BoggledBeagle...
I think I will continue with something like

"this card is no good today anyway and should be thrown away".

and

"You can still enjoy a lot of games even if you decided to keep the card for whatever strange reason."

I am afraid that this sounds like I think that RX 6000 cards are hot steaming piles of dinosaur poo and they should be thrown away immediately, which is not true. I think they can still serve people well.

However, I really do not think that execs in AMD are idiots and they are not aware that this will cause negative sentiment in their customer base.

They made the decision because they felt if was necessary for whatever reason. Most likely they do not have enough employees to continue fully supporting these older cards. Some people are hard to find and also to retain in the company. Most likely trying to fully support older cards would cause some problems in supporting newer cards.

BTW I tested 9070 XT this generation and experienced far more problems after launch than I experienced with a new NVidia gen. Supporting WELL current cards is far more important than supporting old cards. They probably simply cannot do both anymore.

Hecate91It isn't silly when it's not just technical debt, but a lack of financial resources as well on the Radeon side. I doubt AMD would have FSR4 working as well as it does without Sony co-developing the tech as PSSR.
Nvidia keeping driver support for as long as they do is just change found under the sofa cushions for them, a rounding error for a $5 trillion dollar company. And the "optical flow accelerator" turned out to be a bunch of BS as to why previous generations didn't get every feature for quite a while. Even so there never was any outrage for previous gens not getting frame gen.
Consumer cards are especially technical debt for AMD when Nvidia gets closer towards a full monopoly, or who knows how many driver engineers AMD has, freeing up 10 gaming graphics driver engineers for UDNA may help if they only have a team of 30 people.

And I'm saying that the whole point of consumer cards are to give you the financial resources to do that. Consumer GPUs are marketing now. Nvidia gets that, AMD does not. As long as AMD keeps cutting off their consumer GPUs prematurely, people will be turned off all AMD products, straining their finances even more. This will dissuade people from buying UDNA GPUs, and if nobody buys UDNA GPUs, there will be no software ecosystem that supports them, meaning enterprise customers won't want UDNA either.

Dr. DroAs shown above. Many of the driver optimizations apply to all hardware targets because of the shared user mode content and configuration profiling. Many of these benefits can be felt even on a GTX 900 series card.



Indeed, I agree. What will happen here going forward is that no features or major optimizations that require the kernel mode component to be changed in a substantial manner will be done going forward.

Optimizations and features that function at the user mode level can be backported to the 25.10 branch, and this is what AMD has committed to providing going forward with the "maintenance mode" schedule. I don't think FSR is a kernel mode function, so regarding that concern, I don't think this changes anything, at least regarding FSR 4. Redstone, perhaps, maybe, I don't know what changes would be necessary to make that tick.



You got it all right, down to the last detail. I'm in full agreement, I just have to point out the elephant in the room, though. The true problem here is technical debt, and fundamentally why I make the argument that this is a positive thing in the long run. The changes they made in the structure overall (and the reason RDNA 2 had to go) are directly pertaining to this.

Nvidia spent the R&D over the years, always developing, supporting and making every optional API extension under the sun at least functional, if not performant. AMD, on the other hand, has always taken the shallower road that required the least engineering and development time possible. This is what made it possible for Nvidia to support their cards for so long, mostly because the work was already done. You want to use some extension that will help you gain performance, optimize, or run something odd? The Nvidia card will do it. The AMD one will go belly up and croak.

The DirectX 11 driver command lists issue, the software RT driver that Nvidia provided but AMD refused to, RDNA/2 being unable to do HAGS, these are just smaller examples of the big picture I'm trying to present here. People glossed over the 5700 XT forgoing DirectX 12 Ultimate, calling RT needless, and all the other improvements and optimizations "superfluous"... this is your bill, and you should pay it in due. The new work graphs function they just added support for (exclusive to RX 9000 series, btw) in the new driver? Nvidia supports it in Ampere and has done so for over a year.

Techincal debt is absolutely a valid reason but even that is AMDs own fault. Its the story of its life really

Dr. DroWe both know the FSR issue specifically isn't a driver problem but rather, an artificial segmentation decision. The architecture might not be as fast, but it was never a showstopper.

