The AMD Driver Thread

[Vestas]

Hub's take

HUB noticed AMD's decision affects many APU's including the Steamdeck, which is now a legacy product in terms of optimisation

Steam Deck isn't affected any more than the Playstation or XBox are - it doesn't run any AMD drivers , SteamOS uses mesa and game optimisations are DXVK/VKD3D which is nothing to do with AMD.

 

[AMD_Vik]

Maybe I'm misreading AMD_Vik's replies but it sounds like game optimisations are more general rather than card specific and the older cards will still get big fixes and security updates. So what's actually changing?

the 6000 series hasn't really seen any targeted updates for a while now, though all gfx generations will benefit from generic fixes and improvements at the usermode driver level.

Not like they do now. AMD provides game optimizations in its drivers for new popular games and these optimizations often improve performance a fair bit, some people even call it "fine wine". RDNA 2 will no longer receive these "fine wine" updates

it hasn't for some time now? I'm not sure when the last driver was specifically calling out perf improvements for the 6000 series but we may need to look a couple years back from now.

I'm seeing error 3221225477 and the game won't launch at all, but not a straight crash to desktop.
A lot of people are reporting the same since updating to 25.10.2
Going back to a previous driver doesn't work apparently
It seems to be a conflict between 25.10.2 and running the game in dx11
Changing it to run in vulkan solves it, as a workround.

From their bug reporting site;
'I switched from 0 (Direct3D11) to 1 (Vulkan) in “GraphicsSettings.json” (C:\Users\yourPC\AppData\Local\Star Citizen\starcitizen_(sc-alpha-4.1.1)_insyb_0\GraphicsSettings). After that, I was able to start SC without any errors.Important: pay attention to the date of the last folder!Switching back (to Direct3D11) in the SC options and restarting the launcher brought me back to the beloved error code. The result for me is that I can play SC under Vulkan, but not under Direct3D11.'

I'm going to try that now myself and suggest your colleague does the same

Appreciate the info - will relay that

 

[mark 11:11]

im hoping this is just some bad wording thats somehow coming out all wrong
i just got a fresh new 6500xt a month or so ago im about to hopefully get the cables etc for so i can drop it into my pc as a lsfg second gpu
which probably means if it still works with the adrenaline software and im not using hte 6500xt itself as the main gaming gpu
im using it for effectively running fsr4* [well sort of its lossless scalings version] and to get around the refresh rate vram clock pinning problem
so im guessing this doesnt directly affect me as such but its still worrying because you can still buy these gpus new off the shelf..........
im hoping its just badly worded and the marketting machine has misstepped again otherwise thats a bit of an own goal really

 

[SonicSW20]

Can't tell if I'm going mad or everyone else is. Seems pretty clear from what @AMD_Vik has said multiple times that there are broadly two forms of optimisation - more general optimisation within the AMD driver, and optimisations for specific GPUs and RDNA1/2 will continue to benefit from the former.

 

[mark 11:11]

Can't tell if I'm going mad or everyone else is. Seems pretty clear from what @AMD_Vik has said multiple times that there are broadly two forms of optimisation - more general optimisation within the AMD driver, and optimisations for specific GPUs and RDNA1/2 will continue to benefit from the former.

yeah this is why im not so worried for my application i dont think its going to hit me as bad as the initial panic makes it sound if that makes sense
il find out soon when i get around to actually taking the side off and plugging the thing in lol
hopefully the posty has the cables for it later today and il give it a whirl over the weekend lol

 

[Mr Evil]

It’s funny watching all the people not affected by this getting upset.

Owners of newer AMD cards may not be affected now, but we will be affected later when they inevitably drop support for those cards prematurely too.

I think this is a good example of where nVidia does better than AMD. Not the length of support, but the PR. If AMD could communicate this better then it might avoid the negative reactions. There's AMD_Vik trying to do that in this thread, but that doesn't do anything for all the people e.g. watching the HUB video. I'm not suggesting that AMD start doing dubious reputation management, but the way they do things now is terrible.

