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During a livestream that aired today, Microsoft officially unveiled its next OS: Windows 11 and announced that Windows 10 users will get access to Windows 11 as a free upgrade, similar to how Windows 7 and 8 users were upgraded to Windows 10 for free.

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Microsoft also said that Windows 11 will be "the best Windows ever for gaming". To back that claim up, the tech giant announced a slate of gaming-related enhancements. One of these is Auto HDR which will make games look better as it adds High Dynamic Range (HDR) enhancements to titles built on DirectX 11 or higher that previously only leveraged Standard Dynamic Range (SDR). This tech was in fact introduced Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Another enhancement will come to loading speed through the new DirectStorage technology. This was part of the Xbox Velocity Architecture featured in the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S and Windows 11 PCs will load new games faster with a high performance NVMe SSD and the proper drivers.

As a final gaming-related feature, the Xbox app will be built into Windows 11 to provide easier access to Game Pass. Cloud gaming will also be directly added into the Xbox app on PC.

Another interesting announcement during the event, albeit not directly related to gaming, is that Android apps will apparently run natively on Windows 11. The apps will be downloadable from Amazon’s Appstore, which will itself be accessible via the new Windows store.

For more details about the gaming-related announcements, head to the official Xbox blog post in the source link below.

SOURCE

 

[LogicIsHansom]

The TPM 2.0 requirement is likely going to shut out a lot of PCs that don't have it at all, or don't have it enabled by default. The PC I have from 2014 doesn't support it, therefore it is stuck to Windows 10. It can be bypassed for now but who knows if that will still be possible in the future?

Also there are some other "interesting" changes such as removing the possibility of moving the taskbar from the bottom. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications

That singlehandedly killed the update to me.

 

[TomSwitch]

Yes, Microsoft is the new Apple. I hope to like this new Apple better than the old Apple.

Microsoft has been really missing out on the HDR and media action for so long. Windows was the worst HDR experience today. Even a cheap TV stick could do better ages ago.

 

[tech3475]

I'm curious about what the adoption rate of W11 will be like? Out of the 9 or so W10 machines I have between myself and my parents, only 3 I know will officially work.

 

[J-Machine]

luckily most mobos should be able to just have a tpm chip slotted in. the chip is generally like 20 bucks. BUT it's clear 11 is M$ officially killing backwards compatibility thanks to removing the ancient coding that's been in the OS since hecking 3.1.

 

[tech3475]

luckily most mobos should be able to just have a tpm chip slotted in. the chip is generally like 20 bucks. BUT it's clear 11 is M$ officially killing backwards compatibility thanks to removing the ancient coding that's been in the OS since hecking 3.1.

You're forgetting the CPU requirements, such as 8th gen Intel or above.

 

[J-Machine]

You're forgetting the CPU requirements, such as 8th gen Intel or above.

I'm not forgetting that. win 10 has 4 more years. i figure a 9+ year old desktop would be ready to upgrade regardless and thus we shouldn't see any real disruption for users.

 

[chrisrlink]

You're forgetting the CPU requirements, such as 8th gen Intel or above.

guess 10 is the end of the line then for my z420 then

 

[Lacius]

It looks like the TPM 2.0 requirement will probably continue to be bypassable after it reaches general availability (relevant part in bold).

3.6.1 Trusted Platform Module (TPM)

All device models, lines or series must implement and be in compliance with the International Standard ISO/IEC 11889:2015 or the Trusted Computing Group TPM 2.0 Library and a component which implements the TPM 2.0 must be present and enabled by default.

The following requirements must be met:

• All TPM configurations must comply with local laws and regulations.
• Firmware-based components that implement TPM capabilities must implement version 2.0 of the TPM specification.
• An EK certificate must either be pre-provisioned to the TPM by the hardware vendor or be capable of being retrieved by the device during the first boot experience.
• It must ship with SHA-256 PCR banks and implement PCRs 0 through 23 for SHA-256. Note that it is acceptable to ship TPMs with a single switchable PCR bank that can be utilized for SHA-256 measurements.
• It must support TPM2_HMAC command.