For the FSR part, I think it was understandable that there was no launch day support for it in RDNA 2/3 considering that those do in fact lack FP8 support. But in my honest opinion, the issue is that there are several ways to circumvent those limitations, with Intel and Nvidia doing those, such as say Turing using FP16 to run DLSS 4 because no FP8 support or XeSS dot product fallback.

AMD could have easily implemented a FP16 fallback for cards that don't support FP8 and then work on an int8 version which would likely be a bigger benefit for RDNA 2 over 3 (as 3 has the same throughput of FP16 as INT8). It was simple enough that people who were just hacking it in Linux were able to implement it and it would be easier when you have access to the weights as FP8 is a subset of FP16.

So is it a technical challenge? Yes, however it is not unsolvable and their competitors have shown that to them. I feel that AMD current mindset and their lack of foresight for features is their greatest challenge.

As while RDNA 4 is a big step to the right direction, soon after release, there is announcement of DXR 1.2 which includes features like Opacity Micro Maps and SER which Nvidia has since Ada (so 2022) but AMD wasn't wise enough to include it in their 2025 cards... Probably only in their 2027 release of RDNA 5. And the lack of such features might mean that RDNA 4 might degrade in performance tiers as games do in fact adopt those features.

R-T-BYes, technically old cards are supported (wasn't support for maxwell dropped though?), but I doubt there is much more to wring out left post 5 years or so. But 3? 3 is just too young.

Optimizations for past titles =! optimization for future titles. See also: 6800xt slowing down during the 7900xtx launch in titles that launched in the 4 month window.

Oh yeah, and AMD has now backtraced after widespread consumer outrage:

wccftech.com/amd-backtracks-says-it-will-continue-game-optimizations-and-features-support-for-rdna-1-and-rdna-2-gpus/#comments

So much for "technical reasons".

R-T-BWe all know that's a farce but you can probably still expect optimizations at 3 years. I'd say 5 is the cutoff.

Are we getting there yet?

RDNA2 is 5 years old.

TheinsanegamerNOptimizations for past titles =! optimization for future titles. See also: 6800xt slowing down during the 7900xtx launch in titles that launched in the 4 month window.

Oh yeah, and AMD has now backtraced after widespread consumer outrage:

wccftech.com/amd-backtracks-says-it-will-continue-game-optimizations-and-features-support-for-rdna-1-and-rdna-2-gpus/#comments

So much for "technical reasons".

I don't think there was any backtracking at all.

Maintenance mode does not equal no driver support.

They had to clarify the statement due to all the rage bait from HUB video's and Daniel ownes not to mention numerous posters on reddit going off the deep end.

There no official statement from AMD at all saying anything about technical reasons.

Their PR person should been alittle more clear with there statements but the amount of people that just took that ran with the rage bait has been kinda silly.

olymind1And RDNA2 is the heart of current gen consoles, yet they put it on backburner on PC.


I was, now i'm not so sure, if they drop RDNA2 by the near end of current gen consolse, who knows what will happen with RDNA5/UDNA by the end of PS6 era.

Not worried about that at all.

MakaveliI don't think there was any backtracking at all.

Maintenance mode does not equal no driver support.

Nobody claimed it did. Maintenance mode does not include driver optimizations. People in this thread are being disingenuous, claiming that people upset over lack of optimization are claiming ther eis no support, when that is not the argument.

MakaveliThey had to clarify the statement due to all the rage bait from HUB video's and Daniel ownes not to mention numerous posters on reddit going off the deep end.

AMD has now changed their stance to "driver optimizations included, but only monthly". Not a clarification, a CHANGE.

Consumers getting pissed over poor long term support is not "rage bait".

MakaveliThere no official statement from AMD at all saying anything about technical reasons.

Again, never said they did. Dr. Dro claimed there were "technical reasons". You would know this if you read the entire thread instead of cherry picking one comment.

MakaveliTheir PR person should been alittle more clear with there statements but the amount of people that just took that ran with the rage bait has been kinda silly.

Their PR team putting their cards on the maintenance branch then backtracking is not "Rage Bait". Please learn what rage bait is.

Thankfully, the consumer was one again able to bully AMD into properly supporting their products. Why someone would meatshield a multi billion dollar corpo's PR team is beyond me.

TheinsanegamerNNobody claimed it did. Maintenance mode does not include driver optimizations. People in this thread are being disingenuous, claiming that people upset over lack of optimization are claiming ther eis no support, when that is not the argument.

