Slow adoption of Windows 11 for gaming

[GTP]

Windows 11 is still struggling to convince gamers to upgrade

But that could change before too long…

www.techradar.com

 

[Blues]

Just like most every release of Windows since maybe 98 or ME as those ones looked that same so people were more ready to jump though ME proved to make people regret it and might be when the real hesitation began.

 

[MudRock]

Microsoft's tick-tock system; One okay, one really awful version, alternate indefinitely Makes the okay version look awesome

 

[Porthos]

People are not going out of their way to purchase new computers capable of running 11 just yet. Many "gamers" have computers that need major upgrades to be compatible.

 

[britechguy]

I also think that considering Windows 10 (other than its initial debut) and Windows 11 as being at all the same as the Windows versions prior to the era of Windows As A Service is a tenuous proposition.

I consider Windows 11 nothing more than a continuation of Windows 10 and given its development history, it's hard to consider it anything else. There will probably be a Windows 12 (or whatever they choose to call it) which will start out as a rebranded next Feature Update of Windows 11.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Microsoft's tick-tock system; One okay, one really awful version, alternate indefinitely Makes the okay version look awesome

And this applies to Windows 11 how?

It's Windows 10, with a fresh list of nearly artificial hardware requirements and a minor face lift.

It's a service pack, not a new version of Windows.

Microsoft's problem is... there is a MASSIVE lack of TPM in gaming rigs. All those expensive whiteboxes need hardware upgrades, if they want Win11 adoption they have to drop the TPM requirement.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Microsoft's problem is... there is a MASSIVE lack of TPM in gaming rigs. All those expensive whiteboxes need hardware upgrades, if they want Win11 adoption they have to drop the TPM requirement.

In most cases all that is required is a proper BIOS update. TPM is intergraded into most CPUs. Of course most manufacturers are not going to update out of support motherboards unless it’s a major security flaw. I have a Lenovo laptop that has two TPM “chips”. An 1.2 that’s on the motherboard and a 2.0 PTT that is in the cpu chip. I don’t think it originally supported the on board PTT but support was added via a bios upgrade.

 

[Sky-Knight]

In most cases all that is required is a proper BIOS update. TPM is intergraded into most CPUs. Of course most manufacturers are not going to update out of support motherboards unless it’s a major security flaw. I have a Lenovo laptop that has two TPM “chips”. An 1.2 that’s on the motherboard and a 2.0 PTT that is in the cpu chip. I don’t think it originally supported the on board PTT but support was added via a bios upgrade.

You missed my point. Lenovo isn't a whitebox. There are countless hordes of self built machines in the gaming space, and most of them that aren't at least generation 10 simply do not have TPM. There are pin headers on the mainboard for a TPM module, and yes there is the virtual TPM in the CPUs in question... but the BIOS also lacks the support to enable that.

Any machine built by the larger tier 1 OEMs gen8 or younger either has the discrete TPM that can be updated, or the BIOS support needed to do all of this. But the article was specifically talking about gamers. And gamers tend to build their own rigs. Now, many of them are paying for it because they cannot engineer a proper machine to save their souls.

 

[nlinecomputers]

You missed my point. Lenovo isn't a whitebox. There are countless hordes of self built machines in the gaming space, and most of them that aren't at least generation 10 simply do not have TPM. There are pin headers on the mainboard for a TPM module, and yes there is the virtual TPM in the CPUs in question... but the BIOS also lacks the support to enable that.

Any machine built by the larger tier 1 OEMs gen8 or younger either has the discrete TPM that can be updated, or the BIOS support needed to do all of this. But the article was specifically talking about gamers. And gamers tend to build their own rigs. Now, many of them are paying for it because they cannot engineer a proper machine to save their souls.

No didn’t miss the point at all. Most gaming machines have a CPU with built in TPM. The BIOS lacks the ability to address i. It could be fixed but mobo manufacturers aren’t going to spend resources on updating old BIOSes that are out of warranty. There’s no financial reason to do so. And TPM on a home system was a useless feature until Microsoft forced the issue. And frankly sell new motherboards is the whole reason for Windows 11.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@nlinecomputers I disagree that the entire purpose of all this is to sell more equipment.

I think it's just saying support of anything older than such is done. They can't keep dragging everything forward forever. The driver load on ancient Intel stuff alone is bonkers.

