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Microsoft will limit support for new processors to Windows 10 to get more users to upgrade

By Koh Wanzi - on 18 Jan 2016, 2:51pm

Microsoft will limit support for new processors to Windows 10 to get more users to upgrade

Windows 10

Microsoft has announced that starting with Windows 10, it will provide software support for the latest processors only on the most recent Windows operating system. According to Microsoft, this means the ability to focus better on deep integration between Windows and the newest processors, but it is also clearly an attempt to nudge more users to upgrade to Windows 10 in order to enjoy the benefits of the latest processors.

In the past, Microsoft has released software support for each new processor on every support version of Windows on the market. This has at times meant updates that were vital to maintaining the proper functioning of older systems with new hardware. For instance, an update was released for AMD’s Bulldozer CPUs that marked half of the cores in a similar way as Hyper-Threaded cores to allow Windows to more evenly distribute tasks among the available multi-chip modules.

More recently, updates pertaining to Intel’s sixth-generation Skylake processors were rolled out to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 to ensure full support on those OSes.

That will change with the next generation of processors – Intel’s Kaby Lake and AMD’s Bristol Ridge – as Microsoft will only update Windows 10 to support any new technologies they introduce. Still, that might not entirely exclude users on older OSes as they will possibly be able to use the new processors, but might encounter issues like instability, increased power draw, and generally lower performance compared to Windows 10.

Intel Skylake

In fact, despite updates for Skylake having been pushed out to older versions of Windows, Microsoft claims that there are already tangible performance differences between using Skylake on Windows 10 and, say, Windows 7. Compared to Windows 7 PCs, the combination of Skylake and Windows 10 reportedly enables up to 30 times better graphics and three times the battery life.

Microsoft’s new support policy also applies to SoCs from companies like Qualcomm and Samsung. In addition, Microsoft said that users on older OSes – especially those with Skylake currently installed – should start planning to move to Windows 10 because Microsoft will stop releasing even Skylake-related updates for older OSes on July 17, 2017.

You’ll recall that Microsoft has been trying really hard to get people to upgrade to Windows 10, going so far as to offer it as a free upgrade. It looks like its latest move has been similarly calculated to provide even more incentive to users to update their OSes.

Source: Microsoft via Tom’s Hardware

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