That's gonna make a lot of people mad considering RX6000 is still quite fresh relatively speaking

I'll just put the same comment I've made on another article somewhere else :

My guess is that they're preparing the shift to focus on UDNA's software stack, they're freeing up some of their workforce to start prepping the drivers in advance so hopefully the launch doesn't shit itself
I'm thinking that UDNA's gaming performance won't be stellar as they were mostly trying to merge both the gaming and compute arches back into one and doing so didn't yield something as high performing as Nvidia's already mature arches so they're catching themselves on early development of the drivers

this is 120% shoot-in-the-dark guesswork but I'm at least 70-80% confident this is at the very least indirectly related

I cant sum it up better than the article did.

I bought a 6800xt less than 4 years ago. I intentionally bought an AMD card because my intention was to run Linux as my main OS. I waited over a year through unavailability and finally got the chance to buy one. Months of using a vega 64 that had to be run at ever shrinking power targets to maintain stability.

And this is my reward.

Really puts a harsh buzz killer on buying into uDNA when it comes out. nVidia has done the same, but only to the 2000 series from 2018, not the 3000s.

AMD is not doing itself any favors here. Penny wise pound stupid

TheinsanegamerNbut only to the 2000 series from 2018, not the 3000s.

This is not entirely correct;

In the summer, competitor Nvidia removed Maxwell and Pascal architecture graphics cards from Game Ready Support. However, the GeForce RTX 20 (Turing, 2018) and RTX 30 (Ampere, 2020) generations, which are the contemporary counterparts to the Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000, still receive full driver releases. The two generations also support the latest version of Nvidia upscaling with DLSS 4 Super Resolution based on the Transformer model.

Source ComputerBase (de)

With a friendly smile,
Fred.

After Nvidia 1080 Ti, I bought Amd rx 6900 xt in 2022. Due to Amd's inconsistent behavior, I'm giving up on buying Rx 9070 Xt. I'll wait for the 5070 ti or 5070 ti super.

TheGeekn°72That's gonna make a lot of people mad considering RX6000 is still quite fresh relatively speaking

The 6x00 series is the best if you ask me.

We have MPT or tools to increase the power budget, that is stripped from 7x00 series and above (unless you hard mod it)

I still have a 6700XT but this feels a bit stupid. Other generations where extended for far much longer.

Just when people were starting to respect AMD on software support, WHAM, a sucker punch right in the face.

Classic AMD, pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. :rolleyes:

TheinsanegamerNReally puts a harsh buzz killer on buying into uDNA when it comes out. nVidia has done the same, but only to the 2000 series from 2018, not the 3000s.

No, in the 580.88 release notes from July, Nvidia said "After a final Game Ready Driver release in October 2025, GeForce GPUs based on Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures will transition to receiving quarterly security updates for the next three years (through October 2028). Our support lifetime for these GPUs reaches up to 11 years, well beyond industry norms."

They are still listed as having game-ready support on the latest driver, 581.57, which is also the driver that Nvidia tells you to download when you select a Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta GPU on their driver website. Turing (which includes both GTX 16 and RTX 20) is still fully supported, and will be for the foreseeable future.

FR3D1This is not entirely correct;

Source ComputerBase (de)

With a friendly smile,
Fred.

That's not correct either, see above. Nvidia announced in July they would remove Maxwell and Pascal game-ready support in October. Maxwell and Pascal still listed as supported on the latest driver. 581.57.

SsenolAfter Nvidia 1080 Ti, I bought Amd rx 6900 xt in 2022. Due to Amd's inconsistent behavior, I'm giving up on buying Rx 9070 Xt. I'll wait for the 5070 ti or 5070 ti super.

Would be kind of weird to upgrade from a 6900xt to a 5070 Ti/9070XT for ~20-40% more performance. Hell, I'm using a 6800XT and the only worthy performance upgrade in my opinion is the 5090, and I'm not spending that much money. I'm patiently waiting for the next gen GPU's.

SsenolAfter Nvidia 1080 Ti, I bought Amd rx 6900 xt in 2022. Due to Amd's inconsistent behavior, I'm giving up on buying Rx 9070 Xt. I'll wait for the 5070 ti or 5070 ti super.

Ironically, the 1080-Ti had driver support longer than the 6900 XT.

Game optimizations? I am glad they are refocusing resources where it is going to matter.

TheGeekn°72That's gonna make a lot of people mad considering RX6000 is still quite fresh relatively speaking

I'll just put the same comment I've made on another article somewhere else :

TOTAL BRAINELSS

TheinsanegamerNintentionally bought an AMD card because my intention was to run Linux as my main OS.

You're fine on Linux then, the community keeps drivers updated for way longer than most people would ever care to keep a GPU.

The actual message here:

- No FSR4 for RDNA2, ever.

I understand why AMD might want to slow down driver support for older cards. But the 6000 series is not that old. They can reassign people to work on UNDA/RNDA5/whatever they call it. But it seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot prematurely. Maybe once UNDA is released it could make sense to slowly transition off of older RNDA gpus, but why now? It seems much too soon.

