R-T-BGood. 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.

Q : Could this indicate that RDNA1 and RDNA2 use the same driver stack (ie. how GPUs communicates with OS) ?
Meaning : Dropping just RDNA1, isn't freeing enough driver team resources for AMD's future plans (whatever they are).

If there are actual reasons for this and AMD does work towards a better structures and future products, understandable if they manage to not repeat such situation in the future. Still quite a big sting and optics for people that trusted AMD with those products.

What I do find completely unacepptable though is AMD still selling mobile products with RDNA2 iGPUs and worse yet the recent announcement of new re-releases of Zen 2 and Zen3/+ models with RDNA2 iGPUs, basically releasing a product that at release day will already have a deprecated and without any major or important future support plans from the company.

It's not even the first time AMD does this with mobile chips, they already did with Vega in the past when that was still their only current mobile APUs architecture in the market and the support those have nowdays isn't great as a reference to what may happen to those RDNA2 iGPU products.

If AMD was going to do this they should have and need to stop re-releasing and selling "new" products with integrated RDNA2 graphics.

Hecate91It makes no sense why anyone would hold a company to any higher standard than another, besides the obvious double standards.

While Intel moving 11th-14th Core i intregated graphics to a legacy support can be as criticizable from their users, RDNA2 is not only in a wider range of products, RDNA2 was also intended as a high performance and more scalable architecture. At the very least Intel is including support for their Core Series 1 and Series 2 re-releases (including the Core i5 110) in the main Intel Arc driver package download, which I don't have much hopes of AMD doing for their recent announced to be re-released and sell Zen 2 and Zen 3/+ processors given how they handled and have been handling those mobile Vega products.

On the one hand, it's shocking.

On the other hand, who needs game optimisations? It's like OS updates in a way. We're told that we need them, but nobody knows why.

sepheronx

Oh my god, people with a 6700 XT won't get that 2 extra FPS in the newest games, and they're crying so hard about it on Youtube. Ridiculous! :laugh:

R-T-BRDNA products were being launched in May of 2022, so not really in practical reality.

What do you mean not really, RDNA2 is 5 years old, driver optimizations apply to all RDNA2 GPUs.

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

You really need to learn reading between the lines... or removing the weirdly tinted corporate glasses. Holy crap

agent_x007Q : Could this indicate that RDNA1 and RDNA2 use the same driver stack (ie. how GPUs communicates with OS) ?
Meaning : Dropping just RDNA1, isn't freeing enough driver team resources for AMD's future plans (whatever they are).

It indicates RDNA much like GCN is managed like absolute shit again. Needing radically different driver branches for every other gen is obviously not sustainable so why the fuck do they keep creating those pitfalls??? Everything else is just deflection. Having to reduce support on cards still in active use is just a complete nono.

I cant even believe we are having this discussion. AMD is now backtracking but the damage is done anyway, they once again managed to set themselves up as losers. Its one facepalm moment after another.

The irony Is there are probably ten times the number of 6000 cards than 7000 cards out there lmao, and 9000 too, vast majority of their user probably owns RDNA2

Vya DomusWhat do you mean not really, RDNA2 is 5 years old, driver optimizations apply to all RDNA2 GPUs.

RDNA2 products weree still being launched May of 2022. Why are you having a hard time with this? A new product generally means new potential for support optimizations.

AusWolfOh my god, people with a 6700 XT won't get that 2 extra FPS in the newest games, and they're crying so hard about it on Youtube. Ridiculous! :laugh:

That's the FOMO talking, really.

Vayra86I cant even believe we are having this discussion. AMD is now backtracking but the damage is done anyway, they once again managed to set themselves up as losers. Its one facepalm moment after another.

But they are not backtracking, their stance never changed once. The recent clarification statement just reworded it a bit more clearly. "Maintenance mode" means the kernel mode driver will stay within the 25.10 branch and they will maintain that for some time, separately. RDNA 2 owners will still get game updates and profiles as needed, but major changes will no longer occur. Their PR department's gross miscommunication aside, this has been the game plan all along.

AMD is now maintaining three driver families, two of them long-term, 23.19, used in Polaris and Vega, 25.10, used in the earlier RDNA generations and this more current version, which is, for now, 25.20.

Dr. DroThat's the FOMO talking, really.



But they are not backtracking, their stance never changed once. The recent clarification statement just reworded it a bit more clearly. "Maintenance mode" means the kernel mode driver will stay within the 25.10 branch and they will maintain that for some time, separately. RDNA 2 owners will still get game updates and profiles as needed, but major changes will no longer occur. Their PR department's gross miscommunication aside, this has been the game plan all along.

AMD is now maintaining three driver families, two of them long-term, 23.19, used in Polaris and Vega, 25.10, used in the earlier RDNA generations and this more current version, which is, for now, 25.20.

PR indeed. Fact remains one would expect these GPUs to get active support for longer. We have already seen what reduced support meant for the Fury X. The card was toe to toe with a 980ti at launch and then obliterated by it 4 years later.

Similarly we have RDNA 3 that is also already on reduced support wrt FSR functionalities.

Its not looking good at all.

Vayra86The card was toe to toe with a 980ti at launch and then obliterated by it 4 years later.

That was the 4gb vs 6gb of vram mostly but now we have gtx 1080 vs vega 64 on games like battlefield 6.

R-T-BA new product generally means new potential for support optimizations.

That's want maybe you and >90% of people believe but it's not true because you don't understand how this works. Driver optimizations apply generation/architecture wide, not product wide.

YouseethisThat was the 4gb vs 6gb of vram mostly but now we have gtx 1080 vs vega 64 on games like battlefield 6.

