wccftech Valve’s Steam Officially Ends Support For Windows 7 and Windows 8

[UltraMega]

Just now, Sir Beregond said:

This is a fun aside, but I think @pioneerisloud entire premise was that there are a small segment of retro enthusiasts who want to run computers on retro OS's that they have no intention of upgrading to Windows 10 on, and since the games they bought have a required spec of those same retro OS's, losing access to the games because of the game platform dropping support (unrelated to the games themselves) isn't very fun. So I don't think whether or not you can upgrade to Windows 10 is anything they give a rat's about in this context @UltraMega. I'm sure @pioneerisloud already has a W10 or W11 box.

I get that, but there is nothing that will run on 7 but not 10 after doing an upgrade install. Meaning upgrading a machine with 7 on it to 10. Whatever games are in the machine will still run after the upgrade. A clean install might be different. 

 

Some games might have some very specific bugs on 10 that don't exist on 7, and vice versa. I'm not saying there are zero issues for retro gamers, I'm just saying any machine running 7 can be upgraded to 10. 

[pio]

3 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

This is a fun aside, but I think @pioneerisloud entire premise was that there are a small segment of retro enthusiasts who want to run computers on retro OS's that they have no intention of upgrading to Windows 10 on, and since the games they bought have a required spec of those same retro OS's, losing access to the games because of the game platform dropping support (unrelated to the games themselves) isn't very fun. So I don't think whether or not you can upgrade to Windows 10 is anything they give a rat's about in this context @UltraMega. I'm sure @pioneerisloud already has a W10 or W11 box.

I have plenty of Windows 10 boxes.

Yes, this actually does effect me 110%.  My daily driver retro rig is a Socket 939 Opteron 180 with a GTX 480 in it, running Windows 7 x64 because nothing newer will run on it due to missing that instruction set CMPXCHG16b.  I used to actually play games on it, I did just a month ago actually.  In Steam.  Ran my older titles beautifully actually.

[pio]

1 minute ago, UltraMega said:

I get that, but there is nothing that will run on 7 but not 10 after doing an upgrade install. Meaning upgrading a machine with 7 on it to 10. Whatever games are in the machine will still run after the upgrade. A clean install might be different. 

 

Some games might have some very specific bugs on 10 that don't exist on 7, and vice versa. I'm not saying there are zero issues for retro gamers, I'm just saying any machine running 7 can be upgraded to 10. 

Prove it, because I already did in my build log thread.  Don't have a K8?  PM me, I'll send you one just so you can prove me "wrong".  

[UltraMega]

2 minutes ago, pioneerisloud said:

Okay fine.  I'll send you a 939 board, and YOU install Windows 10 x64 to it then?

You're completely missing the point and running a rant about something that doesn't even matter.  Windows 10 isn't a gaming OS for older hardware, its not.  It cannot run on a lot of old hardware, (read the thread I linked) due to that missing CMPXCHG16b instruction set.  And the hardware it CAN run on (that's vintage), it won't run games (even older games) due to missing drivers for the GPU, or the CPU just not having enough grunt power to get through Windows alone.

For THOSE type of people, with retro machines, forcing Windows 10 is a bad bad thing.

I'm not arguing 10 is great for retro gamers, but it's a fact that any PC that can run 7 can also run 10. I mealy mentioned this and you insisted it wasn't true, yet I know that it is so I am simply trying to get you to see that. 

 

If you want to send me your 939 board, I'll install windows 10 on it. 

[pio]

6 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

I'm not arguing 10 is great for retro gamers, but it's a fact that any PC that can run 7 can also run 10. I mealy mentioned this and you insisted it wasn't true, yet I know that it is so I am simply trying to get you to see that. 

 

If you want to send me your 939 board, I'll install windows 10 on it. 

LOL, no its absolutely NOT a fact.  I can install Windows 7 and enjoy it on an Athlon 1100MHz (yes, x86).  And yes, it'll play games too with my Radeon 9800XT.  However it too, will not even try to install Win10 x86, let alone play games.

K8, absolutely is missing the CMPXCHG16b instruction set, which is a requirement for Windows 8.1 x64 and newer.  This is a fact.  Absolutely NOBODY, nobody at all, has EVER gotten Windows 10 x64 to run on a K8.