Intel itself only "supports" Windows 10 on the first flight i Series and younger, but we both know there are still G series CPUs in service. I have no idea how or why, but that old crap is OLD and problematic even for Windows 10. So the TPM 2.0 requirement is a nice line in the sand to finally shed all that crap. "Windows 11" lets Intel say, we're only supporting Gen8 and younger now. Which is inline with the support being given by Dell, HP, and all the tier ones for BIOSs.

Now, if they'd just be OPEN about that, things would be easier. But they aren't, won't, and never have been before. So conspiracies are all we have left, it's annoying.

 

[MudRock]

And this applies to Windows 11 how?

It's Windows 10, with a fresh list of nearly artificial hardware requirements and a minor face lift.

It's a service pack, not a new version of Windows.

Microsoft's problem is... there is a MASSIVE lack of TPM in gaming rigs. All those expensive whiteboxes need hardware upgrades, if they want Win11 adoption they have to drop the TPM requirement.

I am moreso just pointing out that is the public's perception of the OS cycle.

I agree, all Windows 11 is a skin and a window in which to instill these new TPM, minimum CPU and GPT/UEFI requirements. Also notice the lack of 32-bit Win11 as well.

But I do suspect Microsoft also choses to follow the tick-tock pacing. I will garner a guess Windows 11 won't be on the market long, much like 8/8.1.

Honestly though, I think Microsoft had no idea on how to further the dialog. Apple can arbitrarily stop supporting older hardware without so much as a bat of an eye. Microsoft I'm sure faces down the barrel of if they decided to do what they did, while under the Windows 10 umbrella, there likely would have been massive backlash.

"What do you mean I have to buy new hardware to keep working with Windows 10?!? But it is Windows 10! It should just work! This is just excuses to sell new hardware!" (Meanwhile I'm sure part of the Windows 11 avenue comes partly from Dell/Lenovo/etc putting pressure on releasing a new version of Windows.

I would have loved the idea of Windows 10 forever “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10,” I'm sure when we all heard that, we all said "Yeah, right." in our heads or out loud. But its just not possible.

I can just imagine the flipside; Microsoft ending support or any updates suddenly for Windows 10 for non-TPM and <8th gen and <Ryzen 2000 be halting immediately, what kind of chaos that would have caused.

As it is, I'm sure another 3 1/2 years of supporting two operating systems isn't what they wanted either.

I think Microsoft embraces the tick-tock of "one good, one not so good" method since they realized they had done it on accident. Windows 10 forever I'm sure was losing momentum. I know all too well people have stopped upgrading computers like they were during the XP era. This lets them make Windows 11 be the bad guy with the new requirements, and still allows people 3 1/2 years of updates.

Do I think it was to sell more hardware? Not exclusively, but it would shut Dell/Lenovo up for a while and let Microsoft execute what they perceived as a much-needed change in base policy for minimum requirements.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@MudRock I doubt it's about Dell / HP et al directly anyway.

The decision to brand Windows 11 as a thing has to boil down to two things.

1.) Hardware security is a real problem, and the OS can't fix it.
2.) Microsoft makes money off sales of new OSs, and therefore sales of new machines.

So yes, the concerns of Dell / HP matter here, but only because they are aligned with Microsoft's OS division profits. Someone in leadership in Microsoft probably noticed the numbers lagging in that department and started the push for the above. Meanwhile, any technically minded assets in Microsoft will use it as an excuse to address problem 1.

But yes, the PC market's reluctance to upgrade is just bonkers... just like how Android users refuse to spend money on apps, but iPhone users whip out their CCs for everything. If you're trying to make money, it's obvious what platform you're going to market to.

 

[sapphirescales]

the PC market's reluctance to upgrade is just bonkers

Uh, no, it's a rational decision. Hardware requirements have been the same since Windows Vista. Before Windows Vista, each new version of Windows would require at least DOUBLE the memory, a faster processor, more hard drive space, etc. Just looking at memory here, this is what each OS required:

Windows 95: 4MB
Windows 98: 16MB - 4x that of Windows 95
Windows 2000: 32MB - 2x that of Windows 98
Windows XP: 64MB - 2x that of Windows 2000
Windows Vista: 1,024MB - 16X that of Windows XP!!!!!!!!
Windows 7: 1,024MB - Same
Windows 8/8.1: 1,024MB - Same
Windows 10: 1,024MB - Same

Notice what happened? I personally use an Acer laptop from 2007 that originally came with Windows Vista. I put an SSD in it and it's just as fast as a brand new laptop for doing the basic stuff that normal people do on a computer (browse the internet, type documents, store photos, etc.). People used to upgrade or replace their computer every 2-3 years because they NEEDED to in order to run the new versions of Windows. Back then, Microsoft didn't have Windows Update and they didn't support their operating systems for 10+ years.

