AMD drops Windows 10 support for new Strix Point Ryzen AI 300 chips

midian182 · 2024-06-11T06:19:00-0400

In brief: The rumors were (partly) true: AMD has dropped Windows 10 support for its new Strix Point Ryzen AI 300 Series chips. The move comes despite Microsoft continuing to support Windows 10 until near the end of 2025. As noted in the previous report, you can blame the tech world's obsession with AI for the decision.

A Weibo post last month from someone said to be Lenovo's China manager stated that, starting with the Strix Point (Ryzen AI 300) APUs, AMD will stop providing Windows 10 drivers.

The announcement of the Zen 5 mobile architecture has confirmed the lack of support for Windows 10, at least in the mobile chips. A look at the Ryzen AI 9 HX 365 and 370 specs pages list the supported operating systems as Windows 11 64-bit, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu.

The decision to make these mobile chips Windows 11-only isn't too surprising, given their focus on all things AI and NPUs with up to 50 TOPS performance. Microsoft announced that only laptops with an NPU capable of 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) or higher are considered Copilot+ PCs. Accessing all the extra AI smarts baked into Strix Point requires Windows 11, which tends to be the default option in brand-new laptops.

The good news is that AMD hasn't dropped Windows 10 support for all its Zen 5 processors. The four new Ryzen 9000-series desktop CPUs it announced do support Windows 10.

Windows 10 reaches its end-of-support date on October 14, 2025. Organizations that want to continue using the OS after this date will have the option of enrolling their PCs into a paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) subscription, but it's not cheap: $61 per device for the first year, $122 in the second year and $244 in the third.

The latest data from Statcounter shows that while Windows 10's user share has fallen since April, it still holds over 67% of the market while Windows 11 has 28.3%. Microsoft will likely be happier looking at the Steam survey results, where Windows 10's share is just over 5 points higher than Windows 11.

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AMD drops Windows 10 support for new Strix Point Ryzen AI 300 chips

user478318 · 2024-06-11T07:22:57-0400

Great news, should have dropped Windows 10 support 5 years ago, and let the world forget that trashy half metro half windows 7 junk

Uncle Al · 2024-06-11T08:05:30-0400

Not a smart business move at all ...... I predict that will cost them in the end ....

J95qRP7 · 2024-06-11T08:30:13-0400

Windows 10 is EoL in 16 months. All systems released with this chip installed will be windows 11, not 10. There is no need to waste time and money on windows 10 support. These are mobile chips after all

Dimitriid · 2024-06-11T08:31:00-0400

Not to worry: I'm sure they'll be widely supported in Linux.

And while I'm normally not very serious about people jumping ship to Linux I honestly do not see much in the way of options now: Apple would rather continue not to gain market share than relinquish an inch of control from macos and Google is applying Google principles to Chrome OS which means leave it mostly abandoned to die.

All we need now is Valve to push official distro builds of Steam OS to devices other than the steam deck which I am assuming it's probably already in the works and hopefully won't suffer from Valve time like the first time they attempted to create a Distro

winjer · 2024-06-11T11:05:01-0400

Not surprising, considering that Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 in 2025.

mountains · 2024-06-11T11:18:50-0400

For this particular part, being AI focused, it is not surprising that they won't include W10 support. It is good news that they will keep support for W10 in Zen 5. Hopefully that continues.

AMD has a reputation for dropping support for older hardware before it's competitors do. That is one negative factor to consider when choosing parts, both CPU and GPU. I tend to get really good parts, then keep them for a long time.

And I have been really frustrated with W11. Hopefully W11 LTSC is as good as W10 LTSC.

quadibloc · 2024-06-11T11:58:17-0400

Never mind Windows 7. In my opinioin, Microsoft should still support Windows 3.1 - as well as Windows 95, Windows 98, and so on up to Windows 7. After all, people paid for copies of it, and their computers could still be working. After all, the only reason support would be needed is if Microsoft made mistakes when these operating systems were originally written; bugs should be corrected when they're found.
And when it comes to the Apple Macintosh, today's Macintosh computers should be able to run software for Intel Macs, PowerPC Macs, and 68k Macs.

quadibloc · 2024-06-11T11:59:45-0400

J95qRP7 said:
Windows 10 is EoL in 16 months. All systems released with this chip installed will be windows 11, not 10. There is no need to waste time and money on windows 10 support. These are mobile chips after all

There is no real reason for concern that these chips, made by AMD for new laptops, don't support Windows 10.

AMD drops Windows 10 support for new Strix Point Ryzen AI 300 chips

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