Windows 7 is moved to a legacy support model, company says

Jun 23, 2021 12:47 GMT  ·  By

Windows 7 is no longer getting any security patches and updates, so companies out there are one by one giving up on the operating system as well.

AMD is the latest big name to do so, as the firm has recently announced that it’s moving this operating system to a legacy support model, with no new drivers planned for the 2009 operating system.

In addition to Windows 7, Windows 8.1 has the same fate in terms of AMD drivers, so unless you’re running Windows 10, you should no longer receive any new updates on your device.

Windows 7 yet to be abandoned by users

The company says that by giving up on old platforms with a small market share, it can focus more of its resources on supporting the latest operating systems and therefore deliver improvements in a timely manner.

“Beginning with the release of Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 today, we are moving the following graphics products to a legacy model, with no additional driver releases planned. Their final supported driver will be Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.5.2,” AMD said. “Additionally, Radeon Software support for Windows 7 64-bit based operating systems have been moved to a legacy support model. Official end of support from Microsoft for Windows 7 was January 14th, 2020.”

“This change enables AMD to dedicate valuable engineering resources to developing new features and enhancements for graphics products based on our latest graphics architectures.”

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean Windows 7 is dead. While Microsoft has dropped support for this OS version in January 2020, some 20 percent of the world’s PCs are still running it, and what’s worse, many of the users are yet to prepare for the migration to a newer Windows version.

Naturally, Microsoft’s recommended destination is Windows 10, though with Windows 11 just around the corner, there’s a chance the company would soon start encouraging people to make the switch to this OS version.