AMD has now changed their stance to "driver optimizations included, but only monthly". Not a clarification, a CHANGE.

Consumers getting pissed over poor long term support is not "rage bait".

Again, never said they did. Dr. Dro claimed there were "technical reasons". You would know this if you read the entire thread instead of cherry picking one comment.

Their PR team putting their cards on the maintenance branch then backtracking is not "Rage Bait". Please learn what rage bait is.

I'm well aware of what rage bait is just go to reddit and look at all the post from yesterday.

AMD never said they were dropping Support for RDNA 1 or 2 just that priority would go to RDNA 3/4

MakaveliI'm well aware of what rage bait is just go to reddit and look at all the post from yesterday.

AMD never said they were dropping Support for RDNA 1 or 2 just that priority would go to RDNA 3/4

The driver explicitly stated that new game support for Battlefield 6 and Bloodlines 2, as well as new Vulkan extensions, were only for RDNA 3 and 4. Nothing about priority, it's a binary situation. Old cards don't get these features, new cards do.

Most of the reactions to this were rage bait, fueled by people assuming maintenance mode meant no driver support at all, and then channels like HW Unboxed and Daniel Owen took that and added fuel to the fire.
Although AMD's marketing and PR team needs to be a lot more careful with their wording and driver release notes, because the smallest thing regarding AMD blows up into a massive bash fest.

LastDudeALiveThe driver explicitly stated that new game support for Battlefield 6 and Bloodlines 2, as well as new Vulkan extensions, were only for RDNA 3 and 4. Nothing about priority, it's a binary situation. Old cards don't get these features, new cards do.

i'm aware you are all hung up on this line of text on the driver page.

However the guys I play BF6 on RDNA 2 said they had improved performance with 25.10.2 and first support was on the 25.10.1 driver so why would they see performance improvement?

MakaveliI'm well aware of what rage bait is just go to reddit and look at all the post from yesterday.

Yet you keep getting the definition wrong here. Curious.

Also, Reddit? Geez pick some better websites boss.

MakaveliAMD never said they were dropping Support for RDNA 1 or 2 just that priority would go to RDNA 3/4

Where are all the comments here saying AMD was dropping all support? I dont see them.

I see lots of people complaining about THE LACK OF OPTIMIZATION, which is what AMD has now clarified.

Makavelii'm aware you are all hung up on this line of text on the driver page.

However the guys I play BF6 on RDNA 2 said they had improved performance with 25.10.2 and first support was on the 25.10.1 driver so why would they see performance improvement?

"the guys I played with"

Oh so anecdotes are evidence now? AMD stated the newest optimization for BF6 was for RX 7000 and 9000 only, but your buds clearly offer proof to the contrary.

LMFAO.

Hecate91Most of the reactions to this were rage bait, fueled by people assuming maintenance mode meant no driver support at all, and then channels like HW Unboxed and Daniel Owen took that and added fuel to the fire.
Although AMD's marketing and PR team needs to be a lot more careful with their wording and driver release notes, because the smallest thing regarding AMD blows up into a massive bash fest.

Where are all these reactions? Are you guys reading a different universe or something?

AMD dropping optimization on a 4 year old architecture isnt "the smallest little thing". If nVidia claimed they were dropping the RTX 3000 series from optimization you'd be writing books about it.

TheinsanegamerNDr. Dro claimed there were "technical reasons". You would know this if you read the entire thread instead of cherry picking one comment.

To be perfectly clear the "technical debt" remark is something I've said out of my own observation and opinion.

AMD just issued a new statement clarifying they will continue to release game profiles and fixes as needed, it's on the front page right now.

The stance hasn't changed, it's been that from the start. They're just clarifying and reiterating that the 25.10 driver will still be maintained with fixes for new games, as needed. Which is an opaque statement at best, but alas

TheinsanegamerNYet you keep getting the definition wrong here. Curious.

Also, Reddit? Geez pick some better websites boss.

Where are all the comments here saying AMD was dropping all support? I dont see them.

I see lots of people complaining about THE LACK OF OPTIMIZATION, which is what AMD has now clarified.

"the guys I played with"

Oh so anecdotes are evidence now? AMD stated the newest optimization for BF6 was for RX 7000 and 9000 only, but your buds clearly offer proof to the contrary.