A UEFI firmware option to turn off the TPM is not required. Upon approval from Microsoft, OEM systems for special purpose commercial systems, custom order, and customer systems with a custom image are not required to ship with a TPM support enabled.

(PDF: Extensive Windows 11 System Requirements)

 

[tech3475]

I'm not forgetting that. win 10 has 4 more years. i figure a 9+ year old desktop would be ready to upgrade regardless and thus we shouldn't see any real disruption for users.

You said you just need to add the TPM chip.

edit:

If you meant 'if you have a compatible CPU, you can add the chip', then I would first check UEFI as it may have software TPM (fTPM or PTT).

 

[Alexander1970]

The TPM 2.0 requirement is likely going to shut out a lot of PCs that don't have it at all, or don't have it enabled by default. The PC I have from 2014 doesn't support it, therefore it is stuck to Windows 10. It can be bypassed for now but who knows if that will still be possible in the future?

Yes,that is really great.

And thanks to that fucking bloody annoying Bullshit I need now a new PC.....

My PC is still able to run actual Games,Appllications and that Stuff and because of this Bullshit I have to get a new(er) PC....fuck Microsoft this Time.

 

[J-Machine]

You said you just need to add the TPM chip.

edit:

If you meant 'if you have a compatible CPU, you can add the chip', then I would first check UEFI as it may have software TPM (fTPM or PTT).

I was just replying to your reply. as for the comparability I stand by it. if you don't have the 2.0 chip specifically (custom builds could have this happen so best to check the bios) then you can just buy the chip itself since it gets socketed to the mobo.

 

[tech3475]

I was just replying to your reply. as for the comparability I stand by it. if you don't have the 2.0 chip specifically (custom builds could have this happen so best to check the bios) then you can just buy the chip itself since it gets socketed to the mobo.

I'm not saying you can't buy the socketed chip, what I'm saying is that IN ADDITION to the TPM requirement MS also changed the CPU requirements, so just adding TPM may not be enough to meet the official requirements.

So even if I bought the TPM for my old 3770K, it still wont be officially supported.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 'officially supported' CPUs have a compatible TPM built in, either fTPM or PTT.

Really it seem ridiculous to cut off so many CPUs, TPM is bad enough but as you say, at least might be possible to add it depending on the motherboard.

 

[nl255]

I'm not forgetting that. win 10 has 4 more years. i figure a 9+ year old desktop would be ready to upgrade regardless and thus we shouldn't see any real disruption for users.

Four more years of support by Microsoft. I fully expect that by the end of 2022 there will be quite a few games, including GTA Online, that will require Windows 11 and DirectStorage to even run. While it will likely be possible to create a DirectStorage to Nvidia RTX IO wrapper (assuming MS allows Nvidia to ship drivers for Windows 10 that include RTX IO support) for single player games online games like GTA are going to be a problem.

guess 10 is the end of the line then for my z420 then

Yes,that is really great.

And thanks to that fucking bloody annoying Bullshit I need now a new PC.....

My PC is still able to run actual Games,Appllications and that Stuff and because of this Bullshit I have to get a new(er) PC....fuck Microsoft this Time.

Of course it won't be the end of the line or require you to get a new system. At worst you will have to use a BluePill style loader (a very lightweight bare metal hypervisor that intercepts certain instructions and hardware access attempts and returns fake values) but I am sure there will be USB stick/SD images (for use with a SD to SATA adapter) that will walk you through all the steps of taking full ownership of secure boot (dumping the current vendor public keys, generating your own secure boot keypairs, installing those keys, resigning the vendor keys and installing them, signing the custom bootloader, and finally adding the MS bootloader to the blocklist so that Windows can only be booted via the shim/BluePill loader).

