By now, it should be known that Intel’s 7th generation Core series of processors, called Kaby Lake, does not officially support Windows 7. But now it seems even AMD will not be putting any resources into Windows 7 support according to reports from various sources. In a statement to PCWorld, an AMD representative had this to say:
To achieve the highest confidence in the performance of our AMD Ryzen desktop processors… AMD validated them across two different OS generations, Windows 7 and 10… However, only support and drivers for Windows 10 will be provided in AMD Ryzen desktop processor production parts.”
To be clear, the story is somewhat similar on the Intel side of things. Kaby Lake lacks officialy Windows 7 support, but tech bloggers and vloggers have shown that the new Core i3, i5 and i7 chips are all able to run Windows 7 without any major issues. Some have even tested them on Windows 8.1 with similar results. So if you’ve got a copy of Windows 7, theoretically, you could still use the latest hardware – just don’t expect any support from manufacturers should anything go wrong.