I upgraded computers so frequently back then it was insane. First a 286, then a 486, then a 100Mhz Pentium, then a 266Mhz Pentium MMX, then 500Mhz Pentium II, then an 800Mhz Pentium III, then a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4, then an AMD Athlon 3000+, then an AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+, etc. So from 1995 to 2008 I had no less than NINE computers! Nine computers in 13 years. That's freaking insane. You know how many times I've upgraded/replaced my main computer in the last 13 years? Three times. That means I was replacing my computers 3x as often back in the 90's and early 2000's. I'm not the only one who has slowed down my computer buying because you just don't need to replace your computer as often anymore.

Windows 11 is Microsoft's way of creating an artificial need and if they can get away with it this time, they'll pull the same BS next time too, I guarantee it. Microsoft would love nothing more than to be like Apple, forcing you to buy new low quality, disposable products constantly. I mean, look at the Surface line. Absolute junk. They want to take it even further though, forcing people to rent their OS, Office, cloud backup, etc. It's so obvious that I don't know how anyone can be in denial anymore. I knew this crap was coming back when Windows 8 was released. That's when Microsoft stopped caring about making good software and instead started trying to force their agenda on their users. I hope it blows up in their faces.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Windows 95: 4MB
Windows 98: 16MB - 4x that of Windows 95
Windows 2000: 32MB - 2x that of Windows 98
Windows XP: 64MB - 2x that of Windows 2000
Windows Vista: 1,024MB - 16X that of Windows XP!!!!!!!!
Windows 7: 1,024MB - Same
Windows 8/8.1: 1,024MB - Same
Windows 10: 1,024MB - Same

Minimum requirements are about as believable as the miles per gallon a car can get that's on the stealerships windows sticker!

Windows XP...64 megs? I'd have shot myself! heck we were minimum 256 gigs for most of XP's life and towards the end 512 gigs..as our "standard system".

Vista...at least 2 gigs, if not 4.
Been going up since then, for the past couple of years we've had 16 gigs for our standard systems, 8 gigs for the uber cheap clients.

Operating systems have indeed grown, todays Intel i5 CPU is substantially faster than the Intel i5 CPU made 7 years ago. RAM..faster. Drives, have gotten substantially faster...from spindles...to SATA SSD....to M.2....

I don't have a love for Windows 11 yet...I don't dislike it, but....a few areas require several more clicks to get to where I want to get.

 

[britechguy]

Minimum requirements are about as believable as the miles per gallon a car can get that's on the stealerships windows sticker!

Amen, amen, amen!

I don't think I've ever tried running any version of Windows on what was designated as a "minimum spec" machine after seeing what often happened at RAM that was "only" double the minimum spec.

 

[MudRock]

I upgraded computers so frequently back then it was insane. First a 286, then a 486, then a 100Mhz Pentium, then a 266Mhz Pentium MMX, then 500Mhz Pentium II, then an 800Mhz Pentium III, then a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4, then an AMD Athlon 3000+, then an AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+, etc. So from 1995 to 2008 I had no less than NINE computers! Nine computers in 13 years. That's freaking insane. You know how many times I've upgraded/replaced my main computer in the last 13 years? Three times. That means I was replacing my computers 3x as often back in the 90's and early 2000's. I'm not the only one who has slowed down my computer buying because you just don't need to replace your computer as often anymore.

13 years, and Moore's Law was still in full swing. 9 years and it slowed to a crawl. SSD upgrades were a simple fix to the bloat of Windows/apps/etc too and did breath some life into mediocre systems. I mean, 2000-series i5s are still viable for daily driver systems.

Glad we have some heated competition going again.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I'm looking forward to the push to refresh to be Win11 ready once the 8th gen platforms get cheap on the secondary market. Not so much because I wan Win11 everywhere, but because I can finally get the last leap of energy efficiency that Intel provided. That translates into about $20 / month in power savings PER MACHINE here due to the costs of cooling in the Summer. less savings the rest of the year of course, but still saving about $100 / year in power / machine is a big deal. And is even more important when you live in a hot place like I do, because those energy efficient systems also mean less heat in the room.

So the wallet is happy, and the human is comfortable. That's a huge deal! But, by the budgets I've been given for the last decade, just not in the numbers yet.

