Is Windows 8 lighter than 8.1?

[Jaguarek62]

53 minutes ago, Jody Thornton said:

Except CPU blocking due to some updates.  Those don't affect Windows 8, while using Server 2012 patches.

Except you can install wufuc and continue using windows update (no microsoft catalog updates, no manual search)

[AeroSeeker]

4 hours ago, Jody Thornton said:

Except CPU blocking due to some updates.  Those don't affect Windows 8, while using Server 2012 patches.

You can directly bypass this with a neat script. Here's all the details: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3190832/bypass-microsofts-update-block-for-windows-7-8-1-pcs-with-kaby-lake-ryzen.html

And even if that script didn't exist, I'm gonna tell you right now, I've been forgoing Windows security updates for YEARS. Never had a single malware issue since... What... A decade ago? But having said that, I'm a home user. For anything enterprise at all, you should be using Linux, or if you can't do that, Windows 10 with all sec. updates. Also, running without sec. updates does require that you just be smart about what you download and install of course. Employ regular backups and don't click on rando links in emails.

Edited December 4, 2020 by AeroSeeker

[Jaguarek62]

21 hours ago, AeroSeeker said:

You can directly bypass this with a neat script. Here's all the details: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3190832/bypass-microsofts-update-block-for-windows-7-8-1-pcs-with-kaby-lake-ryzen.html

And even if that script didn't exist, I'm gonna tell you right now, I've been forgoing Windows security updates for YEARS. Never had a single malware issue since... What... A decade ago? But having said that, I'm a home user. For anything enterprise at all, you should be using Linux, or if you can't do that, Windows 10 with all sec. updates. Also, running without sec. updates does require that you just be smart about what you download and install of course. Employ regular backups and don't click on rando links in emails.

Actually sometimes they are not only security fixes. Windows 8.1 received nvme updates and usb-c reliability updates. They are important for new systems.

[AeroSeeker]

15 minutes ago, Jaguarek62 said:

Actually sometimes they are not only security fixes. Windows 8.1 received nvme updates and usb-c reliability updates. They are important for new systems.

But didn't those kinds of fixes stop when mainstream support ended?

[Jaguarek62]

2 minutes ago, AeroSeeker said:

But didn't those kinds of fixes stop when mainstream support ended?

Well yes, but last one is from january 2020 so you still need WUFUC to function.

 

For example reliability updates to support new browsers: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4534297/windows-8-1-kb4534297

Edited December 5, 2020 by Jaguarek62

[jeff69dini]

windows 8.0 vanilla user here, no problems on ryzen 5 1600x, gtx 1060, seems super stable

 

also for some reason ms supports 8.0 with the new edge chromium, so I use that browser as well

Edited December 5, 2020 by jeff69dini

[dencorso]

On 12/20/2019 at 2:06 AM, Jody Thornton said:

Well, if you're just using the desktop - and you're not planning to use the Metro apps or the touch environment at all, Windows 8 does provide some benefits over Windows 8.1 that are as follows:

• There are no known telemetry updates in Windows 8 that plague both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1
• Windows 8 does not have any known CPU blocks (which affected update support).  Then again, Windows 8 went out of support in January 2016, so any updates you get will be manually applied from Server 2012 anyway (you can get these from the Microsoft Catalog)
• No GWX Nags!

So you have a Windows version that's fairly modern, and that Microsoft leaves pretty much alone.  You can't run IE 11 (but that hardly matters).  Windows Defender still protects the system with updated definitions.

There actually *IS* a more serious reason to use 8.0 instead of 8.1, for those intending to use the x64 version (most users, nowadays, I'd guess), which cannot be solved by wufuc (because here we aren't talking about any artificial CPU blocks, but of a totally different issue):

On 10/15/2016 at 9:26 PM, dencorso said:

[...T]o avoid decommissioning (= retiring) perfectly good and healthy older hardware, which is @Jody Thornton's original reason. Of course, one can stay on 8.0 for other reasons, all perfectly reasonable, but deciding to keep one's loved/trusty hardware may compel one to stop at 8.0, [in case] one wishes to use the x64 version (the hardware requirements discussed in the quotations below apply to x64 only!). 

