Lippy

They're apparently still releasing 'new' APUs which use RDNA2: The 10 and 100 series.

Not sure what AMD are thinking, but I've a feeling that this isn't going to help them regain market share.

My 1080 Ti has been a legend and has carried my last two builds. That 11 GB of VRAM was huge back in 2017 and certainly helped it to remain relevant over the years, particularly since we've seen newer cards with much stronger GPUs and less VRAM struggle lately due to being VRAM limited.

I finally replaced it with a 9070 XT earlier this year, and while this thing buries it in performance and features, I'm questioning if it will see the same kind of longevity my 1080 Ti had since I've a feeling that its 16 GB of VRAM will eventually be what obsoletes it first.

Ah yes, the Atari Jaguar approach.

All of this is no problem and essentially any computer manufactured in the last couple decades can meet these requirements. They're effectively irrelevant for this discussion.

Not quite. Windows 11 requires an Intel 8th gen or AMD Zen+ CPU or newer, with some odd exceptions. I've dealt with some machines that only fail on the CPU check and can confirm that Windows 11 will refuse to install without bypassing those arbitrary 'requirements'.

I do agree with the rest of your post though.

It wasn't the same experience over here. All MSRP cards sold out instantly on all stores. Whatever was actually in stock were all at least £100 over MSRP, and they quickly sold out too.

The entire GPU market has gone to shit.

It's unacceptable that there's new cards for sale (if you can even find one) that cost more than I paid for my 1080 Ti 8 years ago and have essentially the same amount of VRAM (12 GB vs 11 GB).

I thought that maybe the 9070 XT would be at least a reasonable option if I could get it for MSRP. Of course that launch ended up being another farce.

At this point it looks like I'm going to be riding my 1080 Ti until the bitter end. Sure, newer cards will wipe the floor with it, but I can't justify the current prices.

Nova Lake was always planned to be a late 2026 release according to a leaked Dell roadmap.

We were supposed to get Arrow Lake Refresh for desktops later this year but this was cancelled. So while the headline is technically correct, it's not because Nova Lake is delayed.

That's fine, I've closed the door on supporting Microsoft. They could have just charged for the 'upgrade' and that would have been better since it wouldn't result in the colossal amount of e-waste that this is creating. Even without the forced obsolescence, their products have become hostile, invasive and generally just a PITA to use. Meanwhile Linux distros are knocking it out of the park lately.

I really don't know what Microsoft are thinking. They haven't made particularly good strides towards gaining any kind of goodwill, so once it becomes common knowledge that alternatives not only exist but actually show them up, those lost customers are people that they will never get back. Look how pathetic their marketshare is for Edge for example, even though it's the default browser on Windows. They still haven't been able to shake off the bad stigma that Internet Explorer had (and to be fair, they aren't doing people any favours with Edge either).

Not only that, but hundreds of millions of PCs can't 'just upgrade' because Microsoft has arbitrarily blocked them from doing so without resorting to hacks in order to bypass those blocks.

That kinda did the trick for me since my old PC was starting to struggle with some tasks, so I went and built a new PC recently.

Joke's on Microsoft though, I installed Arch Linux on it instead. It's so much less work to maintain compared to Windows these days.

A relative of mine had also got fed up with the Windows BS and was interested in what I was running, so I got her machine dual booted with Debian now to try it out. She hasn't looked back either, so that to me proves that Linux is ready for non-techies.

I already did this 2 years ago and I still don't miss Windows. I want my OS to just work, and that means not having big companies intentionally blocking updates and bullying consumers just so they can profit from artificially induced OEM license sales. It's pretty wild how quickly Linux has fit the bill in recent years, and how Windows no longer does.

Only hurdle on Linux right now is the transition from X11 to Wayland. Proton doesn't have good support for it yet so I occasionally have to load an X11 session for some games to run. I can imagine that getting worked out eventually.

Microsoft could have simply dropped official support for older machines and then literally done nothing and that would have still been better than what they did. At least then those machines would still receive security updates beyond next year, provided they could still run the latest version of Windows.

For the record, if the arbitrary CPU block is bypassed, then it's possible to install Windows 11 23H2 on a Prescott era Pentium 4 or Athlon 64. The true requirements did change for 24H2, but even then you can install that on a 1st gen Intel or a Bulldozer era AMD system. Microsoft can go suck a dick.

Yeah it was pretty terrible until recently. It at least seems to be changing now. The Pixel 8 line and up now get 7 years of support, and Samsung followed shortly afterwards by doing the same with the S24 series (but not their lower end devices). There's still plenty of other Android devices that get barely any support though, so it's getting there, slowly.