Windows 11 hardware requirements made a mockery of by an Intel Pentium 4 processor

[Redaktion]

Intel Pentium 4 processors run Windows 11 because of an oversight on Microsoft's behalf. Even single-core ones are eligible for Windows 11, provided that they support Hyper-Threading.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-hardware-requirements-made-a-mockery-of-by-an-Intel-Pentium-4-processor.573808.0.html

[somepersonfromtheinternet]

This is outright ridiculous

[Hunter2020]

Not really surprising.  They want to manufacture Windows 11 as a natural disaster so ppl gleefully take up Windows 12. They needed Windows 8 to act as the boggeyman for Windows 10 and they're doing the same with Windows 11 to Windows 12.

[JohnIL]

Did a clean install of Windows 11 on a 8 year old HP Folio with 3rd Gen. i5.
Ran just fine I never got any warnings about incompatibility. I did have TPM 1.2 and secure boot enabled. Actually under Windows security dashboard it seemed pleased with everything. I just think Microsoft wants to sell hardware and also help out its partners. Windows 11 just appears to be Windows 10 with a facelift. Only issue I see running Windows 11 on older hardware is driver support. I noticed the Intel graphic driver was from 2015. Intel has a more recent driver from 2019 for Windows 10. I don't see a point of Windows 11 unless your running certified hardware.

[Dictatortots]

I'm convinced Microsoft has a A team and a B team that leap frog each other. The B team is a bunch of hacks that has been banned from working on the A team, but isn't fired completely because they need those people to be sacrificial lambs for the annual stack ranking.  Every alternate Windows version is worked on by the B team, mostly just on the cosmetics and UI tweaks.

Windows 95 - A Team
Windows 98 - B Team
Windows 98 SE - A Team
Windows Millenium Edition - B Team
Windows 2000 - A Team
Windows XP (several version by both teams)
Windows Vista - B Team
Windows 7 - A Team
Windows 8 - B Team
Windows 10 - A Team
Windows 11 - B Team

[AK76]

Ryzen 1600AF comes up as supported as well, but isn't listed. Maybe it's due to it actually being a 2600?

[vertigo]

I'm surprised a P4 could run it, not because of all this supported/unsupported BS, but just because I would have thought it would be too resource intensive.

I don't see a point of Windows 11 unless your running certified hardware.

FTFY

I'm convinced Microsoft has a A team and a B team that leap frog each other.

It's been clear and widely recognized for a while now that they leapfrog in quality, though this is as good a reason as any as to why. My own personal theory is that MS is just incompetent and has a very hard time doing anything right, and every other version is just an alpha that's all screwed up due to that incompetence, and only after several years of plugging holes are they able to get it halfway decent, at which point they start all over again.

[incom2]

Not surprising at all. Windows 11 is prepared to run under heavy low specs, just because it may happen some disaster leaving most of your cores ruined and using very low RAM memory (I can confirm Windows 11 can be installed and boots ok with only 1 Gb of RAM). In these conditions, you may want windows to still works to save the day, instead of shutting down himself saying nonsenses.

Also that proves Microsoft has made a really light and fast operating system capable of running in very old equipment at almost equal or better pace than the default OS it used.

Finally, PC processors have been overpowered for decades now. I mean, what do you expect from a Pentium 4 at 3 Ghz? It has all the things expected on a x86 processor, even simulates more cores thanks to the hyper threading technology back in the time. So, it will run things a long as we use x86 specifications.

[SK Unices]

Well, this was clickbait and a half.

I can't believe people don't realize what/why the minimum specs are there for - such as not taking a 15-30% performance hit when security features are functional, and the fact that they're baselining on a specific (Skylake-X) version of the x86_64 ISA, so the 'future updates may not work' is because they WILL be taking advantage of new hardware features in security/functional updates.

Remember when Windows 10 dropped support for entire 64 bit multi-core CPU families due to an update issue? Remember when Windows 7 suddenly lost pentium 3 support due to an update? Or when Windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2 came out and completely dropped support for an entire generation of x86_64 processors?

What's happening in the first RTM copy (which is hot off the build system they were using to provide copies to run on unsupported systems in insider program for data/compat/config/firmware metrics/etc collection) is entirely unsurprising.

