Microsoft’s Updated 'Windows 11 Supported Processors' List is… Kind of a Mess

Microsoft has quietly updated its Windows 11 supported processor documentation, but instead of making things clearer, it is confusing users who are still trying to figure out whether their older hardware is officially compatible.

All this while, Microsoft listed every supported Intel processors by their name. But that’s not the case anymore. The updated Intel processor page, spotted by folks at Neowin, now groups processors by series and links out to Intel’s own product pages.

That’s not all; some supported Intel chips, like the Intel Core i7-7820HQ, no longer appear on the updated list. Surprisingly, the entire families of the Intel Celeron 3000 Series are marked supported in the new, updated list. To catch you up, most of the chips from the Celeron 3000 family date back nearly a decade, with only one model (the Intel Celeron 3867U) actually meeting Windows 11’s requirements.

As of now, the confusion is created by the update list of Intel processors. AMD and Qualcomm still have the traditional per-model listings, although those pages haven’t been updated in a long time either. Some newer chips from both vendors aren’t even mentioned there.

Microsoft, however, notes that “Subsequently released and future generations of processors which meet the same principles will be considered as supported, even if not explicitly listed.” In other words, it means that a newly launched processor would meet Windows 11’s requirement even if it’s not there in the list. The company adds that “It is expected that the processor list will not reflect the most current offerings from processor manufacturers between updates. Updates to the processor lists will occur at each subsequent general availability of Windows.”

All that said, it would have been nice if Microsoft had stuck with the processor names.