LMFAO.

Where are all these reactions? Are you guys reading a different universe or something?

AMD dropping optimization on a 4 year old architecture isnt "the smallest little thing". If nVidia claimed they were dropping the RTX 3000 series from optimization you'd be writing books about it.

I don't have a time machine to go back to 2023 before I sold my 6800XT. So I can only go based what my friends that own RDNA2 gpu's tell me.

You have a RDNA 2 gpu based on your sig so you can actually go and test it yourself with the drivers!

Dr. DroTo be perfectly clear the "technical debt" remark is something I've said out of my own observation and opinion.

"But I am also privy to certain details that the general public is not, so that's a very important consideration as to why I am not raising my pitchforks when I would usually be the first to moan about this. I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it, so I won't, but just trust me when I say that there actually is a valid technical reason for this decision."

You claimed to be privy to inside information, thats not "my own observation".

Dr. DroAMD just issued a new statement clarifying they will continue to release game profiles and fixes as needed, it's on the front page right now.

The stance hasn't changed, it's been that from the start. They're just clarifying and reiterating that the 25.10 driver will still be maintained with fixes for new games, as needed. Which is an opaque statement at best, but alas

Actual misinformation

"New features, bug fixes and game optimizations will continue to be delivered as required by market needs in the maintenance mode branch,

- AMD to Tomshardware"

That is today.

"RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 graphics cards will continue to receive driver updates for critical security and bug fixes. To focus on optimizing and delivering new and improved technologies for the latest GPUs, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 is placing Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series graphics cards (RDNA 1 and RDNA 2) into maintenance mode. Future driver updates with targeted game optimizations will focus on RDNA 3 and RDNA 4 GPUs."

That was yesterday.

I highlighted the important bits, since everybody is really struggling with reading comprehension today. AMD did not "clarify" their response, they CHANGED it.

MakaveliI don't have a time machine to go back to 2023 before I sold my 6800XT. So I can only go based what my friends that own RDNA2 gpu's tell me.

You have a RDNA 2 gpu based on your sig so you can actually go and test it yourself with the drivers!

2023? Time machine?

Bruh WTF are you on about? BF6 didnt come out in 2023.

TheinsanegamerN"But I am also privy to certain details that the general public is not, so that's a very important consideration as to why I am not raising my pitchforks when I would usually be the first to moan about this. I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it, so I won't, but just trust me when I say that there actually is a valid technical reason for this decision."

You claimed to be privy to inside information, thats not "my own observation".

That has nothing to do with what I argued after. If anything, these are just the same things I've claimed all this time that earned me the infamous "amd hater" reputation among some circles here. I personally see this decision as shedding weight and refocusing on improvement, which matters much more, to ME, than supporting old cards. This isn't a decision that is taken lightly, after all. Three roads to take from here on out:

1. Look at it for what it is
2. Call them greedy, inconsiderate, etc. and replace your card with an Nvidia or Intel product, renouncing Radeon forever
3. Try to look at the positives and rationalize the decision

I took option 3 myself, which was undeniably, admittedly easier given the circumstances (and mostly the fact I am not affected). I promise it's not some top secret thing, but we're in a public forum and what's in a private forum isn't aired outside, that's all.

TheinsanegamerN2023? Time machine?

Bruh WTF are you on about? BF6 didnt come out in 2023.

That statement reads plain as day.

I no longer have a RDNA 2 gpu sold it in 2023. So the people I play with that own a RDNA 2 gpu and play battlefield 6 are the only ones I can get direct performance reviews from.

You clearly have a 6800XT based on your sig. So if their experience isn't good enough for you. Test the 25.9.1 vs 25.10.2 on your rig.

No where anywhere in that statement did I say BF6 came out in 2023.

you are just making stuff up at this point.

"In order to focus on optimizing and delivering new and improved technologies for the latest GPUs, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 places Radeon RX 5000 series and RX 6000 series graphics cards (RDNA 1 and RDNA 2) in maintenance mode. RDNA 1 and RDNA2 graphics cards will continue to receive driver updates for critical security and bug fixes."

afaik this is the original statement

now come and tell me "oh see it's all ragebait and the guys at hwu and danielwhatever clickbaiting you!"

than magically, after shit hit the fan, they went all "ooh no guys, we've been misunderstood!!" and the statement became "New features, bug fixes and game optimizations will continue to be delivered as required by market needs (whatever that means, probably gobbledygook ) in the maintenance mode branch"


ADDENDUM: some of you seem to think AMD is a startup ran from Lisa Hsu' mom's garage and not a company worth 250BILLION dollars. As if they couldn't afford to pay people to maintain drivers.

