AMD end driver support for everything up to and including the Fury X

[Grim5]

From an AMD perspective I’d have to wonder if a customer who only buys a card every 6-10 years is a customer worth having. Much better to throw your money into new tech for customers who upgrade every year or two.

I mean you're right but there are heaps out there, a friend of mine only upgrades his gpu every 5 years and he gets entry level gpu each time - atm he's on a rx560

 

[Grim5]

Amd also killed the aliens

eish!

 

[shankly1985]

Simple English is what you seem incapable of grasping. "Cards from mid-2015" is very clearly referring to... cards from mid-2015. As in cards that were released in mid-2015. I can't imagine the mental gymnastics it would take to read that as meaning cards released after that point.


That's completely meaningless. They work on an early, leaked version of Windows 11 that's essentially just Windows 10. That implies absolutely nothing about support for the final version. Most of the underlying OS hasn't even been updated to call it Windows 11 yet. There are still references to Windows 10 everywhere under the hood, which is what driver installers and such will be seeing, rather than the new logo hastily slapped on the UI. Every version of Windows is essentially just a redesign of the previous version with some under the hood changes, yet driver support doesn't carry forwards. Hell, driver support sometimes hasn't even carried forward between different versions of Windows 10. A sound card that I have works on older versions of Windows 10, but not the latest couple as Creative dropped support for it in the interim, and the drivers for old versions of Windows 10 don't work on the latest version.

Listen its Windows 10 with redesign and under the hood changes. It is not a full new windows version.

Even windows 10 license keys work

 

[Poneros]

Let's be honest, they ended support for Fury cards since straight after release. The overall support for Fury & Vega Pro has been absolutely pathetic by AMD. It's certainly difficult to recommend their GPUs anymore (...as if it mattered).

 

[FoxEye]

They can't even fix Night Light mode in the drivers for the cards they do support, so... (bug has been around for literally years without AMD lifting a finger to fix it..)

 

[PeegeeTips]

but the cards will still work on the last driver available

This.

As someone who is still running a 7970 in a secondary PC I am totally fine with this.
Progress comes at a cost, and AMD has about a quarter of the resources available to nVidia.
Interestingly - this puts Windows products on a similar footing to Linux support in Mesa, where GCN 1.0/1.1 and earlier do not get default access to the new AMDGPU driver.
**looking forward to installing an immenent release of opensuse tumbleweed - with: Mesa 21.1.3 / LLVM 12.0.1 / Kernel 5.13 - 6800XT should be sweet with this**

 

[Armageus]

Shock as AMD doesn't want to support cards that are now over 5 generations old?
(RX4xx/RX5xx/Vega/RX5xxx/RX6xxx have all happened)

In reality it will affect next to no one - any "serious" gamers playing recent games will not be using a 6 year old card. Anyone still using them will likely be using them for less demanding/older games, or in a secondary machine.

As for Windows 11 support - we haven't got an actual release date for it, and so NVIDIA's Kepler GPUs may be exactly the same position. (Or they both equally may not be, and the Windows 10 drivers may still work, or a Microsoft out of the box driver may be included)

 

[HangTime]

This is pretty standard stuff. I have a RTX470 in my 3rd PC and the driver version only goes up with 395 or something like that.

It is a bit annoying, because my son's PC has a HD7950, and I'd heard it suggested that with FSR being open source, people might be able to port it to older cards (it's really needed on GCN). But when I say "annoying", still completely understandable given it's a 9 year old SKU that predates Win8.1 never mind Win10

Guess we'll have to wait and see on the Win11 front.

 

[BobShark]

I think a bit of context is probably needed here too. We're used to products being supported with regular driver/software updates for a considerable (5+ yrs) period. In the smartphone space, things proper suck. My samsung phone was capped at 2 years software updates and only now receives quarterly security updates.

Forget the fact my phone can happily run the newest version of android no problem, samsung are quite happy to stick their middle fingers up and continue with their intentional planned obsolescence and all the associated damage this causes in the hope that you buy a new product instead. Pockets first, F everything else.

Also worth noting my phone probably cost more than any of those older GPUs when purchased new, too. And also the fact samsung have much deeper pockets to continue said support.

So no, I don't think this is "disgusting" by AMD at all.