No games didnt choke on 4GB at the time. The 980ti also nuked the Fury at 1080p. Also consider that even 4GB was a major bump compared to pre-Maxwell which capped at 3GB and even then just on top of stack. 4GB was a royal amount back then. Besides, Fury also had much higher bandwidth and it should (have) served to alleviate the capacity constraint.

R-T-BRDNA products were being launched in May of 2022, so not really in practical reality.

Don't forget the RX 6750 GRE 10GB and 12GB which released in October 2023... These RDNA 2 GPUs are barely 2 y/o right now.

AusWolfOh my god, people with a 6700 XT won't get that 2 extra FPS in the newest games, and they're crying so hard about it on Youtube. Ridiculous! :laugh:

I think it has more to do with if the game becomes unplayable due to graphical anomalies due to lack of support vs the frame rate.

One way to test would be if someone who still has a Vega GPU and something a bit newer but not as raw in power as VEGA, test alan wake 2 as seen in his video on linux vs windows. Why I suggest that is because GPU's get driver fixes through MESA updates that does allow older GPU's become compatible with newer titles making them playable. Which indicates that the companies do a poor job of support vs the open source community.

Vya DomusThat's want maybe you and >90% of people believe but it's not true because you don't understand how this works. Driver optimizations apply generation/architecture wide, not product wide.

Then explain the nonported opengl/DX11 UNIVERSAL gains to polaris/GCN users of the era. Afterall they had "nothing to gain" right?

Look man, if there wasn't a legit issue in my eyes, I"d not be moaning. I actually LIKE AMD and want them to just... do better. I'm just leaving it at that.

sepheronxI think it has more to do with if the game becomes unplayable due to graphical anomalies due to lack of support vs the frame rate.

One way to test would be if someone who still has a Vega GPU and something a bit newer but not as raw in power as VEGA, test alan wake 2 as seen in his video on linux vs windows. Why I suggest that is because GPU's get driver fixes through MESA updates that does allow older GPU's become compatible with newer titles making them playable. Which indicates that the companies do a poor job of support vs the open source community.

I can't recall ever seeing any graphical error due to a lack of game optimisation in my GPU driver, but I get what you mean.

AusWolfI can't recall ever seeing any graphical error due to a lack of game optimisation in my GPU driver, but I get what you mean.

It can happen and is more common the older the driver is, even if the app in question runs at a feature level that is supported by the older HW and driver. I've seen it on a few games when I still had a Kepler card around.

AusWolfI can't recall ever seeing any graphical error due to a lack of game optimisation in my GPU driver, but I get what you mean.

Brian from tyc in video I posted was using footage of Vega vs Newer gpu In Alan wake 2 and it was all buggy. So I think that is reference he was making. I myself seen such things with older gpus. Oldest Radeon gpu I have is a 5700xt so I can't confirm just yet. But newest I have is a 6800xt. But since I'm on linux, I won't see the pain.

sepheronxBrian from tyc in video I posted was using footage of Vega vs Newer gpu In Alan wake 2 and it was all buggy. So I think that is reference he was making. I myself seen such things with older gpus. Oldest Radeon gpu I have is a 5700xt so I can't confirm just yet. But newest I have is a 6800xt. But since I'm on linux, I won't see the pain.

One more reason for more people to switch to Linux, I guess? Kind of an unorthodox solution, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

AusWolfOne more reason for more people to switch to Linux, I guess? Kind of an unorthodox solution, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

The sad part is, it really is the one good reason. Best budget builds in future will be linux simply because the budget systems will only properly work in linux. But until anti cheat kernel level access nonsense is bypassed or alternatives found, it will never take off because unfortunately, those are the games most people play. But for single player games and the odd multi-player game (palworld, insurgency, etc) linux is fantastic. Got fsr4 and optiscaler working on cachyOS and I tested in my 6800xt and it works quite well (although, more taxing than xess 2 and barely much better looking).

sepheronxThe sad part is, it really is the one good reason. Best budget builds in future will be linux simply because the budget systems will only properly work in linux. But until anti cheat kernel level access nonsense is bypassed or alternatives found, it will never take off because unfortunately, those are the games most people play. But for single player games and the odd multi-player game (palworld, insurgency, etc) linux is fantastic. Got fsr4 and optiscaler working on cachyOS and I tested in my 6800xt and it works quite well (although, more taxing than xess 2 and barely much better looking).

Areweanticheat is working on tracking the effort in getting kernel level anticheat working in linux for real. It's actually making headway, about 25% of kernel level anticheat games can work now.

AusWolfOh my god, people with a 6700 XT won't get that 2 extra FPS in the newest games, and they're crying so hard about it on Youtube. Ridiculous! :laugh:

It's not just game optimization, but it's all the works on vulkan and directx extensions that RDNA 1/2 could have support for (hardware is capable of it) but it doesn't. Like say, cooperative matrix/vector for directx12 since that is unreleased as of yet.

Linux drivers often already have everything of that already implemented. And with that, it means game devs either don't use those new features (as RDNA 2 is still popular) or they use and now RDNA 2 has to go through a bad fallback that nobody really did well or just don't launch.

Vayra86You really need to learn reading between the lines... or removing the weirdly tinted corporate glasses. Holy crap

Actually I don't need to do anything.

AMD provided a follow up statement to clarify and this whole thing is over.

This doesn't affect me personally as i'm not using RDNA 2 and i don't need to be emotional or in my feelings about it.

And if the they did indeed cut support after 5 years I would simply just upgrade to a RDNA 4 gpu so i'm on something current.

This whole running to forums and complaining is not something I do I stick and move.

And to each his own.

This response from a MOD at THG is probably the best one i've seen on this whole situation.