Is Intel ditching driver support for Intel HD 4th gen GPUs on Win7?

Hellriser · 23 Jul 2016

To keep it short, I was trying to download the latest Intel HD Graphics Driver from the official website to update my wife's drivers to try and solve a problem. She has an Intel i5 4th generation and running with the built in GPU since it's more of an office/media computer.

Excluding driver ver. 4414, all the newest versions support 4th gen GPUs only on Windows 10 (when trying to install it says my system doesn't meet the requirements or some message of this sort).

It struck me as odd and you can't really make up a pattern here on only two consecutive iterations that don't support W7, but the fixes in the release notes would be extremely welcome to this OS as well.

Is Intel trying to ditch support for older generations that run Windows 7, thus inevitably making the customer to upgrade to 10 in the hopes of continued support of older generations?

Do you guys, who are more in the know, give any value to my assumption? What's going on?

Cheers!

ICIT2LOL · 24 Jul 2016

Hello Hellriser mate not as far as I know and my Haswell machines all have the Intel Control Panel software installed not that it makes much difference I have to say.

So are you talking about the CPU in your specs below? if so there are these Intel® HD Graphics 4600 for 4th Generation Intel® Core? Processors

Hellriser · 24 Jul 2016

Hi ICIT2LOL,

I'm sorry I couldn't make much of your reply, but your link pretty much shows what I was talking about. From the last 4 driver versions, only one supports Windows 7 and 8.1, the rest are exclusively for Windows 10.

I don't really understand the way Intel issues new drivers, but shouldn't they make every version available for all OSes from Windows 7 to 10?

ICIT2LOL · 24 Jul 2016

Well I was under the impression that only the latest Intel processors were being made only to support 10 and not 7 or 8 - not that I intend building anything or buying any pre made machines with their small architecture stuff in the near future. But I stand to be corrected on that.

But checking up my work laptop is fitted with an Intel® Core™ i7 5500U which suports 10 as does the machine I use day to day has the i7 4700HQ I see also support 10 as well as 7 & 8 - it is just the time frame that they were made for that is the only difference I can see being .

So the work machine uses these Intel® HD Graphics 5500 for 5th Generation Intel® Core? Processors and my main laptop uses the ones I linked to you
Intel® HD Graphics 4600 for 4th Generation Intel® Core? Processors
Graphics 5500 and 4600 respectively.

There is this I have used though I reckon it makes that much diffirence Getting the Most out of the Intel® HD Graphics Control Panel Demo - watch the video.