I am honestly surprised that on a site like this that is dedicated to homebrew and custom firmware that a claim by MS about "requiring" anything is taken seriously and treated as anything more than a potential speed bump. Compared to how 3DS CFW used to be in the menuxhax/emunand days bypassing the Windows 11 "requirements" is going to be trivial and the more MS insists that they are "hard requirements" the more likely there will be at least half a dozen ways to ignore said requirements before it even goes gold much less hits RTM.

 

[leerpsp]

On there web page I see They are saying windows 11 is coming out holiday this year also the new Halo game will be coming out holiday this year so If I could make a guess I would say we will see a full release of windows 11 this November, If I stick back $200 a month witch i really hate to do and after paying off my pokemon preorder I will have a little under $1,000 If I stick with my still new rtx 2070 and if I keep the same ram (its 32gb overkill) I should be able to upgrade to a really good motherboard and cpu and also upgrade to a better PSU, I hate to upgrade my parts so soon seeing how ddr5 will be coming soon (i hope). I was going to buy the New Beats Studio Buds but really don't want to to risk skipping out on the motherboard, They did upgrade the pc health check and it does say that my CPU is only not supported but what if i just upgrade it and then its my motherboard, I really don't want to risk it so that is why I want to get the parts all together.

 

[ZeroT21]

Bet the new Halo title might require windows 11 lolz

 

[nl255]

On there web page I see They are saying windows 11 is coming out holiday this year also the new Halo game will be coming out holiday this year so If I could make a guess I would say we will see a full release of windows 11 this November, If I stick back $200 a month witch i really hate to do and after paying off my pokemon preorder I will have a little under $1,000 If I stick with my still new rtx 2070 and if I keep the same ram (its 32gb overkill) I should be able to upgrade to a really good motherboard and cpu and also upgrade to a better PSU, I hate to upgrade my parts so soon seeing how ddr5 will be coming soon (i hope). I was going to buy the New Beats Studio Buds but really don't want to to risk skipping out on the motherboard, They did upgrade the pc health check and it does say that my CPU is only not supported but what if i just upgrade it and then its my motherboard, I really don't want to risk it so that is why I want to get the parts all together.

I would save up but not actually get any new hardware as it is almost certain that your existing hardware will work just fine once a bootloader is released that bypasses all the checks. Even if it isn't possible to bypass them (yeah, right) it is unlikely very many if any games will actually require Windows 11 until the middle of 2022.

The point is while saving up as much money as you reasonably can is a good idea, don't panic. This is still a very early announcement to the point that MS employees are making contradictory statements about the matter. It is entirely possible that they will backtrack entirely on the CPU requirements or that it will be easily bypassed with nothing more than a sysprep unattended answers file no different than what is currently used to move \Users to a drive other than C. Remember when the Xbox One was going to have always online DRM and a bunch of other bullshit and it ended up not only not having any such requirement but the XBone also ended up having more or less official homebrew support?

Finally, even if it doesn't I can see three ways right now that such a requirement can be bypassed. First, all hardware checks are disabled if running in a virtual machine so you can simply set up a small Linux/KVM system and run Windows 11 in a virtual machine using single GPU passthrough. The second would be for someone to make a FakeVM bootloader/bootkit that tricks Windows into thinking it is running in a VM similar to how the old OEM SLIC emulators worked back in the XP days. The third is a full blown BluePill style bootkit that is a very lightweight bare metal hypervisor that intercepts the instructions and hardware access requests used for said checks and returns fake values (fortunately most VM software including Hyper-V supports nested virtualization so you will still be able to use Vmware/Virtualbox/Hyper-V/etc even with such a loader).

 

[leerpsp]

I would save up but not actually get any new hardware as it is almost certain that your existing hardware will work just fine once a bootloader is released that bypasses all the checks. Even if it isn't possible to bypass them (yeah, right) it is unlikely very many if any games will actually require Windows 11 until the middle of 2022.

