It looks to be a busy year for AMD with plenty of the horizon as we close in on Computex this year. Their new Strix Point mobile chips are on the way, powering the likes of ASUS’ latest range of laptops such as new OLED Vivobooks. They’re going big on new ‘Ryzen AI’ tech, which does seem to come with one big compromise – no support for Windows 10 drivers.
We recently reported that new Zen 5 CPU leaks offer an insight in to the kind of performance boost expected. The very same leak, which comes from the manager of Lenovo China, also made mention to this lack of Windows 10 support. With their GPU sales slowing right down, AMD is instead joining the AI craze on their other core sector.
Could AMD drop Windows 10 driver support?
Despite Windows 10 remaining a highly-popular operating system (that doesn’t reach end of life until October 2025), AMD could be effectively dropping support to instead focus on Windows 11 and its AI features such as Copilot, which remains limited in Win10. This is reportedly the case for upcoming Strix Point APUs, which we now know will be using Ryzen AI technology.
However, don’t expect this to be the same for the newest Zen 5 CPUs arriving with the Ryzen 9000 series, for desktop use. We still fully expect Windows 10 drivers to get support here. The Strix Point mobile chips are designed for laptops, all of which come with Windows 11 as standard.
Time to upgrade?
Many of us are more than happy to stick with Windows 10 for as long as possible. As we mentioned above, there is still some time to go until it reaches its end of life as Microsoft detail here. But if you’re picking up a new laptop, you should expect to find Windows 11 installed – it has been this way for years now.
For example, early listings for the new Vivobook range will indeed come with Windows 11. As we can see below, there is already mention of the new AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 processor, quite the mouthful. It shows that AMD is really prioritizing new AI technology, as this processor comes with an NPU (neural processing unit) dedicated for faster AI calculations, rated at 45 TOPS.
