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AMD To Drop Monthly Driver Support for Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000

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"AMD will be moving the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series of products to a new driver support model. We will continue to support the mentioned products in our Catalyst releases, but we're moving their updates to a quarterly basis, whereas our AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later products will continue to see monthly updates. The Quarterly Catalyst releases will focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates."

Read more: http://www.ngohq.com/news/21725-amd...r-support-for-radeon-hd-2000-4000-series.html
 
I'm not sure that this can be classed as "good". nVidia offers Windows 8 support for the FX series, which was released back in 2003; AMD doesn't even support the 4xxx series, which was released in 2008. That may change before release - as there will still be quarterly releases - but at the end of the day they are cutting off support much sooner than nVidia and the 4xxx series is currently unsupported on Windows 8.

AMD should be offering more support - not less - to counter the popular perception that their drivers aren't as good.
 
TAC4U said:
I'm not sure that this can be classed as "good". nVidia offers Windows 8 support for the FX series, which was released back in 2003; AMD doesn't even support the 4xxx series, which was released in 2008. That may change before release - as there will still be quarterly releases - but at the end of the day they are cutting off support much sooner than nVidia and the 4xxx series is currently unsupported on Windows 8.

AMD should be offering more support - not less - to counter the popular perception that their drivers aren't as good.
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Quality and quantity are to separate things and some times NV WHQL drivers are near enough Quarterly.
And the fact that AMD have been doing monthly WHQL drivers for years already which has not change that popular perception, so more quantity is clearly not the solution.
And it seems that you did not read the statement.

AMD will be moving the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series of products to a new driver support model. We will continue to support the mentioned products in our Catalyst releases, but we’re moving their updates to a quarterly basis, whereas our AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later products will continue to see monthly updates. The Quarterly Catalyst releases will focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates. The reason for the shift in support policy is largely due to the fact that the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series have been optimized to their maximum potential from a performance and feature perspective. The 8.97 based driver, released in May 2012 will be the first driver for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series under the new support model; it is an extremely stable and robust driver branch for these products and will be the baseline for our quarterly updates.

Our main development and testing efforts will now be focused on the AMD Radeon™ HD 5000 and later products. This is the best use of our resources, as the AMD Radeon HD 5000, AMD Radeon HD 6000, AMD Radeon HD 7000, and future products have the greatest potential for further performance and feature enhancements.

Also with regards to Windows 8 support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, 3000, 4000 Series of products; the In-the-box AMD Graphics driver that ships with Windows 8 will include support for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series, and it will support the WDDM 1.1 driver level features. The AMD Catalyst driver for Windows 8 will only include support for WDDM 1.2 support products (AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later).
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TAC4U said:
I'm not sure that this can be classed as "good". nVidia offers Windows 8 support for the FX series, which was released back in 2003; AMD doesn't even support the 4xxx series, which was released in 2008. That may change before release - as there will still be quarterly releases - but at the end of the day they are cutting off support much sooner than nVidia and the 4xxx series is currently unsupported on Windows 8.

AMD should be offering more support - not less - to counter the popular perception that their drivers aren't as good.
Click to expand...

Nvidia release "official" drivers once a blue moon for ALL cards.... Yes, we get a reasonably steady flow of leaked betas but Nvidia can deny all knowledge of these if users have problems.
 
kitch9 said:
Nvidia release "official" drivers once a blue moon for ALL cards.... Yes, we get a reasonably steady flow of leaked betas but Nvidia can deny all knowledge of these if users have problems.
Click to expand...

Is the idea of a beta release not to take feedback and implement the said feedback if possible in the official release as not all betas are leaked.
 
TAC4U said:
I'm not sure that this can be classed as "good". nVidia offers Windows 8 support for the FX series, which was released back in 2003; AMD doesn't even support the 4xxx series, which was released in 2008. That may change before release - as there will still be quarterly releases - but at the end of the day they are cutting off support much sooner than nVidia and the 4xxx series is currently unsupported on Windows 8.

AMD should be offering more support - not less - to counter the popular perception that their drivers aren't as good.
Click to expand...

Nvidia don't need to test their drivers too much on old cards as they're all dead :p I jest, somewhat

To be honest I doubt driver updates will do much for owners of 2900XT cards, do you? Even 4870/90 are a bit long in the tooth and it isn't like they'll stop working now either, just no improvements
 
d_brennen said:
Nvidia don't need to test their drivers too much on old cards as they're all dead :p I jest, somewhat

To be honest I doubt driver updates will do much for owners of 2900XT cards, do you? Even 4870/90 are a bit long in the tooth and it isn't like they'll stop working now either, just no improvements
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If not dead, release a new driver to kill all the old hardware anyway :p


Seriously though, a new driver can have a new name, and IDENTICAL drivers inside for the old cards, who says that new drivers improve or change anything on 5 year old + cards.