I was wrong about Core 2.  I'll give you that, but I also said from the very first comment I've never tried a Core 2 with Windows 10 yet.  Maybe the 775 motherboard chipsets have the CMPXCHG16b instruction set, and maybe that's why those work?  I really don't know.  It was implemented with AMD during the K10 era.

As far as sending you a board, dude I'll send you a whole 939 board, CPU, and RAM combo if you really want to do this.  I have a stack of 6 of them in my storage closet lol.  

Edited January 4 by pioneerisloud

[bonami2]

Guy old game can run fine with swap file on ssd.

 

Ran bf4 4k maxed with 4gb ram on my fx 8300 and 6800xt no issue.

 

 

[LabRat]

1 hour ago, UltraMega said:

It says 64 bit right here, at 7 seconds in to the video. 
 

 

 

That's an AM2 Athlon 64 X2 CPU
which, does support CMPXCHG16B / CompareExchange128

 

 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Specs | TechPowerUp CPU Database

WWW.TECHPOWERUP.COM

---

Windsor, 2 Cores, 2 Threads, 3 GHz, 125 W

AM2 Windsor(onwards) core K8-uArch, has the instructions.

 

 

 

Edited January 4 by LabRat

[UltraMega]

3 minutes ago, pioneerisloud said:

LOL, no its absolutely NOT a fact.  I can install Windows 7 and enjoy it on an Athlon 1100MHz (yes, x86).  And yes, it'll play games too with my Radeon 9800XT.  However it too, will not even try to install Win10 x86, let alone play games.

K8, absolutely is missing the CMPXCHG16b instruction set, which is a requirement for Windows 8.1 x64 and newer.  This is a fact.  Absolutely NOBODY, nobody at all, has EVER gotten Windows 10 x64 to run on a K8.

I was wrong about Core 2.  I'll give you that, but I also said from the very first comment I've never tried a Core 2 with Windows 10 yet.  Maybe the 775 motherboard chipsets have the CMPXCHG16b instruction set, and maybe that's why those work?  I really don't know.  It was implemented with AMD during the K10 era.

The instruction set you mentioned is only required for 64-bit. perhaps that particular CPU specifically is in an extremely rare spot of being able to run XP-64 bit but only 10 32-bit, but it can still run 10, just not 64-bit. 

The other CPUs you mentioned can all run 10 64-bit no problem. 

I also think I was remembering running into issues installing 10 64-bit on a P4, which was later upgraded to a core 2 duo. P4 still worked with 32-bit tho, and subsequently so did the Core 2 Duo. 

[pio]

7 minutes ago, LabRat said:

There was no S754/939 "6000+"

That's am AM2 Athlon 64 X2 CPU
which, does support CMPXCHG16B / CompareExchange128

 

 

TY.  I wasn't sure if the cutoff was Socket 939 or if AM2 K8's were included.  I know K10's work, which I said.

 

5 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

The instruction set you mentioned is only required for 64-bit. perhaps that particular CPU specifically is in an extremely rare spot of being able to run XP-64 bit but only 10 32-bit, but it can still run 10, just not 64-bit. 

The other CPUs you mentioned can all run 10 64-bit no problem. 

I also think I was remembering running into issues installing 10 64-bit on a P4, which was later upgraded to a core 2 duo. P4 still worked with 32-bit tho, and subsequently so did the Core 2 Duo. 

............didn't I say that like 10 times?  Yes, a K8 can install Win10 x86.  But its not going to play games on Steam in 10 x86.  The CPU is stuck at 100% the whole time because of the Windows 10 overhead required.  But yet 2 weeks ago, my K8 build was happily playing my Steam games on Windows 7 x64.

You're also negating every OTHER CPU that's older than K8, that can run and play games on Windows 7 just fine, but can't run Windows 10.  I never said this was a problem for people with modern hardware, this is a problem for vintage / retro enthusiasts.

Edited January 4 by pioneerisloud

[LabRat]

10 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

The instruction set you mentioned is only required for 64-bit. perhaps that particular CPU specifically is in an extremely rare spot of being able to run XP-64 bit but only 10 32-bit, but it can still run 10, just not 64-bit. 

The other CPUs you mentioned can all run 10 64-bit no problem. 