On 12/18/2015 at 11:13 PM, dencorso said:

Intel processors that are unable to run 8.1 and 10 lack PREFETCHW, which all multicore AMD processors do include, whereas most multicore AMDs that are unable to run 8.1 and 10 lack CMPXCHG16b, instead. [Of course,] all Athlon XPs cannot run even 8.0, because they lack SSE2, among other things [and] not all Athlon 64 X2 and later AMD processors are able to run 8.1 or 10, but all can run 8.0...

On 9/9/2016 at 5:06 PM, dencorso said:

Of course we're talking about Intel processors from Jan 2006 or newer. It turns out that the 1st Intel processor to support PREFETCHW was Cedar Mill, the 65 nM final revision of the Pentium 4 released on January 5, 2006. [However], it seems that the 1st AMDs to support CMPXCHG16B were the Bulldozers, from late 2011!!!

Sysinternals' CoreInfo is the right tool to test whether a machine has those requirements or not.

NB: Care when interpreting CoreInfo's results: in them a "*" means "yes" and a "-" means "no", but all the features it tests are alway listed. So, the excerpt below means "YES Supports CMPXCHG16B and NO Support for PREFETCHW":

...
CX16          *    Supports CMPXCHG16B instruction
...
PREFETCHW     -    Supports PREFETCHW instruction
...

This summary is provided just to remind people of the described issue, and has been edited (by myself) for clarity and to stress tha some guesses at the time they were originally posted are now known to be facts.

 

[Jaguarek62]

2 hours ago, dencorso said:

There actually *IS* a more serious reason to use 8.0 instead of 8.1, for those intending to use the x64 version (most users, nowadays, I'd guess), which cannot be solved by wufuc (because here we aren't talking about any artificial CPU blocks, but of a totally different issue):

But who uses pentium 4 as their daily machine anyways? I don't want to wait 5 minutes just for the browser to load.

[Jody Thornton]

1 hour ago, Jaguarek62 said:

But who uses pentium 4 as their daily machine anyways? I don't want to wait 5 minutes just for the browser to load.

I actually forgot that was indeed the original reason I chose Windows 8 x64.  I was using an HP xw8200 system with Dual Xeon 3.68 GHz CPUs.  They were the Netburst architecture..  At the time, it ran Windows 8 just peachy, but I went back to Vista on that system, before I decommissioned it.

 

[UCyborg]

My previous PC had 2 GHz Intel Celeron codenamed Northwood, NetBurst architecture. It wouldn't take even newer web browser to take 5 min to load, but back then two games that I played, Call of Duty 2 and Need for Speed Most Wanted needed about 5 minutes to load their maps. Minimum requirement for 256 MB of RAM was good enough for gameplay, but not for decent load times.

[dencorso]

13 hours ago, Jaguarek62 said:

But who uses pentium 4 as their daily machine anyways? I don't want to wait 5 minutes just for the browser to load.

No more than a few. As for AMD users, I guess there may be some more users of CPUs from before 2012, though.

15 hours ago, dencorso said:

[However], it seems that the 1st AMDs to support CMPXCHG16B were the Bulldozers, from late 2011!!!

 

[UCyborg]

1 hour ago, dencorso said:

As for AMD users, I guess there may be some more users of CPUs from before 2012, though.

Indeed.

1 hour ago, dencorso said:

[However], it seems that the 1st AMDs to support CMPXCHG16B were the Bulldozers, from late 2011!!!

However, that's where you're wrong:

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon 64 X2 6000+ - ADV6000IAA5DO (ADV6000DOBOX).html

[asdf2345]

On 12/6/2020 at 9:07 AM, UCyborg said:

However, that's where you're wrong:

https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon 64 X2 6000+ - ADV6000IAA5DO (ADV6000DOBOX).html

Yeah, because I remember setting up a 8.1 PC for a family member with a Phenom II X4 955, and it worked great. That PC runs 10 now, and works fine, albeit slower because of 10.

[Jaguarek62]

1 hour ago, asdf2345 said:

Yeah, because I remember setting up a 8.1 PC for a family member with a Phenom II X4 955, and it worked great. That PC runs 10 now, and works fine, albeit slower because of 10.

Oh I remember my old laptop with AMD turion 64 x2 tl-60 running windows 8.1 just fine

[asdf2345]

4 hours ago, Jaguarek62 said:

Oh I remember my old laptop with AMD turion 64 x2 tl-60 running windows 8.1 just fine

Now that you said that, I remember running 8.1 on some old 1.9GHz Dual Core AMD laptop, think it was like the TK-57 or something