 

[NutritioN]

Unfortunately AMD can't stop Hub and that other article website posting alarmist news stories and consumers jumping to alarmist conclusions.
Where's the source, was it in the driver notes?

 

[uscool]

Awaiting for AMD's official response

 

[tamzzy]

Owners of newer AMD cards may not be affected now, but we will be affected later when they inevitably drop support for those cards prematurely too.

agree, if the precedent is set now, who's to say they won't drop RDNA3/4 support in a couple years time?
fine wine now smells like vinegar

whilst it probably won't affect the majority on a computer enthusiast forum (for obvious reasons), the average person is likely to keep their gpu for a longer period of time

(it doesn't affect me, but a few of my friends are using 6000 series GPUs on my recommendation...hard to explain this one to them :/ )

 

[NutritioN]

No point guessing at a worst case scenario. Would make no sense for AMD/Nvidia to do that, to stop supporting games that are still recent enough. But who knows, and really what's the actual impact? I've always thought 'fine wine' was always a cringe concept. New drivers should naturally improve or offer new benefits, but why has it become an expectation? And if you're differentiating the 'average user' I'd imagine they wouldn't notice and care even less, in my opinion.

You don't know what you dont have, lets say AMD/news outlets didn't say anything recently and olders GPUs started receiving fewer and less frequent updates to newer GPUs. Would you really notice that roll-off? And as Vik says, still get the support common across the Radeon ecosystem?

 

[Sythe79]

agree, if the precedent is set now, who's to say they won't drop RDNA3/4 support in a couple years time?
fine wine now smells like vinegar

whilst it probably won't affect the majority on a computer enthusiast forum (for obvious reasons), the average person is likely to keep their gpu for a longer period of time

(it doesn't affect me, a few of my friends are using 6000 series GPUs on my recommendation...hard to explain this one to them :/ )

Yeah, saying well they are 5 years old cards what do you expect really isn't the point, they aren't 5 year old cards to a lot of people who paid decent money for them 2–3 years ago.

We'll have to see if any new releases do get affected, but it only needs one game to have worse than expected performance on the 6000 series to kill any confidence in buying AMD.

 

[Freddie1980]

agree, if the precedent is set now, who's to say they won't drop RDNA3/4 support in a couple years time?
fine wine now smells like vinegar

whilst it probably won't affect the majority on a computer enthusiast forum (for obvious reasons), the average person is likely to keep their gpu for a longer period of time

(it doesn't affect me, but a few of my friends are using 6000 series GPUs on my recommendation...hard to explain this one to them :/ )

I'm thinking with the switch to UDNA which appears to be a major updated to the underlying architecture I could very well see AMD wanting to cut support for all legacy RDNA cards soon after launch

 

[tamzzy]

And if you're differentiating the 'average user' I'd imagine they wouldn't notice and care even less, in my opinion.

one would hope

but take for example the 6800xt and 7800xt were basically concurrently on sale for a period of time last year
they are also broadly comparable in terms of non-ray trace performance
now that the 6000 series is deprecated, it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility that in newer titles, the 7800xt would see better performance when in reality it should be broadly similar...

that £50 saving isn't much of a saving when you have to swap out to a new gpu a couple years sooner
and that £100 saving vs nvidia isn't really a saving when nvidia "supports" their gpu fully (in reality who knows) for the best part of 8-10 years

eg: gtx 1080 released mid 2016, game-ready driver support ending 10/2025, security updates 10/2028
vs
rx6800xt released end 2020, "game-ready" driver support ending 10/2025, security updates until???
we could use the 5700xt at mid 2019, but it's still a poor show in comparison

 

[Firegod]

Yeah, saying well they are 5 years old cards what do you expect really isn't the point, they aren't 5 year old cards to a lot of people who paid decent money for them 2–3 years ago.