Vya DomusSo nobody can give me a concrete example of this super long amazing support translating into actual game optimisations all the way till the end. Got it.

Anyone who thinks that Pascal, for example, was receiving game optimisations till the end of driver support is uhm… being silly.

There are 5 examples that I know of that there are bug fixes, performance optimizations or new features on old gpus.

1) A performance issue that was introduced and resolved at some point on Halo Infinite on maxwell gpus.
2) Turing got support for dlss 4 upscaling. Will rdna 2 get the int8 version of fsr4? We know it can run on rdna 2, but will it get official support? Yes nvidia has locked FG to Ada and MFG to Blackwell but that was an opportunity to give full fsr4 support to rdna 2 and better support.
3) Battlefield 6 runs on Pascal but it has issues on Vega gpus. This is not the only game that has problems on games that require a newer driver branch. Will they get fixes now that these gpus are on maintenance mode? Maybe because:

4) Amd actually fixed a crash on clack ops 6 on polaris gpus with driver 25.5.1 (but the old branch 23.19)

The same fate that befell Vega will destroy rdna 2, that is the reason that most enthusiasts are weary of this.
Does anyone remember vega 20? (radeon VII). It has 16gb of vram.

I know that those are tangential examples but there are a case to be skeptical of amd's actions.
Even if they optimize the old driver branch, for how long?
Will rdna 2 support shader model 6.9? Turing will with the 590.xx drivers and that is example number (5). I am not sure if it supports shader model 6.8 because of that branch split right now.
etc...

FSR4 will never come on RDNA2, let's not even joke about that, in ANY official capacity. even though the cards are more than able to run it well (at least as well as RDNA3) on int8.

What if they had some real serious reasons for the original decision??? Would them reverting their decision be a real positive impact on consumers or not? I mean all consumers, not just owners of the old cards?

Owner of RX 6900 will have a horrible experience playing the new AAA title that will come out in 2027 anyway. Lower models will be totally unusable.

I think that the notion that AMD is a horrible greedy company wanting just to spare money to screw their loyal consumers with old cards over is a bit childish and too simple thinking. I think it is all a bit more complicated.

Nvidia probably has few times more employees for GPU support than AMD. Just saying.

y2faultyFSR4 will never come on RDNA2, let's not even joke about that, in ANY official capacity. even though the cards are more than able to run it well (at least as well as RDNA3) on int8.

And that is a pity.

BoggledBeagleOwner of RX 6900 will have a horrible experience playing the new AAA title that will come out in 2027 anyway. Lower models will be totally unusable.

Probably not, while games become heavier over time, console generations are the ones that cause the biggest jumps. Games that play on ps4 and xbox one are the ones that play fine on 8gb cards for example. Similarly games right now, up until the ps6 releases, will always play fine on a rx 6900 xt. Even in the heaviest unreal 5 games you can go for 1440p@60 (high settings) and since they force the horrible TAA, fsr4 would help a lot to mitigate the temporal artifacts.

Vya DomusRDNA2 is 5 years old.

RDNA products were being launched in May of 2022, so not really in practical reality.

I know when the 6950 XT launched because my brother is still using one. And he was using Polaris before that and missed out on the OpenGL fixes, that would've helped him majorly ("no performance gain from new drivers" then AMD just casually fixes their decades old broken OpenGL stack but gates out anything not RDNA LMAO).

TheinsanegamerNOptimizations for past titles =! optimization for future titles. See also: 6800xt slowing down during the 7900xtx launch in titles that launched in the 4 month window.

See also when AMD makes a major performance breakthrough in an API and just doesn't bother to backport it to old but "still supported" stuff. Yeah, it has happened. Twice actually.

TheinsanegamerNOh yeah, and AMD has now backtraced after widespread consumer outrage:

Good. I will curb my outrage for now. This shouldn't even be on the table for the RDNA2 cards for a year more at minimum, two ideally.

PerfectWaveTOTAL BRAINELSS

what is wrong with you ?