I also think I was remembering running into issues installing 10 64-bit on a P4, which was later upgraded to a core 2 duo. P4 still worked with 32-bit tho, and subsequently so did the Core 2 Duo. 

As I linked, mentioned, and expounded on here:

CMPXCHG16B / CompareExchange128 is a Windows 8.1 x64-Onwards requirement. (and was not present on AMD CPUs until the AM2/K8+DDR2 era)

It has little to do w/ 64-bit, other than MSFT req. support for it in 8.1x64 and newer released.

AFAIK, Intel has had support for CMPXCHG16B / CompareExchange128 since the very first EM64T Pentium 4s. 
Similarly, AMD K7 lacks even more instructions vs. Intel's contemporaries.
K7 (Athlon 7/XP/MP) is early-P4 fast but limited in software support to Pentium 2-3 era sofware.

Edited January 4 by LabRat

[UltraMega]

10 minutes ago, pioneerisloud said:

TY.  I wasn't sure if the cutoff was Socket 939 or if AM2 K8's were included.  I know K10's work, which I said.

 

............didn't I say that like 10 times?  Yes, a K8 can install Win10 x86.  But its not going to play games on Steam in 10 x86.  The CPU is stuck at 100% the whole time because of the Windows 10 overhead required.  But yet 2 weeks ago, my K8 build was happily playing my Steam games on Windows 7 x64.

All I said was any hardware that can do 7 can do 10. I didn't say anything about all hardware that can do 7 64-bit being able to do 10 64-bit.

 

Makes sense that there might be a few very unique CPUs that can't do the 64-bit version of 10, but can still do the 32-bit just fine. 

 

I my experience 7 and 10 run about the same on old hardware. Definitely differences in what they do while idle tho. Been quite a while since I used 7 extensively. 

Edited January 4 by UltraMega

[The Pook]

3 minutes ago, pioneerisloud said:

............didn't I say that like 10 times?  Yes, a K8 can install Win10 x86.  But its not going to play games on Steam in 10 x86.  The CPU is stuck at 100% the whole time because of the Windows 10 overhead required.  But yet 2 weeks ago, my K8 build was happily playing my Steam games on Windows 7 x64.

You're also negating every OTHER CPU that's older than K8, that can run and play games on Windows 7 just fine, but can't run Windows 10.  I never said this was a problem for people with modern hardware, this is a problem for vintage / retro enthusiasts.

 

kind of sounds like you're saying K8 can't install Windows 10 x86 teehee 

 

I assume the biggest hurdle for retro builds is GPU drivers more than the bloated OS tho. I still don't understand why I can download a 3080 Ti Windows 8.1 driver but a 6600 GT can't get a W10 driver. 

 

[LabRat]

9 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

All I said was any hardware that can do 7 can do 10. I didn't say anything about all hardware that can do 7 64-bit being able to do 10 64-bit.

 

Makes sense that there might be a few very unique CPUs that can't do the 64-bit version of 10, but can still do the 32-bit just fine. 

 

In my experience 7 and 10 run about the same on old hardware. Definitely differences in how what they do while idle tho. Been quite a while since I used 7 extensively. 

"few very unique CPUs"
AFAIK, you were around (in the enthusiast community) when AMD64 stormed the market.
How can you say this when, the entirety of S754, S940, and S939 processors lack compatibility?

Your experience is missing details. This isn't a case of "Well XYZ product always worked great for me".
This is a case of hard facts, showing an entire era of revolutionary CPUs is hardware incompatible. This isn't a "rare, unique" or "anecdotal" issue.

 

x86/32-bit Windows is not a viable substitute. 
Unironically, running some lightweight x64 Linux distro + Steam with compatibility layers is the 'best' solution @TM, and you lose a lot performance to 'overhead', esp. on older hardware.

Edited January 4 by LabRat

[UltraMega]

1 minute ago, LabRat said:

"few very unique CPUs"
AFAIK, you were around (in the enthusiast community) when AMD64 stormed the market.
How can you say this when, the entirety of S754, S940, and S939 processors lack compatibility. 

Your experience is missing details. This isn't a case of "Well XYZ product always worked great for me".
This is a case of hard facts, showing an entire era of revolutionary CPUs is hardware incompatible. This isn't a "rare, unique" or "anecdotal" issue.

 

I never personally owned any AMD CPUs back then, but again the CPUs in question can run 10, just not the 64-bit version of 10. 