Hecate91You're fine on Linux then, the community keeps drivers updated for way longer than most people would ever care to keep a GPU.

I'm sure that basic driver support will be kept up, but this is AMD dropping game-specific optimizations, which is not something the Linux community has the capability to do, since it requires proprietary knowledge of the architecture.

SemperPC09I understand why AMD might want to slow down driver support for older cards. But the 6000 series is not that old. They can reassign people to work on UNDA/RNDA5/whatever they call it. But it seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot prematurely. Maybe once UNDA is released it could make sense to slowly transition off of older RNDA gpus, but why now? It seems much too soon.

And it's not just the age of the 6000 series (which is still a full generation newer than Turing, which Nvidia is still supporting for the forseeable future), it's the fact that RDNA 2 has the full DX12 Ultimate feature set. Yes the ray tracing sucks, but other features like mesh shaders work just fine. And even the ray tracing can be playable if implemented well, like in Doom Dark Ages

I'd even understand dropping RDNA support for lack of DX12 Ultimate support, that's what Nvidia is doing here soon with Pascal and older GPUs. But RDNA 2 can run every single new game. Dropping it is just (in the most charitable interpretation) a sign of lack of resources in a slowly dying product division, or (in the least charitable interpretation) a hamfisted attempt to boost RX 9000 sales.

nVidia shills are gonna love this ammodrop :rolleyes:

Really though, everyone needs to calm down. Even Polaris-Ellesmere is still getting (lagged-behind) driver support.

LabRat 891nVidia shills are gonna love this ammodrop :rolleyes:

Really though, everyone needs to calm down. Even Polaris-Ellesmere is still getting (lagged-behind) driver support.

Getting driver support for bug fixes etc is one thing. Sounds like this kills all game optimizations for new games coming out. So while newer cards will get game specific updates to improve performance the 5xxx and 6xxx series won't. Depending on the the game this could be a huge issue.

I read that topic in german somewhere else already today and discussed it a bit with the ai.

Radeon 6000 were still sold a few months ago and now they retire the drivers. The drivers were full of bugs which got never solved. What I remember I bought the Radeon 6600xt in August 2021. I had for a few months in 2023 a radeon 6800 non xt.

I decided to not buy the radeon 9070xt because the existing powercolor 7800xt has massive problems in windows 11 pro and barely any support in gnu gentoo linux. The initial buying decission for the 9070xt was delayed because of the massive price scalping in central europe for months. 3rd party not supported tools like lact for gnu gentoo linux which needs special software hacks to get it running at all are not something i want to see after owning that 7800xt for nearly full 23 months. The fan support was silently introduced in middle of 2025. I expect much more regarding driver quality and core driver support. In my point of view only those amd based gaming handheld devices brought bare minimum driver support a few months ago. I am a long term linux kernel user since version 2.0.0. I never stopped using it.

The dropping of driver support, the never fix of core issues for the 6000 radeon cards when i owned them paint a picture to not buy the radeon 9000 series. In past months windows 11 pro 24h2 had massive issues with windows gpu drivers and epic game store. Earlier with Star Wars jedi survivor in windows 11 pro with regular game crashes. The laptop experience with windows 11 pro and the radeon gpu of the ryzuen 4650u also gives a very bad impression. The ryzen 4650u does not get any proper windows drivers for my refurbished device. I had to look up the driver and the amd homepage needs improvement. The driver is around half to a year old for the ryzen 4650u. Even 4 year old out of warranty sold lenovo notebooks which are sold as refurbished device than do not have proper support for windows 11 pro and form amd. My ryzen 7600x crashed while updating the AMD chipset drivers in windows 11 pro 24h2 on my x670 mainboard and with the installed 7800xt.

I did not yet bother 3d gaming in gnu gentoo linux for several years. The windows 10 pro and 11 pro gaming experience with the radeon 6000 cards was bad.
--

A german forum user somewhere else wrote that nvidia supports up to 7 year old graphic cards. I think that fits for the 900 and 1000 series. Amd stops graphic card supports for around 4 year old graphic cards.

The limited overclocking and lock down of overclocking support for amd based graphic cards makes purchasing an amd graphic card even more a bad choice. Feel free to check igorslab and the ~3-5 different amd overclocking and tuning tools there for only windows.

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The dropped FSR 4 Support for the shown possible way for the radeon 7000 and 6000 cards do not make the situation better. (Feel free to research that topic yourself, please. there was experimental feature. what i remember the 7800xt lacks core functionality. I'm not sure if that gpu lacks int8 processing capabilities. It may use other instructions to emulate that. ...)

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I wanted to sell my powercolor 7800xt hellhound before the 2 year warranty runs out around november 2025. I have to keep it. Nvidia has interesting software and hardware choices. AMD has funny driver programmers. Intel has in my point of view bad future for their graphic card department.

I think the key words in the article are "day one" support, not "full driver support" but the comments in this thread seem to have missed that part or don't understand what "day one" support means.

Day one support means the driver team writes custom shader code for the particular game that's being released. It doesn't mean the game won't run, it just won't be as optimized as if the driver team had taken the time to hand-tune custom shaders for the game.

