Starting to take shape —

New Windows 10 build smooths tablet experience, makes Edge super fast

But AMD users will want to hold off.

A new Windows 10 build is now available for Fast Ring users. Build 10122 should be available to download, but Microsoft is advising that users with AMD video cards pass on it for the time being. That's because there's currently a crashing issue in the Edge browser (still named "Project Spartan" in this release). Microsoft is working with AMD to update its drivers to address the issue, but until an update is available, AMD users are advised to switch to the Slow Ring.

The new build makes Windows 10 look the way it looked when Microsoft demonstrated it at its Build and Ignite conferences earlier this month. This has two major parts; the Start menu has been reorganized to group Explorer, Settings, Power, and All Apps together, and the Start screen now puts more focus on new, larger tiles, putting the menu-like parts (including the aforementioned grouped icons) together in a hamburger menu.

Similarly, Edge now includes the new tab screen shown off at Build. This is strongly reminiscent of iGoogle, including a search bar, popular links, news, and weather.

The build also changes the way Windows handles setting default apps. Apps can no longer ask to be made the default (something that Win32 programs could previously do, but Metro apps could not), and the prompt to specify which app to use has been updated.

Less visibly, Edge has gotten faster. Microsoft has described some of the work it has done to make its Chakra JavaScript engine faster, and the company is claiming huge performance improvements both in synthetic tests, such as Google's Octane and Apple's Jet Stream, and in real-world sites.

Channel Ars Technica