AMD Ryzen and Windows 7 Driver Support

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Oct 29, 2000
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For the last couple of days we have seen rumors and postings talking about AMD's new Ryzen having driver support for Windows 7, but nothing with a solid source. This, of course, contradicts what we had previously heard about Ryzen only supporting Windows 10, so we reached out to AMD to see if we could get some clarity for our readers. Does Ryzen have Windows 7 support or not?

Yes, we have drivers for win 7 today on the AM4 platform because we enabled 7th gen A-series for dell, HP, Lenovo etc last year with the launch of our AMD 7th Generation A-series processors.
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So there you go, straight from the horse's mouth. No BS.

...and more leaked Ryzen benchmarks just hit the web!
 
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So this leaves the [H] with some interesting work to do perhaps. People will want to see some benchmarks on this and it could be interesting. As much as Windows 10 gets called out for being bloated it my personal observation is that it seems like Microsoft is making some fairly significant optimizations in 10 with each major update. The latest insider build, 15025, it seems really zippy on my Surface Pro 3. Again, this is just personal observations and no kind of testing what so ever.

If someone is looking for something might be a hit to do around [H], take some latest and greatest hardware and do some 10 vs. 7 benchmarks. I'd love to see the results. I'm guessing 7 would do ok overall but would probably start to show some age.
 
heatlesssun said:
If someone is looking for something might be a hit to do around [H], take some latest and greatest hardware and do some 10 vs. 7 benchmarks. I'd love to see the results. I'm guessing 7 would do ok overall but would probably start to show some age.
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That could be interesting.

If I had to wager a guess, it would be that the difference would be minimal, except for on really low speced systems, where we might see a bigger advantage on 10. It's just a hunch though.
 
It gets way more complicated than sometimes these OS debates tend to be honest about. Personally I've not used Windows 7 on my own devices for close to four years and none of the devices I used day to day now came with Windows 7 or in the case of my sig rig, were bought in mind to support Windows 7. Testing everything I use across four devices on 7 or any other OS for that matter, seriously, that's a shitload of work.
 
dgz said:
Not that I am against it in any way but for some reason I imagined AMD's PR person mentioning "don't forget about the new leaked benchmarks!" at the end of the conversation :D
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Hahah, nah. Kyle just happened to find them while I was in the middle of making this post, so he asked me to add them to the end.
 
B00nie said:
Smart move for AMD - folks who can't buy new Intel chips have now a competitive offering.
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It's not about being smart, it's about not being suicidal. 7 and 8.1 still make up half the market, and I'll lay money that performance is no better on 10 than 8.1.

AMD isn't in a position of limit themselves to one version of one operating system.
 
This is great news for all you Windows 7 peasants* out there!

*= JUST KIDDING!!!!! :wacky:
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
If I had to wager a guess, it would be that the difference would be minimal, except for on really low speced systems, where we might see a bigger advantage on 10.
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I fresh installed Windows 10 (during the free upgrade period) on a number of older laptops, and saw a noticeable improvement in speed over Windows 7. Made the laptop usable again.
 
nutzo said:
I fresh installed Windows 10 (during the free upgrade period) on a number of older laptops, and saw a noticeable improvement in speed over Windows 7. Made the laptop usable again.
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How old were those installs of 7?

I've noticed the same thing though :)
 
I always assumed the rumors were referring to some Windows 10-specific power feature, not Windows 7 support as a whole. Not supporting the dominant OS would be retarded.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I always assumed the rumors were referring to some Windows 10-specific power feature, not Windows 7 support as a whole. Not supporting the dominant OS would be retarded.
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That's exactly what it is. What "not supported" means is Microsoft won't offer support if you don't have a Skylake, and originally rumored Ryzen, CPU. So, it really affects like 5 people.
 
Yeah, "not supported" doesn't mean "won't run/work". It just means "No lifeguard on duty, swim at your own risk".
 
Microsoft was recently crowing about how Win10 is now on 25% of devices. Thinking it would be rather silly for a 3rd party company to ignore the other 75% of Windows users by not offering some type of support for non Win 10 users.
 
Hoping for a good release of Ryzen. Not at all expecting one.

This AMD, so even if the CPU is interesting, YMMV when it comes to actually getting one.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Microsoft was recently crowing about how Win10 is now on 25% of devices. Thinking it would be rather silly for a 3rd party company to ignore the other 75% of Windows users by not offering some type of support for non Win 10 users.
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Tell that to Intel.
 
DPI said:
It's not about being smart, it's about not being suicidal. 7 and 8.1 still make up half the market, and I'll lay money that performance is no better on 10 than 8.1.

AMD isn't in a position of limit themselves to one version of one operating system.
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Which means there were being smart dude. Damn man, you really need to just stop.
 
Cobra said:
Yeah, "not supported" doesn't mean "won't run/work". It just means "No lifeguard on duty, swim at your own risk".
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Not according to many of the anti Windows 10 folks around there parts. To here them talk, it was not going to support anything prior to Windows 10 WHAT...SO...EVER! :D
 
I'm excited now! I'll eventually move to 10, when I feel like it. I'm drastically due for an upgrade, and depending on Ryzen's performance, I'm going to go with AMD or Intel. Whichever is going to get me more bang for the buck!
I'm still rockin' a Phenom II 955!

Also, seen this in the AMD Subforum.
ochadd said:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/56124/amd-ryzen-flagship-cpu-r7-1800x-8c-16t-4ghz/index.html

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-am4-processor-family-leak-r7-1800x-flagship/
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