More than a year ahead of the official end of Windows 10 support, AMD's AI chips will forego support entirely

In another attempt to convince us that “AI PCs” are somehow fundamentally different from the PCs we’re already using, AMD has officially dropped support for Windows 10 from its new AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series platform. This can be observed by glancing at the official AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 specs page, which now only lists 64-bit versions of Windows 11, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ubuntu as having official support.

Is this a big deal? It depends on how much you like using Windows while also disliking Windows 11. Personally, I prefer Windows 10 as a daily driver, and will only resort to Windows 11 use for professional needs.

That said, the gaming performance and compatibility of Linux operating systems get better every day, so dropping Windows 10 shouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker for these CPUs. After all, the Ryzen 9 AI 9 HX 370 can perform formidably, even in Silent mode. But users who were interested in those laptops and wished to downgrade to Windows 10 are now totally out of luck, it seems.

  • joojmachine@lemmy.mlEnglish
    842·
    5 months ago

    I mean, there’s always another option beyond W11, if you catch my drift

    *loud penguin noises*

    • zcd@lemmy.caEnglish
      46·
      5 months ago

      I will help anyone who is interested in installing Linux

          • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            Could you please explain how to do it in only the GUI? I need to disable my Nvidia GPU with scripts, detaching the GPU from my main OS, before I can pass it. It’s not 100% reliable

            • ozymandias117@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              5 months ago

              I’m working off the assumption you are using one GPU for the host and one for the guest

              The guest one is permanently blacklisted on the host, and you can select the passthrough settings in the GUI

              If you’re dynamically detaching the GPU, my statement was incorrect

              • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.mlEnglish
                2·
                5 months ago

                Oh okey, then I am with you! I have an integrated GPU in my processor that have been tinkering with but for my usecase it’s not enough. Ideally would I need two external GPUs in my system so I can game on both Windows and Linux without rebooting or leaving Linux. Detaching a GPU from a running system is quite messy 😅

      • whereBeWaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        I’ve been very uninterested in linux as I use my pc predominantly for gaming but after I got a Steam Deck I am very interested in swapping over to bazzite by the time windows 10 support ends as I saw how easy it is to get games working on linux.

        I am kinda concerned that installers of games are not going to work on linux though as I install my non-steam games on my windows pc and copy them over to the deck. Do you know a way to get installers work on linux?

    • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      18·
      5 months ago

      If this hardware doesn’t even work on the largest PC os on the market I doubt it’ll work with Linux. Maybe in 5 years when someone reverse engineers it and writes an open source driver

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    475·
    5 months ago

    “Amd won’t support OS that isn’t supported anymore”

    This isn’t news and it definitely doesn’t need the commentary it’s receiving here.

  • ilmagico@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    5 months ago

    Ok, so, no official support for Windows 10, but can you still install and run Windows 10 and renouce whatever “support” or will it just not work?

    • Clusterfck@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      221·
      5 months ago

      I mean, they list Red Hat and Ubuntu as the only OFFICIALLY supported Linux distros and both of those are based on other “non-supported” distros, so I don’t think it means much.

      • HybridSarcasm@lemmy.worldEnglish
        48·
        5 months ago

        Red Hat (RHEL) is not based on any other distro, like Ubuntu is with Debian. RHEL is downstream of Fedora, meaning that RHEL developers can work on code that affects Fedora AND RHEL. This is not really true of Debian and Ubuntu. They are distinct projects with different goals. In many ways, Ubuntu is beholden to what Debian does. This isn’t usually a problem because Debian is very conservative in its approach to software. Ubuntu doesn’t usually have to worry about Debian screwing with something Ubuntu is trying to do.

        Which, is all to say that there is no other distribution you can officially equate to RHEL like you can with Debian & Ubuntu.

        • Clusterfck@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          9·
          5 months ago

          The person was asking a fairly simple question and I gave an answer that avoided jumping into the genealogy of GNU/Linux based distributions. Many apologies, won’t happen again.

          • ITGuyLevi@programming.devEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            I mean you were pretty damn correct in your statement. Fedora is not officially supported, neither is Debian, a couple popular derivatives are though. My guess is Canonical and IBM were willing to add stuff to make AMD feel confident enough to list them as “Officially” supported.

            Personally I’m not a fan of RHEL or Ubuntu but absolutely love Debian. Part of me feels like I would like RHEL if I used it enough, but I use Window’s daily at work and still don’t like it…

    • anyhow2503@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      It will probably just work, even if not officially. If any weird Windows issues crop up, Microsoft may or may not fix them. I think AMD even provided workarounds and special drivers for Windows 7, just without any official support. They may not do that this time around though, since a lot of things have changed.

    • lemme in@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      According to this article, regarding Intel Alder Lake

      Intel’s Thread Director technology is the key here. This hardware-based technology uses a trained AI model to identify different types of workloads at the chip level. It then provides that enhanced telemetry data to Windows 11 via a Performance Monitoring Unit (PMU) built into the chip. The operating system then uses that data to help assure that threads are scheduled to either the P- or E-cores in an optimized and intelligent manner.

      However, while Windows 11 exploits Thread Director’s full feature set, Windows 10 does not. Due to optimizations for Intel’s Lakefield chips, Windows 10 is aware of hybrid topologies, meaning it knows the difference between the performance and efficiency of the different core types. Still, it doesn’t have access to the thread-specific telemetry provided by Intel’s hardware-based solution.

      As a result, threads can and will land on the incorrect cores under some circumstances, which Intel says will result in run-to-run variability in benchmarks. It will also impact the chips during normal use, too. Intel says the difference amounts to a few percentage points of performance and that the chips still provide an “awesome” user experience. We’ll have to see how that works in the real world to assess the impact.

      Intel also says that users can assign the priority of background tasks through the standard Windows settings, but these global settings apply to all programs. So it remains to be seen if that will have a meaningful impact on performance variability in Windows 10.

      https://www.tomshardware.com/features/intel-shares-alder-lake-pricing-specs-and-gaming-performance/4

      so, it’s still works but not optimized for some apps. Probably this will be the same with AMD’s latest CPU.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    301·
    5 months ago

    My impression was that normally OSes support chips rather than the other day around.

    I guess CPU vendors can push out microcode updates using mechanisms in the OS.

  • letsgo@lemm.eeEnglish
    23·
    5 months ago

    How does a CPU drop support for an OS? Seems the wrong way round to me. Is there a Windows 10 specific way of loading 5 into the accumulator or something?

  • Raxiel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    5 months ago

    If Weird Al died on a Friday and came back the following Sunday, would he be Ryzen Al?

  • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    5 months ago

    Isn’t the same true for the 7950X3D?

    I doubt you would have many issues using win10 on this platform if you wanted to.

    • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
      121·
      5 months ago

      It’s all about getting users to buy new PCs that can run the AMAZING AI! (I’m being sarcastic here). It’s good for AMD and Microsoft’s pockets.

      • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        5 months ago

        I mean, sure but even phoenix based OEM platforms tend to ship with win11 anyways, right? Did any of those release with win10 ootb?

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        I’m guess its more a cost savings effort for AMD that they won’t have to do a development and testing channel for Windows 10 anymore.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    5 months ago

    Can its AI portion be used for something other than AI? If not then no big loss other than wasted silicon.

  • ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    They probably want to be on best terms with microsoft. M$ have been heavily marketing ARM CPUs from Qualcomm and AMD don’t want to be left bihind.