 

[sapphirescales]

Windows XP...64 megs? I'd have shot myself!

It really wasn't that bad. I ran Windows XP on a Micron laptop with a 233 Mhz processor and 64MB of RAM and it ran just fine. It was MUCH faster than a modern computer with a hard drive. Even if you have an i7 laptop, hard drives just don't work right in Windows 10/11. If you have a higher density 7200rpm desktop hard drive that can do 200+MB/s then it's okay but a 5400rpm laptop hard drive that can barely do 100MB/s is unbelievably slow, I guess because Windows 10/11 requires 100MB/s of throughput just to run the background processes that are a part of Windows.

But here's another thing to think about. That Micron laptop originally came with Windows 98. Windows XP was released just 3 years later. Of course, there was NO WAY to run Vista on that thing. I think it maxed out at 128MB, though maybe it was 256MB. Regardless, it didn't have the 1Ghz+ processor that Windows Vista required. Computers got obsolete SUPER fast back then. That's just not the case anymore.

Glad we have some heated competition going again.

Yeah, me too, but unless there are applications that appeal to regular computer users that require this increased speed, there still won't be any incentive to upgrade. Your average computer user can't tell the difference between a Dell Latitude E6430 with a 3rd gen i5 and a brand new Dell Latitude 5530 with a 12th gen i7 if they both have an SSD and a fresh install of Windows. If they want to game or edit videos then sure, they'll see a huge difference, but for browsing the internet and stuff there really isn't a need for more speed.

In fact, you could claim that Windows Vista created an "artificial need." What made Vista so bloated was all the visual style BS that literally nobody asked for. We've become accustomed to this, but really, we've reached a point now where the limitation is the human eye itself. Yeah, I'm sure we could make a screen that could output 95 trillion colors, but people literally wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Web apps take up LESS resources, not more.

What drives innovation now is making laptops smaller and lighter with better battery life because regular computer users CAN tell the difference between their old boat anchor of a computer and a brand new thin and light laptop with 10+ hours of battery life. But we're even close to hitting a wall with this. You can only make a laptop so thin, and there are only so many hours in the day. I don't see a person upgrading to a new computer because it gets 36 hours of battery life vs. the 12 their current one gets. Yeah, it may be triple the battery life, but since they're not going to use their computer for more than 12 hours at a time, does it really matter?

Now we've reached the point where the only way they're going to be able to sell new computers is to create artificial demand, either by building them like crap and making them non-repairable (we're already seeing this) or by dropping support for older models to artificially make them obsolete and force you to buy a new one.

The computer industry has never had to deal with having a replacement-only market. The appliance market has been like this for decades. Nobody throws away their perfectly working fridge and buys a new one just because the new model has a fancy ice maker or whatever. Microsoft and PC manufacturers need to accept reality and stop trying to force people to upgrade just because they don't like living in a replacement-only market.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It really wasn't that bad. I ran Windows XP on a Micron laptop with a 233 Mhz processor and 64MB of RAM and it ran just fine. It was MUCH faster than a modern computer with a hard drive. Even if you have an i7 laptop, hard drives just don't work right in Windows 10/11. If you have a higher density 7200rpm desktop hard drive that can do 200+MB/s then it's okay but a 5400rpm laptop hard drive that can barely do 100MB/s is unbelievably slow, I guess because Windows 10/11 requires 100MB/s of throughput just to run the background processes that are a part of Windows.

Yes I remember XP on early Pentium II's...think I initially ran it on a 233 or 266...although if memory serves me correct, I got it up to 96 megs. But in no way is was it even remotely "faster" than a modern computer. Also XP got a lot "heavier" as it was service packed, esp SP2 that really gutted the OS and re-wrote it much more securely (patching all those DCOM exploits for example).

Regardless, spindle hard drives are gone, extinct for us, I'd rather mow my lawn with toenail clippers than work on a Win10 rig with a spindle drive. My MSP contracts will not cover those, we lose far too much time working on them. This weekend I onboarded a new client...most of their fleet of computers was modern, except 2x laptops (which are being replaced). But I had to onboard those particular laptops until we get new ones in. Both of those laptops took tween 3-4 hours to do the same exact process that did on the dozen other laptops with M.2 drives in about 30-45 minutes...60 minutes at the most. Same_exact_steps being done. HUGE difference.

 

[Porthos]

Regardless, spindle hard drives are gone, extinct for us, I'd rather mow my lawn with toenail clippers than work on a Win10 rig with a spindle drive.

Amen, I will have to use that one.