 

However, it does seem like a pretty rare occurance to me since 64-bit didn't even really take off until the windows 10 era. Can't imagine there are many people affected by this issue. I'd call that rare.

 

I'd be curious just to know what would happen if you tried to upgrade from 7 to 10 64-bit on one of those CPUs instead of doing a clean install. I'm guessing it still doesn't work, but maybe it makes an exception for upgrade installs. 

[LabRat]

27 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

 

I never personally owned any AMD CPUs back then, but again the CPUs in question can run 10, just not the 64-bit version of 10. 

 

However, it does seem like a pretty rare occurance to me since 64-bit didn't even really take off until the windows 10 era. Can't imagine there are many people affected by this issue. I'd call that rare.

 

I'd be curious just to know what would happen if you tried to upgrade from 7 to 10 64-bit on one of those CPUs instead of doing a clean install. I'm guessing it still doesn't work, but maybe it makes an exception for upgrade installs. 

Well, this explains the 'preconceptions'.
I may have gotten a low-cost CPU using Intel's retail partner program, but going through their marketing materials, made me sick.
Intel generally imbued "loyal customers" and "salesmen" alike to believe There isn't really an option besides Us.
 -and, that's exactly the vibe I'm gettin'
 

 

Here, I find it odd that you move from 'an enthusiasts perspective' to a 'retail-normie perspective'

 

-Windows 7 x64 was *the* OS for gamers, enthusiasts, and homelab'ers (+Windows Server 2008 R2). Generally, 'normie' consumer-facing prebuilts and lower-end laptops were cursed with x86 Windows. 

(I do recall debate in the community 'back in the day' on the topic. Facts ended-up being, 64-bit support is a need, not a want.)

-Retailers rarely sold x64 licenses w/ PCs, as they were mass-moving min.spec PCs.
(IMO, Vista got its bad reputation majority from the same)

-Very few 'normie' and 'professional' consumers or 'enthusiasts' liked 8/8.1.
(When I worked retail tech+sales, I had several people purchase Windows 7 for $100+, and have us put it on their <$800 new PC in the 8/8.1 era. Eventually my boss had it come down from corporate, that we are *not* to 'downgrade' PCs, even if the customer supplied software and paid for the work.)

 

No, you cannot 'work around' the check with an upgrade install. I've taken Pio's bet before.
I spent a full night and half a morning trying to get 10x64 and 8.1x64 installed on my K8N-DL. I tried upgrade installs, and even installing Windows on another PC, and popping the drive back into the Legacy machine. 

I'm open to being incorrect but, I've put great effort into working around the issue, myself:
8.1x64-onwards is hardware-incompatible with S754/S939/S940 K8 CPUs from AMD; full stop.

As far as the Steam Support thing in-particular:
This isn't like the Analog Cell Phone, that relied on depreciated supporting-technologies...

There's no technically-, legally-, viable reason to forcibly and artificially 'break/brick' otherwise fully-functioning hardware and software.
To do so without offering some kind of 'replacement for basic functionality' is taking something away from the customer.

In the end, it boils down to something fundamental:
If one pays for something, uses it as advertised, then comes back to it later, only to find it's been artificially disabled by the seller/provider...
That's basically theft, or at least "damage(s)".

Edited January 4 by LabRat

[Sir Beregond]

39 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

All I said was any hardware that can do 7 can do 10. I didn't say anything about all hardware that can do 7 64-bit being able to do 10 64-bit.

I still don't understand what any of this has to do with Pio's point about retro gaming/hardware/OS enthusiasts. Yes an extremely small and niche segment of people, but still, should they lose access to their games that otherwise works?

 

"It can upgrade to 10". Cool, seems like a completely irrelevant point to the above.

[UltraMega]

6 minutes ago, LabRat said:

 

Here, I find it odd that you move from 'an enthusiasts perspective' to a 'retail-normie perspective'

 

I don't really have a perspective on this. I simply stated that any PC that runs 7 can run 10. I have a few opinions about 7 vs 10 but I'm not trying to debate any of them. I was unaware of the issues about 64 bit specifically with these specific CPUs, but it doesn't make what I said wrong either since they can still run windows 10, just not 64-bit. 

 

Retro and Enthusiast are opposite end of the spectrum anyway. 

