What is the difference between a qualifying processor and those which do not

Has anybody found out which instruction sets in Intel and AMD are responsible for qualifing for W11 officially?

No direct proof, although the processors that are compatible all have the architecture changes driven by the attacks and attack potential of the Spectre and related nasties, this is even down to some Intel Gen7 units that were actually running the changes that came in with Gen8.

Of course it could be related to other architecture changes that came in at the same time during the redesign.

As these architecture changes were mostly security related there are few specifics.

One thing that could be a scary thought is that the initial protection against Spectre was provided by code changes to slow the processors down and give them chance to avoid issues - no one knows if this code is still in Windows 11 and if not does it mean that running an incompatible processor on 11 would no longer be protected against a spectre attack. I doubt this is true. but it is a worry

tinmar49 said:

Has anybody found out which instruction sets in Intel and AMD are responsible for qualifing for W11 officially?

Click to expand...

The cutoff was more just an arbitrary decision more than anything else. "OK. So we have to cutoff the approved list somewhere. Let's take a vote. 10th gen, 9th gen, 11th gen? Raise your hands for 10th gen!"

Here's the thing....your hardware either meets Microsoft's specs or it doesn't. And you either install Windows 11 on your hardware, whether it meets their specs or not, or you don't. It's up to you.