Hi folks
Win 11 Enterprise / Pro for Workstations allows 4 Physical CPU's - (not cores or threads but actual physical CPU's).
Is the limit on W11 Pro still 2 physical CPU's.
OK this might be 95% good enough for domestic users but a few might have 4 physical CPU's - which would be good for running a whole slew of VM's etc on with passthru of native hardware to the VM's.
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB SATA Device (250 GB, SATA-III)
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VDSL 50 Mbps
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Legacy MBR installation, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers, no SSE4.2, cannot get more unsupported ;) This is only my test laptop. I had installed Windows 11 here before upgrading my main PC. For my main PC I use everyday see my 2nd system specs.
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB SATA Device (250 GB, SATA-III)
Internet Speed
VDSL 50 Mbps
Browser
MICROSOFT EDGE
Antivirus
WINDOWS DEFENDER
Other Info
Legacy MBR installation, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers, no SSE4.2, cannot get more unsupported ;) This is only my test laptop. I had installed Windows 11 here before upgrading my main PC. For my main PC I use everyday see my 2nd system specs.
It's no longer common place for home users because you have multiple cores in the CPUs these days, but years ago I used to run dual Pentium Pro CPU systems at home.
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB SATA Device (250 GB, SATA-III)
Internet Speed
VDSL 50 Mbps
Browser
MICROSOFT EDGE
Antivirus
WINDOWS DEFENDER
Other Info
Legacy MBR installation, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers, no SSE4.2, cannot get more unsupported ;) This is only my test laptop. I had installed Windows 11 here before upgrading my main PC. For my main PC I use everyday see my 2nd system specs.
I wish I could recall prices, but yes, I was pushing the limits of where your typical home user was. At the time, I was specializing in Windows NT Clustering so I built some high-end machines with a bunch of SCSI disks shared between two systems so that I could perform clustering tests at home
Back before multi-core CPUs it was common for professional workstations and servers to have more than one physical CPU. Back in 1997 I help set up Dell PowerEdge servers for a government contract. Each server had either 2 or 4 Slot One Xeon CPUs. I don't remember how expensive they were but Dell charged us about $1000 to replace a motherboard. We used rack mounted servers because that was the only way for us to get 4 physical CPUs. About 5 years later CPUs were fast enough we started using professional workstations with 2 Xeon CPUs.
BTW, we had one Dell rack mounted server with 8 physical Xeon Slot One CPUs. Someone told me it cost $100,000.
AMD Ryzen 7 6800H with Radeon 680M GPU (486MB RAM)
Memory
Crucial DDR5-4800 (2400MHz) 32GB (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card(s)
NVIDIA RTX 3060 Laptop (6GB RAM)
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n/a
Monitor(s) Displays
15.6-inch
Screen Resolution
1920x1080 300Hz
Hard Drives
2 x Samsung 990 Evo Plus (2TB M.2 NVME SSD)
PSU
n/a
Mouse
Wireless Mouse M510
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2100Mbps/300Mbps
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Firefox
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Malwarebytes
Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 25H2 (26200.8246)
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PC/Desktop
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Custom build
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D
Motherboard
ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi II
Memory
G.SKILL Flare X 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4
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ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX3060TI-08G-V2-GAMING (RTX 3060-Ti, 8GB RAM)
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Samsung G50D IPS 27"
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1440p/180Hz
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SAMSUNG 990 EVO Plus (2TB] M.2 NVME SSD
SAMSUNG 990 EVO Plus (4TB) M.2 NVME SSD
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Corsair RM750x (750 watts)
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Cooler Master MasterCase 5
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Scythe Mugen 6
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Logitech K520 (MK540 keyboard/mouse combo)
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Logitech M310 (MK540 keyboard/mouse combo)
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2100 Mbps down / 300 Mbps up
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Firefox, Edge, Chrome
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Malwarebytes (Premium)
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ASUS Blu-ray Burner BW-16D1HT (SATA) || Western Digital Easystore 20TB USB 3.0 external hard drive used with Acronis True Image 2025 backup software || HP OfficeJet Pro 6975 Printer/Scanner
Thanks everybody for replying. We all learn things every day no matter how old we are !!.
The problem with multi-cores vs physical CPU's is that pass thru for VM's isn't exactly the same.
Mind you if you have too many multi processors / CPU's then the overhead of the main host OS in managing them becomes significant - obviously you need other bits on a mobo such as multi-channel DDR RAM etc but you get the idea of what I'm looking at.
Our ten year old computer is still powerful enough for almost anything except gaming of course and 4K video editing. So it would be foolish to replace it just to run Windows 11. We just bypass compatibility check and we are good to go.
Remember everyone replacing their GPU or the whole computer just to run Vista? Some months later it was revealed it wasn't necessary as Vista 32-bit could work with the Windows XP graphics drivers, aka XPDM mode. Don't do the same mistake again. Think twice before you replace your old PC.
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB SATA Device (250 GB, SATA-III)
Internet Speed
VDSL 50 Mbps
Browser
MICROSOFT EDGE
Antivirus
WINDOWS DEFENDER
Other Info
Legacy MBR installation, no TPM, no Secure Boot, no WDDM 2.0 graphics drivers, no SSE4.2, cannot get more unsupported ;) This is only my test laptop. I had installed Windows 11 here before upgrading my main PC. For my main PC I use everyday see my 2nd system specs.