And "windows update still works!" .... well, yes, the whole point was that future updates may fail, just like how the Windows 7 update killed the OS on a slew of older systems.....

[CSM]

Well, this was clickbait and a half.

I can't believe people don't realize what/why the minimum specs are there for - such as not taking a 15-30% performance hit when security features are functional, and the fact that they're baselining on a specific (Skylake-X) version of the x86_64 ISA, so the 'future updates may not work' is because they WILL be taking advantage of new hardware features in security/functional updates.

Remember when Windows 10 dropped support for entire 64 bit multi-core CPU families due to an update issue? Remember when Windows 7 suddenly lost pentium 3 support due to an update? Or when Windows 8.1 and server 2012 R2 came out and completely dropped support for an entire generation of x86_64 processors?

What's happening in the first RTM copy (which is hot off the build system they were using to provide copies to run on unsupported systems in insider program for data/compat/config/firmware metrics/etc collection) is entirely unsurprising.

And "windows update still works!" .... well, yes, the whole point was that future updates may fail, just like how the Windows 7 update killed the OS on a slew of older systems.....

in first place: Windows 7 dropping CPUs without SSE happened nearly 9 years after it's release, and a bunch of the affected CPUs did actually meet Windows 7 requeriments (1 GHz x86 CPU or faster), mainly the late >1 GHz Penitum 3s and the AMD Athlon XP (which competed against the Pentium 4, but lacked SSE2). The same issues also affected Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 as well, the later based on Windows XP and consequently affecting Windows XP with the POSReady hack as well. Also keep in mind Windows 7 never enforced an SSE2 requeriment until said update came nearly 9 years, it was an stealth change and when MS acknowledged that, they decided to not fix it and start requiring SSE2.

Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2: yeah, they dropped early x86_64 CPUs on the 64 bit versions by requering CMPXCHG16b (CX16), LAHF-SAHF y PREFETCHW instructions, which basically killed all 90nm Netburst chips and AMD K8 CPUs before Windsor based Athlon 64 X2s. However these requeriments didn't affected the 32 bit versions of Windows 8.1 and 10. MS did warn about them and these old CPUs were incompatible since day one,

Windows 10 only dropped a certain CPU after it's release and it happened to be the older Atom Z2xxx line and they were dropped because of incompatible graphics drivers for their integrated graphics (that specific Atom line used PowerVR based graphics that didn't have updated driver and breaks on Windows 10 versions past 1607).

Also Windows 11 is technically the first Windows version to start enforcing CPU support, Windows 7 didn't enforce a supported CPU list, same for 8.1 and 10. Also saying the Skylake-X ISA is kinda exaggeratting since that one even includes AVX-512, which is NOT present in all mainstream Intel CPUs other than Tiger Lake or Rocket Lake, also still no AMD CPU features AVX-512 yet. also Windows won't be requering AVX anytime soon considering a bunch of the officially supported CPUs still lack AVX (see Coffee Lake and Comet Lake Pentium and Celeron), and requering AVX-512 would mean even killing almost all supported intel cpus and all AMD CPUs. Requeriment changes may change in the future

Requiring SSE4.1 or 4.2: Probably, but who knows

Requiring AVX: Not anytime soon, as long there are current generations and supported CPUs without AVX in the market

[M$gohome]

Evidently people cannot wait to be the b!tch of yet another windoze version... sad times.

[Fred]

Yep... myself with XEON cpu... and not supported in my case...

[ChrisNY]

Thank God Microsoft lied to us so that we can install the operating system and keep our computers running longer. Maybe the Pentium 4 is a bit over the top though. I'm running a AMD 8150 FX which is pretty old in itself but it's still 8 cores at 3.6 GHz. But we don't really want to remind them so they start locking us out of our computers and making us downgrade.

[MPKC]

Windows 11 is utter trash!  it came from its brother Trash 10!  windows is a JOKE anymore. Garbage!  Windows hasnt been exciting since XP, at least 7 was a good solid OS.
with all the blue screens i have seen, boot loops i have seen, windows 10 / 11 are just pure trash!

[Robert]

Simply but quit crying that Windows 11 won't work on your old hardware.  It'd not supposed to.  It's like putting brand new headlights on a car that's smashed.

Buy a new computer and shutup.  10 years is long enough for a computer.  The new system is supposed to have security features that old stuff doesn't support.  That's just the way it is.