I honestly don't know if Nvidia do anything for older drivers other than add the actual same driver over and over again, does anyone else? Personally while I have an 80mbit connection and AMD drivers take 10 seconds max to download.... why do I want to download the driver for a x1900? Seriously just why? Separate the old cards into it's own driver, if there is something new, and you can support it with little effort do so, if not why bother.
 
Final8y said:
And it seems that you did not read the statement.
Click to expand...
It says that the 4xxx series and below will run on Windows 8 but that they won't actually support the new Windows 8 driver model (WDDM 1.2). It also implies that the CCC won't be supported, which includes some important functionality (especially for dual-monitors and scaling). Meanwhile the nVidia Windows 8 driver supports WDDM 1.2 for cards down to the GeForce 6 series, which dates back to 2006 (previously I stated the FX series from 2003 but that was a mistake on my part due to the drop down boxes on the nVidia website listing Windows 8).

kitch9 said:
Nvidia release "official" drivers once a blue moon for ALL cards.... Yes, we get a reasonably steady flow of leaked betas but Nvidia can deny all knowledge of these if users have problems.
Click to expand...
That's true, though there is no meaningful difference between beta and official. However, I do like AMD's monthly approach as you know exactly where you stand.

drunkenmaster said:
Personally while I have an 80mbit connection and AMD drivers take 10 seconds max to download.... why do I want to download the driver for a x1900? Seriously just why? Separate the old cards into it's own driver, if there is something new, and you can support it with little effort do so, if not why bother.
Click to expand...
My opinion is just the opposite. It's much easier to simply have a universal download that supports all cards, even if some cards aren't updated regularly. I was annoyed the other day when I installed an old card in my father's system and tried installing the unified AMD drivers only to find that the 4xxx series uses a different driver. I was so used to one driver working for all cards that I didn't even consider I had the wrong driver.

Don't get me wrong, neither nVidia nor AMD have bad drivers and I'm well aware that there are plenty of complaints about nVidia drivers but I do think that AMD needs to step up its game. My previous card was the 5970 and I was annoyed at how long it took to provide an option to disable Crossfire or configure settings for individual games - even when such a feature was finally included it wasn't as user-friendly as nVidia's drivers which had had it for years.
 
TAC4U said:
It says that the 4xxx series and below will run on Windows 8 but that they won't actually support the new Windows 8 driver model (WDDM 1.2). It also implies that the CCC won't be supported, which includes some important functionality (especially for dual-monitors and scaling). Meanwhile the nVidia Windows 8 driver supports WDDM 1.2 for cards down to the GeForce 6 series, which dates back to 2006 (previously I stated the FX series from 2003 but that was a mistake on my part due to the drop down boxes on the nVidia website listing Windows 8).


That's true, though there is no meaningful difference between beta and official. However, I do like AMD's monthly approach as you know exactly where you stand.
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What's so important about WDDM 1.2 that for people with those cards would care that they are stuck on WDDM 1.1, if its so imported for these people to keep up tith the latest and greatest features and experience then they would not be using those cards by then anyway.
 
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TAC4U said:
It says that the 4xxx series and below will run on Windows 8 but that they won't actually support the new Windows 8 driver model (WDDM 1.2). It also implies that the CCC won't be supported, which includes some important functionality (especially for dual-monitors and scaling).
Click to expand...

It also points out that the windows 8 driver WILL support these old cards, and windows 8 has good multi-monitor and scaling features.

The things that seem specific to CCC - setting global or per-game AA/AF/etc outside of application settings; crossfire management, etc - these are the things I wonder about. BUT the press release says specifically (see bold):
Also with regards to Windows 8 support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, 3000, 4000 Series of products; the In-the-box AMD Graphics driver that ships with Windows 8 will include support for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series, and it will support the WDDM 1.1 driver level features.
Click to expand...

These things are all 1.1 driver level features, so it looks like 4xxx and older users will be covered. They'll have a perfectly working catalyst-equivalent driver, that gets bugs fixed via windows updates, but gets no new features added.

With crossfire profiles being supplied in separate CAP files, I expect they'll still be compatible going forward.

It's likely there will be things that people cant do without access to CCC, but the windows 8 native driver is an AMD driver, so should support most of the things AMD drivers typically do.
 
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