Microsoft confirms Windows 11 will only support 8th Gen and up CPUs. According to Microsoft, Windows 11 will not install on earlier CPUs. This means Microsoft's own Surface Pro 4, Surface Pro (2017), and Surface Studio 2 ($3,499) will not be upgradeable to Windows 11.

https://twitter.com/dispensa/status/1408582402998341633
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/windows-processor-requirements

nah
but we will see

click the links, look for yourself. AMD has the largest range of support due to the wider Motherboard compatibility and instruction set.. Intel is very limited in whats is supported.

yes you should do that and read it is not final and it is probably only for OEM requirements

It's possible that older CPU's may be made to run on it (depends on instruction set though). It will certainly be interesting to see what GOG "supports" based on the "GOG only support old games on the newest OS's" thing. That may be technically correct, but if MS-DOS games listed on GOG start "needing" an 11th Gen CPU + W11, it's certainly going to put a dent in GOG's sales from getting a little too carried away with mimicking Microsoft's fake requirements...

What games use CPUs below 8th gen?

Quite honestly that stuff needs reviewing anyway. Looking through some games recently, it's obvious new games have "W10" written on them regardless of what they actually run on "because we don't support older OS's", whilst many older games that came here years ago still have "W7, XP", etc, listed as if GOG still does support them. "Minimum OS" here has become so inconsistent as to be meaningless for any reliable guide of what a game actually requires. Pretty much all of them. I haven't seen a single game that will only run on an i5-9400/10400/11400 but not an i5-8400/7400 (or a Ryzen 2600/3600/5600X but not a 1600). It's nothing like the situation years ago when MMX, SSE, 3DNOW, etc, instructions were added at a rapid pace and compiled to as a requirement (or 64-bit only games won't work on 32-bit CPU's). The only recent thing I've ever seen like that is Celeron / Pentium not running literally only one or two Ubisoft games (that they wouldn't play well anyway) due to lack of AVX instructions with no SSE fallback code. The rest are usually fake made up "requirements", especially for lighter weight / older games here.

Tons of games still show windows 7, 8 and 10 as "works on" this is a non issue for GOG. If there emulators and wrappers support the system they will support the system.

We have until 2025 to see whats going on, but TPM 2.0 is a requirement of Windows 11 so this idea of "changing in the future" means either chipsets need to support older CPU's or this is a going to happen and we all need to accept it.

TPM 2.0 supported hardware is sold out as well, go take a look!

Or we just give both Microsoft and the scalpers who just bought out all the TPM modules the middle finger and happily remain on an older version. ;-)

Microsoft gatekeeping customers from the next Windows version after the forced Windows 10 upgrade shitshow?

Can't say I really believe it, but I wouldn't be surprised, as Microsoft does have a shotgun blast-to-the-toes mentality from time to time.

I have an i5 2500k and it still got enough power to run anything. But I don't play every new game, so... Yeah, maybe there are games that wouldn't work very well on my system.

Some recent games I've played are Control and Hitman 3. I'm no expert but I think Hitman needs quite a bit of CPU, seeing how many characters are on screen, following their routines, reacting to what's happening, etc. Funnily enough, the most CPU demanding game I have is X3. It's ancient (from 2005!) and has a funny quirk. It's a very CPU hungry game and only makes use of one single core. Best way to play it is with one of those old single core CPUs from the time where AMD and Intel tried to reach 5 GHz.

Most games don't use CPUs that powerful. For Intel this is everything below the i3/i5/i7 7000 series and for AMD its everything below the R3/R5/R7 2000 series. So famous value CPUs like the i5 2500k/ i7 2700k and the 1st Gen Ryzens as well as all of AMD's good-enough-at-the-time FX series will be locked out.

MS probably didn't get the memo that planned hardware obsolescence isn't as common as software obsolescence. There's no way they won't backpedal on this; if they don't, they'll lose the market share from the huge userbase of these CPUs after Win10 support stops.

Windows 11 will not support first generation Ryzen CPUs, but they're only like 3-4 years old. WTF?

Right!? and the Intel line is even smaller, the supported chips at the moment are so few and far between. Microsoft promised a lengthy blog post to explaining the decision but.... I'm not holding my breath.