[Sir Beregond]

1 minute ago, UltraMega said:

Retro and Enthusiast are opposite end of the spectrum anyway. 

Strange statement.

[UltraMega]

3 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

I still don't understand what any of this has to do with Pio's point about retro gaming/hardware/OS enthusiasts. Yes an extremely small and niche segment of people, but still, should they lose access to their games that otherwise works?

 

"It can upgrade to 10". Cool, seems like a completely irrelevant point to the above.

 

I was responding to Pio's claim that there is a "ton" of hardware locked to windows 7. That simply isn't true. 

[pio]

3 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

I don't really have a perspective on this. I simply stated that any PC that runs 7 can run 10. I have a few opinions about 7 vs 10 but I'm not trying to debate any of them. I was unaware of the issues about 64 bit specifically with these specific CPUs, but it doesn't make what I said wrong either since they can still run windows 10, just not 64-bit. 

 

Retro and Enthusiast are opposite end of the spectrum anyway. 

I beg to differ on that last point.  Retro and Enthusiast go hand in hand.  The only people that are into retro hardware, are the people who have a geniune love of hardware itself.  Retro enthusiasts, I'd say are a grade above your standard enthusiast that has one rig and upgrades regularly.

 

  

2 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

 

I was responding to Pio's claim that there is a "ton" of hardware locked to windows 7. That simply isn't true. 

 

It absolutely IS true.  Try to run Windows 10 on a K7 or a Pentium 3 or Socket 423 P4.  You'll find that games run just fine on that hardware on Windows 7, whereas they won't even install Windows 10.  The K8 thing as well, which is newer.

That's the whole point I'm making here mate.  Steam is essentially stealing games from my access, that I've paid for, that I play on the systems designs to run them.  Yes, YES, I "can" run them on modern hardware with a modern OS.  But I shouldn't HAVE TO.

Edited January 4 by pioneerisloud

[UltraMega]

Just now, Sir Beregond said:

Strange statement.

OK?

 

Are we done here yet? Is this level of scrutiny really required?

 

I was hardly saying anything here at all and it snowballed simply because of the technicalities. 

[LabRat]

7 minutes ago, Sir Beregond said:

I still don't understand what any of this has to do with Pio's point about retro gaming/hardware/OS enthusiasts. Yes an extremely small and niche segment of people, but still, should they lose access to their games that otherwise works?

 

"It can upgrade to 10". Cool, seems like a completely irrelevant point to the above.

It is directly topical, here.
Steam dropping Win7 support, would be a non-issue if (early) common multi-core 64-bit CPUs (K8+DDR1) could run 10x64.

Personally, I prefer 7 but, I can't entirely disagree in 10 being bretty gud for retro gaming.

Sadly, 'retro' includes a lot of late DX9 and DX10 games that needed more than 4GB of RAM to run well.

Edited January 4 by LabRat

[UltraMega]

Just now, pioneerisloud said:

I beg to differ on that last point.  Retro and Enthusiast go hand in hand.  The only people that are into retro hardware, are the people who have a geniune love of hardware itself.  Retro enthusiasts, I'd say are a grade above your standard enthusiast that has one rig and upgrades regularly.

I simply mean Retro hardware is old and weak, which is the opposite of enthusiast hardware. I'm not saying people can't be into both. 

Lets move on. 

[pio]

Just now, UltraMega said:

I simply mean Retro hardware is old and weak, which is the opposite of enthusiast hardware. I'm not saying people can't be into both. 

Lets move on. 

Dude, you just dissed our entire hwbot team...........  

 

We've got team members buying 4870x2's right now.......

Edited January 4 by pioneerisloud

[pio]

Look, Ultra......

 

I never ONCE said that this move from Steam isn't something you can mitigate with modern hardware and OS's.  That's duh, we all know that.

The point I was making, is that this completely ruins the purchases of old games (on Steam), that were bought on purpose to play on old hardware.  This is 110% a fact that you CANNOT dispute.  Try to run a 4870x2 on Windows 11, tell me how well the driver install goes.  Or same thing trying to install Windows 10 or 11 to an older CPU.

I never said that this is a problem for people with modern hardware.  It's a problem for people with older hardware, benchmarking (3dmark is on Steam), and other uses of old hardware such as retro gaming.