30 PCWorld MARCH 2021NEWS
IMAGE: ROB SCHULTZGoogle Chrome is killing off support
for some ancient PCs
If you own one of these PCs, it’s time to either buy a new one or seek out a new browser
besides Google Chrome. BY MARK HACHMANI
f you’re one of the few remaining users
whose PC contains an Intel Pentium 4 or
an AMD Athlon 64, bad news: You’re
about to lose access to Google’s
Chrome browser.
As noted by TechRadar (go.pcworld.com/
ntrd), Google is warning (go.pcworld.com/
gwrn) that in Chrome 89, it plans to dropsupport for processors that lack Streaming
SIMD Extensions support (SSE3). (The current
version is Chrome 88.) If your PC includes one
of those processors and tries to run Chrome,
running the browser will result in a crash.
Otherwise, Chrome simply won’t install.
Google’s betting that the population
impacted by this change is small. “Our