AMD dumps DirectX 9 card support under Windows 7

[LoadsaMoney]

We were surprised to see that customer oriented AMD has decided to leave its all DirectX 9 supporters hanging. According to AMD's support site, its DirectX 9 cards won’t be officially supported under Windows 7.

AMD says: "Note: AMD’s DirectX 9 ATI Radeon graphics accelerators are not officially supported under Windows 7. If the user chooses to, they can install the ATI Catalyst Windows Vista graphics driver under Windows 7. Please be aware that none of the new Windows 7 graphics driver (WDDM 1.1) features are supported (as the Windows Vista level graphics driver is limited to WDDM 1.0 level support). Using the ATI Catalyst Windows Vista driver under Windows 7 is not officially supported by AMD, and as such AMD will not provide any form of customer support for users running in this configuration."

The list is quite long and it includes ATI Radeon 9500 Series, ATI Radeon 9550 Series, ATI Radeon 9600 Series, ATI Radeon 9700 Series, ATI Radeon 9800 Series, ATI Radeon X300 Series, ATI Radeon X550 Series, ATI Radeon X600 Series, ATI Radeon X700 Series, ATI Radeon X800 Series, ATI Radeon X850 Series, ATI Radeon X1050 Series, ATI Radeon X1300 Series, ATI Radeon X1550 Series, ATI Radeon X1600 Series, ATI Radeon X1650 Series, ATI Radeon X1800 Series, ATI Radeon X1900 Series, ATI Radeon X1200 Series, ATI Radeon X1250 Series ATI Radeon X2100 Series and ATI Radeon Xpress Series.

Most chipset IGPs won’t officially support Windows 7 which is kind of an issue if you ask us. The owners of the cards listed above won't get any support for any operating systems anymore and if you have in mind that most of the games on the market are DirectX 9 and they are programmed for consoles, it kind of makes things look bad. Nvidia's new Windows 7 driver supports cards all the way to Geforce 6 that is DirectX 9.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16168/1/

 

[NickK]

I can see why - you have to draw a line to when you stop supporting things.

With DX11, DX9 is two release out and so they can make this leap. However people using old hardware with windows 7 doesn't give AMD any money.. just the cost of development. To be honest this article is a no brainer.. when do you stop supporting hardware? Fud's language is very scaremongery when you consider the X800 series was about when the original first dual cores appeared.. eons ago..

It becomes an MS issue because people delay their windows 7 move until they can update their graphics card which is likely to only be of benefit if they upgrade the rest of their system.

Now with nVidia out of the equation, the only card that people can buy for windows seven is AMD.. so we're now feeling the curse of the monopoly..

 

[Mr Paul]

The support hasn't really gone, as they can use the Vista drivers....

 

[Hairybudda]

DX9 compatability isn't being dropped, it's just that cards that only support DX9 aren't being officially supported. Use the new cats at your own risk kinda thing, if you own an older card.

 

[wiak]

well last time i checked amd was releasing DX9 drivers every quater or something compared to DX10+ drivers that are out every month

 

[DeadMan]

If your happy with all of your Directx 9 games stopping working then Yay! great move... not.

If there were a map of directx supported games it would probably read something like..

Current games market for the past 3 years:

80% Directx 9
19.80% Directx 10
0.20% Directx 11

 

[derkaderka]

April fools day come around already ?

They cant be serious

 

[Minstadave]

Total non-story, you can still use the Cat 9.8s.

 

[Martini1991]

If your happy with all of your Directx 9 games stopping working then Yay! great move... not.

If there were a map of directx supported games it would probably read something like..

Current games market for the past 3 years:

80% Directx 9
19.80% Directx 10
0.20% Directx 11

Lulwut?.....

 

[Greebo]

If your happy with all of your Directx 9 games stopping working then Yay! great move... not.

If there were a map of directx supported games it would probably read something like..

Current games market for the past 3 years:

80% Directx 9
19.80% Directx 10
0.20% Directx 11

It doesn't say that and your breakdown of games is irrelevant.

It "might" mean your dx9 card won't play anything in windows 7 however all dx9 games will play on dx10 cards and above.

You will probably find that based on windows 7 that the breakdown of AMD cards used will be as follows:

0.2% directx 9
90% directx 10
9.8% directx 11

With the directx 11 cards market share increasing every day. So if this might affect 0.2% of amd card owners then it's hardly the end of the world is it?

I used to have a x800xt for over 3 years and the only reason I finally upgraded it wasn't for performance issues but there were too many games which required shader 3 support which I wanted to play so had no choice but to upgrade.

 

[Firegod]

Lol @ Fudzilla. Love the last line in that quote, "Nvidia's new Windows 7 driver supports cards all the way to Geforce 6 that is DirectX 9." Think they need to get their tongue out of Nvidia's a***.

 

[gareth170]

If your happy with all of your Directx 9 games stopping working then Yay! great move... not.

If there were a map of directx supported games it would probably read something like..

Current games market for the past 3 years:

80% Directx 9
19.80% Directx 10
0.20% Directx 11

what are u on about..

they are only not supporting older dx9 cards. they've already droped the older cards from the vista driver so it make sense to not supporting older dx9 cards in the win7 driver..

all dx9 games will still work on 2000 to 5000 series cards

 

[MadMatty]

Isnt this old news ?. All DX9 cards went to legacy status around cat 9.3. Legacy 9.8 Driver set was released though to make sure all those dx9 cards get at least one driver to make them work in win7. I have a 1950pro Crossfire setup thats working fine in win7. May not support newer games, but then the hardware would be too slow to play newer games anyway. Ati are doing us a favour making us upgrade to a newer card