For those of us running their AMD cards on Linux who use the open source AMD drivers (not the AMD provided ones) this won't make any difference.

Key takeaway: Refuse Windows. Embrace Linux.

LastDudeALiveAnd it's not just the age of the 6000 series (which is still a full generation newer than Turing, which Nvidia is still supporting for the forseeable future), it's the fact that RDNA 2 has the full DX12 Ultimate feature set. Yes the ray tracing sucks, but other features like mesh shaders work just fine. And even the ray tracing can be playable if implemented well, like in Doom Dark Ages

I'd even understand dropping RDNA support for lack of DX12 Ultimate support, that's what Nvidia is doing here soon with Pascal and older GPUs. But RDNA 2 can run every single new game. Dropping it is just (in the most charitable interpretation) a sign of lack of resources in a slowly dying product division, or (in the least charitable interpretation) a hamfisted attempt to boost RX 9000 sales.

It is quite shocking, especially since, like you said its a fully functioning card, DX and raster wise. Ya, the RT is kinda sucky, but 6000 series is still capable. A 6000 AMD card and anything at or past Nvidia 20 series are perfectly fine cards for more budget minded pcs and even for easier to run games. It seems like a bad idea to cut 5000 and 6000 series out. Seems much too early, especially since Nvidia is just now ending support for much older cards.

I would tottaly understand maybe split drivers once UDNA launches. IE one for all RNDA cards and one for the new UNDA. But these serious cuts before the launch are intresting. Maybe they are trying to boost 9000 series buy rate. But to that I would say fix the pricing and get it down to its launch msrp of 600. That would be much more inticing, at least to me, than oops sorry, your card does not have driver support for x, y, z. If I was a 6000 or 5000 owner and something that could run fine was cut out because of this driver idea I would not say, "oki dokie, gotta go pick up a shiny, still price inflated 9070xt." No, thats silly I would pick up a 5070 or 5070ti or wait untill super refresh and grab a card I know should be supported for much longer. Plus, better RT, CUDA and other Nvidia nice to haves. AMD has gotten better but not equal. I think they forget that, especially with a move like this. I have to conclude, not really a smart move.

BeermotorI think the key words in the article are "day one" support, not "full driver support" but the comments in this thread seem to have missed that part or don't understand what "day one" support means.

Day one support is the same as general support. The cards will only receive drivers for massive bugs and security fixes, which happens once in a year or so. So yes this effectively end their active driver support.

Hardware is shit, Gaming is shit, Operating System is shit...

Glad to have been part of the fun era in the late 90s and early 2000s.

BeermotorI think the key words in the article are "day one" support, not "full driver support" but the comments in this thread seem to have missed that part or don't understand what "day one" support means.

BeermotorDay one support means the driver team writes custom shader code for the particular game that's being released. It doesn't mean the game won't run, it just won't be as optimized as if the driver team had taken the time to hand-tune custom shaders for the game.

That's effectively the same as losing driver support, since major bugs are rather rare.

And as others have corrected me on, Turing is still receiving optimization. That came out in 2018 a year before rnda1. This is a really bad look for AMD.

BeermotorFor those of us running their AMD cards on Linux who use the open source AMD drivers (not the AMD provided ones) this won't make any difference.

Key takeaway: Refuse Windows. Embrace Linux.

I like Linux and use it, but multiplayer games still require Windows and we're a tiny market. Windows is still the overwhelming majority. We're not enough to support Radeon and its gonna hurt them moving forward. AMD has fought hard to fix the perception of their driver quality and then pulls this genius RPG-to-the-foot move.

One guy in my group has already been affected. Was planning on a 9070xt for his next build to replace his 2070 super, saw this news, texted it to me, and is now planning on a 5070ti instead.

*slow clap*.

LabRat 891nVidia shills are gonna love this ammodrop :rolleyes:

Really though, everyone needs to calm down. Even Polaris-Ellesmere is still getting (lagged-behind) driver support.

Lagging security updates when your competition is still receiving gaming optimization isn't a good selling point. As we saw with the 6950xt when the 7000 series came out, it only took a few months for the 6950xt to go from a 3090ti competitor in raster to losing to the 3090 and occasionally the 3080.

This is how we end up with gaming graphs where nvidia dominates the top 10 and gives the impression that AMD cant make competitive hardware.

Hecate91You're fine on Linux then, the community keeps drivers updated for way longer than most people would ever care to keep a GPU.

Sure, on linux i will be mostly fine, windows its going to become evident with time.

It will definitely make me think more on my next GPU, do I want to buy from a company that only supports their products from 4 years, or the one that supports them for 8+ years?

ToTTenTranzThe actual message here:

- No FSR4 for RDNA2, ever.

I would 100% infer that too

LastDudeALiveAnd it's not just the age of the 6000 series (which is still a full generation newer than Turing, which Nvidia is still supporting for the forseeable future), it's the fact that RDNA 2 has the full DX12 Ultimate feature set.

This is a massive point to make, they're still effectively modern architecture, minus ML Upscaling, but there are non-ML options in most games. Truly a shame and a kick in the teeth for 6000 series owners.

AMDog act.