Saturday, April 21st 2012
AMD to Drop Support for Pre-HD 5000 GPUs with Catalyst 12.7
AMD will conclude driver updates for pre-Evergreen, or pre-Radeon HD 5000 (that's HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000) series GPUs, starting this summer. The change could take effect with Catalyst 12.7 (around July). Users of these older GPUs can use the (then) latest driver (Catalyst 12.6) to run their older DirectX 10/10.1 graphics cards. The elimination of pre-Evergreen GPUs could also slim down the driver package a bit, in terms of file-size.
Source:
Phoronix
130 Comments on AMD to Drop Support for Pre-HD 5000 GPUs with Catalyst 12.7
Additionally Windows 8 will probably have compatibility drivers integrated.
This issue really isnt a big deal.
4000 series but they did it in one time ,looks like big haste not gradual:shadedshu
The important things are bug fixes and most importantly OS support. AMD did the same thing when Win7 was about to come out. They axed a crap load of cards, ending official support for them right before release of Win7, to try and force people into upgrading if they wanted to upgrade to the new OS. Luckily the Vista driver still worked, and the Win7 driver will probably work with Win8, but it should have to be this way. We should have to use unofficially supported drivers just to run an OS.
absolutely- we see who's stupid -many ones like you who love they brand for any cost.in this forum we can see many ones like you(over 95% users on this forum)
nvidia still support they 8 years old card's (even split shader card's like 6000 / 7000 series graphics ) . but now we saw amd forgotten old customers for their shity reasons.and many Mentally retarded amd fanboys just Advocating shity brand. :)
On another Note NV is guilty of dropping support aswell. Users of NF1-NF4 got shafted for driver support under Vista let alone 7. That right there made many switch to intel via sis or AMD for chipset motherboards. Btw youre telling meNv isnt guilty of dropping official support of their products. Look at GF 1-GF FX.
Atleast the last Agp driver that Amd Had for R9***-X1K ran those cards fine in Vista and 7.
Also they cut down on overhead. In All honesty this just means driver releases pretty much become quarterly instead of monthly. If you have any problems just send up a Catalyst report.
Would really suck if I had to use Win7 drivers on Win8. I dont need 3000 cards to get performance updates (if any left), just certificated drivers for other OSs.
I went from 4850 to 6870. Oh boy...
Dont worry I will hate Nv next week and love AMD :cool:
note the news source is Phoronix. Linux stuff here methinks.
Its not cool seeing techpowerup sink to trash journalism like other sites. Way to intentionally misrepresent the truth.
Ideally they should phase it out, I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying its not going to affect the majority of users with old cards. It's not that AMD has forgotten customers, it's about using resources efficiently - They are a business with a budget.
PS.
But this thread isn't about what Nvidia does, its great that Nvidia support older cards, great for them and you, excellent, next time I see you I will give you a medal.
It isn't about being a fanboy, because I've owned Nvidia cards, I've had more Nvidia cards than ATI cards, in fact I still run Nvidia card right now in another rig. I have no problem with Nvidia. So please explain why we are fanboys?
Surely the fact that you call ATI a "shitty brand" just shows your hate towards them. Maybe the fanboy is a bit closer to home.
Edit: Wait wait wait, so its linux only? Funny all the Nvidia fan boys show up to bash ATI, now they've got it wrong, their true colours came out - where are they now to appologise. "Likely" isnt a conclusive definite. If news is to be posted it should be conclusive otherwise its a rumour.
From the first paragraph of the source: Next time try reading before insulting the news staff. The news that was posted is definite, or at least concrete enough to be considered definite. AMD will be dropping support for these cards in 12.7 one way or another, and that is what was reported. Though perhaps it should be made clear that it is only definite for Linux and highly likely for Windows.
In the past they provided good legacy drivers. I don't see how this would be any different (if its true).
For some reason Linux is always the first OS to get shafted. Always wanted to move to Linux but the way it gets treated support wise from all brands makes me say "forget it".
EDIT: Either way, I'm sticking to NV for the time being. Their drivers under both Windows and Linux are just better. I hope AMD gets their thumbs out of their asses sometime soon.
1) Legacy for older cards, release quarterly drivers
2) Card-family specific teams that write only for their specific card. Example : Hd5xxx team, HD6xx team, HD7xxx team.
3) Dedicated teams for Windows, MacOS, Linux/*nix
Sure, it would cost more every year to increase the software and drivers teams. But the payoff would be worth it if they could actually put out lighteight, decent and stable drivers.
AMD needs to get their drivers sorted. That's one of the things holding them back. That and nV paying for game optimization on their arch, and sometimes even de-optimization for AMD/ATI.
As for this only being a Linux issue, it's only a matter of time before they discontinue monthly support for those cards on Windows too.
So, you might not be getting monthly driver updates for pre-DX11 cards released over 3 years ago? Big deal. Also, pretty sure 4xxx and older will work just fine on Win8. Got a x800 mobile in an old laptop that I put Win7 for kicks on and it runs the games it's fast enough for just fine.