Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen processors will only support Windows 10

Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen processors will only support Windows 10 (From PCGamer)

It's no secret that Microsoft wants you to upgrade to Windows 10. Like, really badly. Microsoft's pulled out all the stops it can think of, even going so far as to limit support for new processors to Windows 10 only. And yes, in case you were wondering, Microsoft is following through with an announcement it made earlier this year that Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen processors would require Windows 10.

"Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel's upcoming 'Kaby Lake' silicon, Qualcomm's upcoming '8996' silicon, and AMD's upcoming 'Bristol Ridge' silicon," Microsoft stated in a blog post earlier this year.

At the time, Microsoft also included Intel's Skylake CPUs in the mix with an 18-month grace period to make the upgrade. It later reversed course among intense backlash from the Internet community at large. Wondering if the same would be true of Kaby Lake and Zen, PCWorld reached out to Microsoft, which held firm in its initial decision.

"As new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told PCWorld. "This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon."

Taken at face value, Microsoft is forging ahead and promoting new features, though one can't help but feel it's another arbitrary move to get users to upgrade to Windows 10.

So, what happens if you install a Kaby Lake processor in a desktop PC running Windows 7? Good question—nobody knows outside of Microsoft and Intel, and until the CPUs are out in the wild, no one will have the opportunity to try it out.

One unnamed source told PCWorld that without support and security updates, his guess is that the experience would be "a bit glitchy." Another surmised that certain apps trying to use features built into the chips could crash. Even if you can get the OS installed, it would likely be a sub-optimal experience at best.

There's not a whole lot Intel and AMD are saying about this. Both chipmakers provided canned responses when asked for thoughts on the subject, with Intel confirming it has no plans on updating Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 drivers for Kaby Lake "per Microsoft's support policy change."

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So if you plan to upgrade to Zen or Kaby Lake, add $100 to this future upgrade...

Why is MS so desperate to get people to Windows 10? That's what I want to know...

I wager there are good reasons to have the latest software running in conjunction with the latest hardware, but at the same time if someone wants to run older --but still viable and functional -- software with new hardware they should be allowed to.

Seems fishy. Hmm...

@mrbojangles25: it costs MS more money to support multiple versions of windows. e.g. they fix a security bug in windows 10. right...now does that also apply to 8.1, 7 and vista? need to check. ok so it does. so that patch needs to be backported. that means more testing to make sure the changes dont break anything on those OSs.

windows 10 is a rolling release OS. they dont even need to test what happens if a patch is installed without another patch that may, or may not, be related is installed. all patches are mandatory and are installed automatically on windows 10. so, from a code perspective, there is only one windows 10. they still have to test different configurations because i can have different settings to you and that may have an effect on a patch. but its still faster.

MS are a services company and windows is just the OS they use to deliver those services. they would prefer to put less resources into maintaining multiple versions of it.

Nah. You don't charge $100 for an OS and do the human cent-iPad thing. That only happens on comedy shows, right?

I'm going to kill myself before i use windows 10. I think i have a couple years left before i have to do this. But when its no longer possible to use windows 7 its over for me.

I had a good run though.

LOL! Southpark ftw!

Unless motherboard makers dont include drivers for Win 7/8, is the only way those cpus wont work right. MS does not have to physically support drivers for the cpus for their OS's if the OS can support the processors cores/thread count. Windows 7 supports upto 256 threads.