We'll have to see if any new releases do get affected, but it only needs one game to have worse than expected performance on the 6000 series to kill any confidence in buying AMD.

It is the point to be fair. People don't kick up a fuss with mobile phones for example. If you buy a second hand phone you don't go arguing why are there no more official updates for it. Everyone accepts, you get 2-3 OS updates and then like 3-5 years security patches. If people are still buying 6 year old graphic cards, recently, then they aren't really thinking about longevity or doing any forward planning. At the end of the day, old hardware gets phased out. What I think would have been better and @NutritioN has said this, where was the news publication from AMD to say "Hey, in the next driver release or in x months time, this is going to happen. Here's the heads up." And I don't think that has happened. People are finding out from driver release notes. Not good.

 

[Sythe79]

It is the point to be fair. People don't kick up a fuss with mobile phones for example. If you buy a second hand phone you don't go arguing why are there no more official updates for it. Everyone accepts, you get 2-3 OS updates and then like 3-5 years security patches.

They aren't second hand, that's the point new mainstream 6000 series cards were still being released in 2022, you could have bought one on a day one and barely be out of a standard 3-year warranty right now yet driver support is getting sunset.

What's the incentive to buy a 9070xt right now if there's every chance they might give up full driver support in two years.

 

[Firegod]

They aren't second hand, that's the point new mainstream 6000 series cards were still being released in 2022, you could have bought one on a day one and barely be out of a standard 3-year warranty right now yet driver support is getting sunset.

What's the incentive to buy a 9700xt right now if there's every chance they might give up full driver support in two years.

I know the cards aren't second hand but my bad analogy was about buying things that have been around for awhile. I probably should have just said buying a phone that has been out for awhile instead of second hand lol. But the point makes sense. I don't know what power AMD has with retailers selling old stock. It isn't really anything to do with them at that point if a shop wants to rid itself of older models.

 

[uscool]

It is the point to be fair. People don't kick up a fuss with mobile phones for example. If you buy a second hand phone you don't go arguing why are there no more official updates for it. Everyone accepts, you get 2-3 OS updates and then like 3-5 years security patches. If people are still buying 6 year old graphic cards, recently, then they aren't really thinking about longevity or doing any forward planning. At the end of the day, old hardware gets phased out. What I think would have been better and @NutritioN has said this, where was the news publication from AMD to say "Hey, in the next driver release or in x months time, this is going to happen. Here's the heads up." And I don't think that has happened. People are finding out from driver release notes. Not good.

Well the competition seems better for support that's only gonna hurt AMD if someone is looking to be buying GPU in the future

After all the vram on 6000 was geared for better lifespan

 

[Firegod]

Well the competition seems better for support that's only gonna hurt AMD if someone is looking to be buying GPU in the future

I thought Nvidia were around the same with support tapering off after 5-6 years? Thinking on, it would have been better if they said when UDNA releases next year that then, that would be the EOL for the older models. It would feel like a better fit for then focusing on 9000 series and UDNA models. That's just my personal thoughts on it all. As a user of the 6000 series, none of this comes as a big surprise to me and the card has performed longer than I intended so there's no real issue from me with this.

 

[Firegod]

After all the vram on 6000 was geared for better lifespan

You do know the card will still work with games yeah? Might not be hitting the max potential performance in a new title, whatever that may be, but the games will still work. You make it sound like games will suddenly become unplayable.

 

[uscool]

I thought Nvidia were around the same with support tapering off after 5-6 years? Thinking on, it would have been better if they said when UDNA releases next year that then, that would be the EOL for the older models. It would feel like a better fit for then focusing on 9000 series and UDNA models. That's just my personal thoughts on it all. As a user of the 6000 series, none of this comes as a big surprise to me and the card has performed longer than I intended so there's no real issue from me with this.

Example above about 1080
gtx 1080 released mid 2016, game-ready driver support ending 10/2025, security updates 10/2028