The point is while saving up as much money as you reasonably can is a good idea, don't panic. This is still a very early announcement to the point that MS employees are making contradictory statements about the matter. It is entirely possible that they will backtrack entirely on the CPU requirements or that it will be easily bypassed with nothing more than a sysprep unattended answers file no different than what is currently used to move \Users to a drive other than C. Remember when the Xbox One was going to have always online DRM and a bunch of other bullshit and it ended up not only not having any such requirement but the XBone also ended up having more or less official homebrew support?

Finally, even if it doesn't I can see three ways right now that such a requirement can be bypassed. First, all hardware checks are disabled if running in a virtual machine so you can simply set up a small Linux/KVM system and run Windows 11 in a virtual machine using single GPU passthrough. The second would be for someone to make a FakeVM bootloader/bootkit that tricks Windows into thinking it is running in a VM similar to how the old OEM SLIC emulators worked back in the XP days. The third is a full blown BluePill style bootkit that is a very lightweight bare metal hypervisor that intercepts the instructions and hardware access requests used for said checks and returns fake values (fortunately most VM software including Hyper-V supports nested virtualization so you will still be able to use Vmware/Virtualbox/Hyper-V/etc even with such a loader).

Ok I'll save up but not buy anything till everyone knows, If I can bypass it or they backtrack I'll just buy a new gamesystem with what I saved up.

 

[vincentx77]

You're forgetting the CPU requirements, such as 8th gen Intel or above.

It's starting to look like they're talking out of both sides of their mouths on that. It's being 'suggested' that any machine that supports TPM 2.0 will be able to run Windows 11, which makes sense. It didn't come standard on motherboards until 2016. Those little add-in modules have shot up in price in the few days. What was a ~$20-25 add in TPM2.0 chip is now over $150 on ebay. I get that it's supposed to be for added security, but this is the kind of added fuckery we don't need in the pc space.

 

[tech3475]

It's starting to look like they're talking out of both sides of their mouths on that. It's being 'suggested' that any machine that supports TPM 2.0 will be able to run Windows 11, which makes sense. It didn't come standard on motherboards until 2016. Those little add-in modules have shot up in price in the few days. What was a ~$20-25 add in TPM2.0 chip is now over $150 on ebay. I get that it's supposed to be for added security, but this is the kind of added fuckery we don't need in the pc space.

I wont be surprised if either requirements are just an artificial barrier on install, which can be bypassed, but the issue is whether they cause problems long term.

For example, an update refusing to install (even if it’s again artificial) or not being able to run certain games as they’re storing keys on the TPM.

Reminds me of hackintoshes and how much of a pain they can be.

I find the CPU official requirement in many ways to be worse than the TPM one, since at least the former may be available as an addon, depending on the motherboard (e.g. my old Asus mobo lacks a header but my MSI does have one).

 

[nl255]

I wont be surprised if either requirements are just an artificial barrier on install, which can be bypassed, but the issue is whether they cause problems long term.

For example, an update refusing to install (even if it’s again artificial) or not being able to run certain games as they’re storing keys on the TPM.

Reminds me of hackintoshes and how much of a pain they can be.

I find the CPU official requirement in many ways to be worse than the TPM one, since at least the former may be available as an addon, depending on the motherboard (e.g. my old Asus mobo lacks a header but my MSI does have one).

As I understand it, Hackintoshes are mostly a pain because of limited hardware driver availability which isn't a problem on Windows. So said bypass methods (most likely by either tricking into thinking it is running in a VM or even using a very lightweight bare metal hypervisor to intercept and fake the CPU version check, also note that software only TPMs designed for use with things like qemu do exist) will probably be more like using Luma or Atmosphere CFW than a Hackintosh.

Of course, that is assuming they actually go through with it and it can't be permanently bypassed with nothing more than a sysprep unattended answers file like what you would use to permanently move the Users folder to another partition/drive.