 

[HangTime]

Was this signposted anywhere before hand? At least with Nvidia they seem to have given several months warning, whereas this came as a bit of a shock to me, announced basically at the same time the new driver comes out. With the GPU shortage the timing isn't great, although you'd imagine it will take a while to have a significant impact (i.e. a new game comes out that requires a minimum driver driver above this).

 

[Aretak]

Listen its Windows 10 with redesign and under the hood changes. It is not a full new windows version.

Even windows 10 license keys work

That's a somewhat bizarre argument. Windows 7 was essentially Vista SP3 with a new UI and name to disguise the stink of failure, so was that not a "full new Windows version" either? Not to mention that 8 and 10 are pretty much just evolutions of 7 with new UIs and "under the hood changes" too. By that logic, the last actual "full" new consumer edition of Windows was XP, since it marked the switchover from the DOS-based versions to the NT kernel on the desktop. Assuming we're not counting Windows 2000, which wasn't technically designed for desktop users, even though many (including me) ended up using it because ME was terrible. Of course, this is rather irrelevant in terms of driver support, as trying to install drivers from even 7 or 8 on Windows 10 generally results in failure, even if they are basically the same OS with a fresh coat of paint. Windows 11 doesn't look to be changing anything in terms of what Microsoft do to create a "new" version of Windows. Perhaps you're only just noticing it now because there's far better in-depth coverage of the "under the hood" parts of a new Windows version now than there was in the mid-2000s.

As for license keys, Microsoft don't care about selling Windows to consumers any more. Sure, they'll do it if you really want, but Windows 10 can straight up be activated with a Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 key too - no previous Windows installation required. That functionality was added in the November 2015 update. All they want is people using the latest version so that they can harvest their data. Hell, even not activating Windows 10 at all doesn't actually stop you from using it. The countdowns to when Windows would stop working if you didn't activate are long gone. Now all it limits you from doing is customising your desktop.

This is pretty standard stuff. I have a RTX470 in my 3rd PC and the driver version only goes up with 395 or something like that.

Nvidia fully dropped support for Fermi in 2019. That's nine years after the GTX 470 came out. Still a damn sight better than the six years that the Fury cards have gotten.

 

[heatonpkmassive]

Apparently Matrox also stopped driver development for the Mystique and G200 cards as well.

I can verify this and that the S3 Virge cards will not be getting any new drivers either. Disgraceful

 

[watercooledman]

I can verify this and that the S3 Virge cards will not be getting any new drivers either. Disgraceful

 

[Steampunk]

Don't AMD just move things onto a legacy driver that only gets updated twice a year or something?

 

[SkeeterUK]

Well thats what they done if u read the last posts in amd drivers thread, they moved the cards to legacy and 21.5.1 i think it is supports old cards and their probably be more of those drivers in the future.

 

[kitfit1]

Don't AMD just move things onto a legacy driver that only gets updated twice a year or something?

Yep, that's what they have always done. To give you an example, i have an ATI 5970 that i bought in 2009, AMD although not updating the functionality of the drivers have updated them so far all the way to Win10.
Link to the current Win10 drivers: https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-hd/ati-radeon-hd-5000-series/ati-radeon-hd-5970

One thing to keep in mind though, AMD had not even fully integrated ATI into the company in 2009. To still be updating drivers to Win10 after 12 years says a lot in my mind.

 

[Phixsator]

Let's be honest, they ended support for Fury cards since straight after release. The overall support for Fury & Vega Pro has been absolutely pathetic by AMD. It's certainly difficult to recommend their GPUs anymore (...as if it mattered).

I have absolutely no issue recommending a Radeon GPU from a software/hardware standpoint. My Vega 64 worked without issues, so did my RX5700 and my current 6700XT is kicking some serious butt. It all depends on what it's for and the budget involved.

 

[Dave2150]

I can verify this and that the S3 Virge cards will not be getting any new drivers either. Disgraceful

I'm waiting patiently for a Windows 11 driver for my Voodoo 3 3000!

 

[humbug]

Both the AMD and Nvidia cards will still play your game, old and new, they just wont get performance optimisations.

 

[random_matt]

I don't like nor buy AMD, I'll make a thread calling them out to justify my love for another brand.
2021 internet in a nutshell, pathetic.