it before and neither had our admins. After doing some googlefu it appears there are numerous problems with the skylake NUC systems and windows 7.
 
I am doing this like second hand as I'm home now and asked the admin to look at it, and here is the response. Although I know that we tried lots of different settings through the initial testing.

UEFI Boot is disabled (UEFI Boot Shell is also disabled)

Legacy Boot is enabled

Secure Boot is disabled
 
I don't know about you but the best thing I could see with this is linking a OS to a Windows key. I'm sure there is a way they could do this. Mobos die here and there but far less likely for CPU's. Just my 2 cents.
 
Here's a further explanation of what the Windows 10 requirement means:

tldr - New AMD requires OS awareness for their Zen hyper threading (like Bulldozer support had to be patched into 7). New Intel power management requires OS awareness.

What I get from this is Zen CPU's will run on 7, just not optimally (like Bulldozer didn't run well pre-patch on 7) and you may have to disable a power state to run a Kaby Lake CPU on 7 or 8.

Microsoft recently sparked a stir when it was reported that the company will support upcoming CPU architectures by Intel and AMD only on Windows 10, with the keyword being "support" and not "compatibility." This means that Microsoft will offer customer-support and likely serve updates to Intel "Kaby Lake" and AMD "ZEN" machines only running Windows 10 (and its enterprise variant Windows Server 2016, based on the NT 10 kernel), and not older versions of Windows. The processors themselves are compatible with any x86 operating system, Windows or *nix, 32-bit or 64-bit. HotHardware dug out the likely causes of this decision.

Apparently, new power-management and SMT features are behind the decision. With its "Kaby Lake" microarchitecture, Intel is introducing a new power-management feature called Speed Shift Technology. This lets the processor adjust its clock-speed to match processing loads at response time of 15 ms. This likely requires OS-level hooks, so the on-die power-management components can poll for processing loads and accordingly raise or lower clock-speeds 66.66 times each second, at no CPU cost. In its ZEN microarchitecture reveal, AMD too spoke about fine-grained, multi-domain clock-gating (≠ power-gating) on its "ZEN" based processors, such as "Summit Ridge."

AMD "ZEN" processors introduce simultaneous multi-threading, a feature that exposes each physical core as two logical CPUs to the OS, for better utilization of on-die resources. Intel's implementation of SMT is the HyperThreading Technology (HTT), and has been around for over a decade. AMD's SMT implementation isn't identical to that of HyperThreading, with the two threads on a CPU competing for resources in a method unique to AMD. This can't work without the OS kernel and scheduler being aware of the method. You'll remember that Microsoft had to update the kernel and scheduler of Windows 7 in a similar way, to optimize it for "Bulldozer."

These, HotHardware argues, could be the likely reasons why Microsoft is limiting support for the new CPU microarchitectures to Windows 10.
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SOURCE
 
Well, here's another question. If they're able to do this with CPU drivers, then what's to stop Microsoft from mandating that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel stop making graphics card driver updates for old OS's?
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Well, here's another question. If they're able to do this with CPU drivers, then what's to stop Microsoft from mandating that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel stop making graphics card driver updates for old OS's?
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Well, Microsoft can't mandate something like that, but they COULD withhold certification for drivers for older OS's. Or more likely, just set a date past which they will no longer certify drivers. So all the vendors could keep making them (if it was profitable) as long as they wanted.

But AMD/Nvidia are only going to keep making drivers for popular operating systems. Once Win7 falls below some threshold in the market, they're probably not going to keep cranking out drivers.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Well, here's another question. If they're able to do this with CPU drivers, then what's to stop Microsoft from mandating that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel stop making graphics card driver updates for old OS's?
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Because outside of paranoid web forum posts, that's not what MS does or needs to do. New CPU or platform features, if they require low level OS support (i.e. not a driver), will not be added to Windows 7 via updates. That's what effectively kills Windows 7 for newer hardware. Although it doesn't immediately have an effect, it's inevitable in the long term.

Whether relatively few people run Windows 7 instead of 10 on newer hardware isn't a concern to MS. Without support to ensure it works, major OEMs can't certify systems with upcoming CPUs as Windows 7 compatible. If those OEMs offer Windows 7, the seller will have to assume responsibility for all problems since MS isn't going to update Windows 7 for Zen, Kaby Lake or later processors.

Lastly, as a consumer segment user of Windows 7, don't expect for MS to care at all. The answer to all problems at this point from MS is for you to upgrade to 10. I think there is still a tiny chance that at least Intel will release Windows 7 drivers for Kaby Lake, since corporate/enterprise customers still overwhelmingly use Windows 7. I'm not holding my breath.
 
pxc said:
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Lastly, as a consumer segment user of Windows 7, don't expect for MS to care at all. The answer to all problems at this point from MS is for you to upgrade to 10. I think there is still a tiny chance that at least Intel will release Windows 7 drivers for Kaby Lake, since corporate/enterprise customers still overwhelmingly use Windows 7. I'm not holding my breath.
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I think both MS and Intel said adding support for the new power management features in Kaby Lake would require significant changes to the underlying OS in Win 7. So Kaby Lake will WORK, you just won't get the improved battery life.
 
Yeah, that's one of the things I suspected would be a problem in another thread. I still don't know whether relatively small problems will discourage hardware upgrades in corporate environments running Windows 7. If not, that increases the chances that Intel will have Windows 7 drivers for Kaby Lake. I just don't think it's certain.
 
So everyone's just cool that MS forces it's big brother version of windows to everyone. I guess the corporations have already won.
 
No, some of us are just realistic in evaluating the available options. New hardware requiring support at the OS level isn't going to happen with Windows 7, since it's in security updates (only) extended support (and bug fixing by contract). You can choose to continue using it, where it should be generally usable as a desktop OS for the next 3+ years, DX limitations aside.

However, since MS is moving into undocumented Windows Update packages for 7 and 8.1, you may have other problems in the shorter term. I expect there will be alternative update methods, where individual security updates intended for WS2008 R2 or WS2012 R2 are used instead, and possibly someone taking apart the newer update packages and stripping out the annoying garbage.

Eventually, you'll get to the point where you have harder choices to make, such as switching OS to Linux or macOS. That's pretty much up to you if you don't want 10.

In the general sense, to answer your question, yes most consumers are cool with (or ignorant of) MS's spying in consumer versions of Windows 10. And in a way, that screws over the rest of the consumers who are not okay with it, but what can you do? Continue using Windows 7 for now, and consider switching OS in the future is a fairly reasonable strategy.
 
macOS is probably just as controlling as Windows 10.

If you're planning on migrating away from Windows and are considering Linux, I'd be setting a distro up on an inexpensive spare machine now and getting used to the ins and outs of the OS as well as working out what software applications run cross platform and what applications need to be replaced with Linux alternatives.

Dumping Windows and diving straight into Linux is bound to result in a massive fail.
 
BulletDust said:
macOS is probably just as controlling as Windows 10.
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Or not. You can actually turn off unwanted "features" in OS X/macOS. iOS is a different animal and that seems to really confuse people.
 
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