Zen 5 APUs will require Windows 11
Many people are reluctant to upgrade to newer versions of Windows, be it due to hardware requirements or changes in behavior and look. This is currently the case with Windows 11, but it seems that staying on Windows 10 will soon start to run into obstacles. From AMD, for example. This company is apparently starting to drop support for this OS. The company’s upcoming hardware will probably no longer have any drivers for Windows 10.
According to various sources that have sprung up on the internet recently, at least some of the Ryzen processors based on the new Zen 5 architecture coming out this year will not support the Windows 10 operating system. Particularly, it’s said to be like this for the APU branch of Zen 5 architecture, which is primarily designed for laptops, i.e. the Strix Point processors with 12 Zen 5 / Zen 5c cores and RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU. AMD will reportedly only provide Windows 11 drivers for these processors and no drivers for Windows 10. Besides that, the processor will naturally be able to run Linux, but that’s a platform that works a bit differently, with drivers being present in the OS kernel.
Along with Strix Point, the same restrictions should probably apply to the more premium Strix Halo special version, which will feature 16 large Zen 5 cores and a powerful integrated GPU, and uses 256-bit LPDDR5X memory.
The lack of drivers for Windows 10 will probably impact the integrated GPU, which uses RDNA 3.5 architecture (and has up to 16 CU / 1024 shaders in Strix Point, or as many as 2560 shaders / 40 CU in Strix Halo). These processors also contain NPUs with XDNA 2 architecture, which will probably also be covered by drivers only for Windows 11.
However, AMD could also not provide the platform drivers for SMBus, USB and other SoC connectivity for these processors (when using them under Windows 10). It’s not yet clear how critical the situation will be. Sometimes drivers for a newer system can be forced into an older one, so it’s possible that the Strix Point and Strix Halo will be able to somewhat run under Windows 10 in a limited way. Don’t count on it too much, though.
However, there is no confirmation yet that AMD plans not to provide Windows 10 drivers for the desktop Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” in a similar way. These will be different, chiplet-based processors with up to 16 Zen 5 cores for the AM5 socket. They will be using existing 600 series chipset boards and AMD is also using the same IO chiplet in them as in the Ryzen 7000/7000X generation.
For this reason, they shouldn’t need that many driver changes and much of the software components should be possible to reuse from the older generation, including eventheir integrated GPU drivers. These processors are therefore likely to still be able to runWindows 10 at launch. It is possible that there will be official support for them directly.
- Read more: Leaked AMD documents show Zen 5 and 6 IPC and architecture details
- Read more: AMD confirms Zen 5 details: 6 ALUs, full-performance AVX-512
- Read more: AMD’s Zen 5 is said to be 40% faster over Zen 4. Can that be real?
- Read more: Zen 5 to have higher power consumption and price, clock speed to reach 6 GHz
Axe Windows 10 support? Why not…
In defense of AMD and the decision to support only Windows 11, it must be said that this is a sensible move. While it sometimes feels (definitely does to me) that year 2015 was here just recently, Windows 10 is in fact nine years old, with ten years generally being the length of time after which Microsoft will completely abandon a particular version of the operating system, which also means the end of security updates. That’s the point by which you should abandon ship and upgrade to some newer version.
There’s this popular contrarian misconception that updates are the root of all evil and problems, but this is nonsense. Without up-to-date security patches, you’re at risk of various malware infections, ransomware infection that could kill all your data, or other bad things. You really shouldn’t use an unpatched OS on a computer that is connected to the internet .
Thus, it doesn’t actually make much sense to make Windows 10 drivers for Strix Point processors, as it would cost non trivial developer effort and this OS will only be functional for roughly one year after the hardware is released. All PCs with Ryzen 9000s will almost certainly be sold with Windows 11 out of the box, and if someone wanted to manually install Windows 10 in order to make use of an old pre-existing license, they’d have to change the OS within a year anyway, so it hardly makes sense to do.
For Windows 10, Microsoft will be offering a paid subscription providing ongoing security support, but it will be quite expensive. It can therefore be expected that most people who would like to stay on Windows 10 out of dislike for the newer version of the system will probably not adopt this solution either. Fort these reasons, this premature support cut-off by AMD is pretty much a reasonable and understandable thing to do, even though it feels a bit annoying for users to be pushed into upgrading or switching OS like this.
Source: TechPowerUp
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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