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ATi to only support HD 2000 series cards and up

LoadsaMoney

LoadsaMoney

LoadsaMoney

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Beginning next month with the Catalyst 9.4 release, support for the R300/400/500 generations of graphics processors will be dropped from AMD's mainline ATI driver. In a move they hope will allow them to focus their efforts on newer and upcoming graphics processors, the mainline Catalyst driver on both Linux and Windows will stop supporting cards older than the Radeon HD 2000 series. Linux customers affected will be encouraged to use their open-source driver stack (xf86-video-ati or xf86-video-radeonhd and Mesa) or stay with the Catalyst 9.3 driver.
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http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r500_legacy&num=1
 
IIRC they want to be able to make the drivers more optimised for latest cards. Older hardware can use the older drivers, as improvements may be few and far between after 2+ years anyway.
 
I guess they have to cut the tether somewhere. 2006 was quite a while ago now. Hopefully it'll mean better improvements for users of the more modern ATi cards as they won't have to distribute resources on outdated products any more and can focus more on the quality of the drivers rather than the quantity of cards they'd otherwise have to maintain.

Edit: Also, yeah, I'd imagine anyone using a card from 2006 or earlier isn't really fussed with frequent driver updates.
 
LoadsaMoney said:
Even Nvidia still do them for their 6/7 series, and how old are they now.

2000 series aint even 2 years old yet. :p
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They're still supporting those, though. It states cards older than the Radeon 2000 series, presumably they'd still support the 2000 series because they're pretty much based on the same architecture as RV670 and RV770.

Edit: This post was the result of a misinterpretation on my part, my bad.
 
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Lightnix said:
They're still supporting those, though. It states cards older than the Radeon 2000 series, presumably they'd still support the 2000 series because they're pretty much based on the same architecture as RV670 and RV770.
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Im sure what Loadsa meant was its only 2 years of architecture they are supporting which really isnt long at all.
 
Not a big deal really, as said above regular updates are not really essential.

Would not bet against AMD releasing new drivers if there was ever a show stopping issue where there should not be.

It is only being removed from mainstream releases after all. :)
 
Don't see why one areth it would matter... as long as the latest release for the 1xxx gen is stable and works great then who cares about updates.
 
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