If you are using the same Windows computer today when you played the original Guild Wars or bought it in the year YouTube and Reddit were born, you may soon face some difficulties if you prefer the Chrome browser to browse the network.
Although admittedly small, the Chrome user base on devices dating back to the early 2000s still exists. A new policy document published by the Chromium development team states that they will no longer support processors that do not have something called SSE3, or Streaming SIMD Extensions 3, in Chrome x86 builds.
The requirement to run SSE3 will not affect macOS, Android or Chrome OS devices in any way, as they have been running since 2014 (Chrome 35, Android L), but will affect a small proportion of Windows and Linux users running Chrome on dusty old systems. That’s right, users who haven’t updated their hardware in over 15 years! Those affected will receive a notification starting with M87 stating that they need to upgrade to use Chrome. Starting with Chrome 89, attempting to run Chrome on these devices will result in a crash and the option to install it will be completely removed when the user’s hardware is detected and found to be insufficient.
“Until we require SSE3, Chrome will warn affected users (with x86 CPUs that do not support SSE3) that their computers will soon be unsupported. The implementation will use the structure in // chrome / browser / obsolete_system. This will result in a warning bar that can be dismissed and a permanent warning on the chrome: // settings / help page, ”
Chromium developer policy document
It is likely that devices running outdated SSE2 are being discarded by Google because there are so few of them comparatively, and this can provide a slight increase in performance for most users. In fact, the policy document cites a 5kb improvement in the official Chrome Builds. Yes, I know that this is practically nothing, but it is something.
I actually have my first and dearest memories of these devices, but it looks like it’s really time to move on now, if you can and are still interested in using the Google browser. Remember that Chromium Edge also requires SSE3, so if you really choose any of the main players on the market, you’ll have to run up-to-date hardware.
