Microsoft updates its processor requirements for Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909

[zanderthunder]

 

Microsoft is ready to release its next feature update for Windows 10, the November 2019 Update. As usual, the company has updated its processor requirements for the new version, but there are some surprises in there. For one thing, it retroactively changed the requirements for version 1903 while it was at it.

 

It's a reasonable thing to do, since Windows 10 version 1909 is really just version 1903 with an enablement package to light up some new features. If 1909 supports certain new processors, then 1903 must support them as well.

 

On the Intel side of things, Microsoft updated them to say that they support 10th-generation Core processors, along with Xeon E-22xx. There's also support for Atom J4xxx/J5xxx and N4xxx/N5xxx, Celeron, and Pentium, although specific models of Celeron and Pentium aren't listed. On a side note, Intel 10th-gen is listed as Core i3/i5/i7/i9-10xxx, despite no 10th-gen Core i9 existing just yet.

 

In the AMD department, there's still support for the company's seventh-generation processors, including A-series, E-series, and FX-9000, along with Athlon 2xx, Opteron, and EPYC 7xxx. What's new for AMD is support for Ryzen 3xxx CPUs, where previously only Ryzen 2xxx processors were listed.

 

What's more interesting is the Qualcomm CPUs that are listed. Previously, version 1903 supported the Snapdragon 850, but that's removed and replaced with both the Snapdragon 855 and the Snapdragon 8cx. It's unclear if this is a misprint, but the Snapdragon 855 was never supposed to be a PC chipset; it's for smartphones. It's possible that Microsoft meant to write Snapdragon 850, which is a PC chipset that's based on the Snapdragon 845.

 

Of course, we've reached out to Qualcomm for comment on this, so we'll update this article accordingly. At this time, there's nothing on the Qualcomm website about a Snapdragon 855 platform for PCs.

 

You might be wondering why Microsoft's custom SQ-1 processor - the one used in its new Surface Pro X - isn't on the list. That's because the processor isn't very custom. It's really just an SKU of the Snapdragon 8cx that has some optimizations for the Surface Pro X.

 

Source: Microsoft updates its processor requirements for Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909 (via Neowin)

[Dce3480]

The 1909, 1903 updates require Snapdragon 855, 8cx, and Intel Comet Lake CPUs as a minimum on new devices.

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Microsoft has updated its minimum processor requirements for Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm on new hardware that ships with Windows 10 version 1903 and the forthcoming version 1909.

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The newly updated living document for Windows 10 CPU requirements is an important one for manufacturers that intend to ship new laptops and desktops with Microsoft's latest versions of Windows 10. 

The requirements are the same for both versions of Windows 10, which is probably because the two are basically the same – Windows developers, for example, don't even need new tools to target version 1909 if they're already working on software for version 1903. 

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[Karlston]

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