AMD/ATI Drops Windows XP Support 251
Billly Gates writes "The latest beta drivers for the Catalyst drivers control suite only list Vista as the lowest version they will support. We still have almost a year before Windows XP support finally ends. Will NVidia follow? So if you own a AMD system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version. Looks like another death knell for this very long lasting platform."
Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're buying the latest and greatest gaming cards, you're probably going to want DirectX 10 or 11, good multicore support, and an OS that can handle more than 3-ish GB of RAM.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're buying the latest and greatest gaming cards, you're probably going to want DirectX 10 or 11, good multicore support, and an OS that can handle more than 3-ish GB of RAM.
This is a complete slow-news-day non-story. It's just a more specific way of saying "nothing lasts forever".
The headline should have been "Nothing Lasts Forever and XP Won't Be the First Exception" or maybe "For-Profit Corporation Doesn't Want to Support Dying Platform". Not exactly surprising, informative, or newsworthy.
Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM (Score:5, Informative)
Also, there's an important point here which isn't being addressed in the summary.
Vista and later (all NT 6.x versions) use a new "WDDM" driver model for video drivers. Although there are various characteristics of WDDM, the really defining one is that only a tiny shim that basically wraps the direct hardware access lives in kernel mode. Everything else - the actual program logic of the video driver - lives in user mode. This is fantastic for a number of reasons:
1) All the crash-prone code is now user-mode. When a XP video driver crashes, it causes a bluescreen. When a Win7 video driver crashes, it causes a blank screen for about a second while the user-mode driver restarts.
2) Updating and rolling back video drivers no longer requires a reboot; in fact, it only takes a couple seconds. It's actually practical, if you really want to, to switch video drivers between games (for example, if the latest and "greatest" doesn't work with one of your older games, but you want to use it for everything else).
3) Developing and debugging user-mode code is a lot easier than doing the same for kernel-mode code. This change lets developers spend a greater portion of their time improving the driver logic, rather than making the driver work with the various configurations of the NT kernel.
My guess is that AMD decided the benefits of item #3 were worth more than continuing to release drivers for 12-year-old OS. By no longer maintaining the pre-WDDM version, they can focus their resources on supporting modern platforms that are also easier to develop for.
Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM (Score:4, Interesting)
Um... no. That's ridiculous, in fact. As a MSDN subscriber, I can still download, from Microsoft, MS-DOS 6.0. That doesn't mean I have to call it a "0 year old" operating system!
If you want to get picky over the "12 years" claim, you could argue that I should count from the last time a major upgrade was released, which would be 5 years (and SP3, unlike SP1 and SP2, was hardly major).
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No, XP is still 12 years old. Vista's existance just means that XP was superceded 6 years ago, and has been deprecated since. The age of ANYTHING is how long ago it was concieved.
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That is the age of Windows XP design. But since Microsoft doesn't sell Windows XP design, but just copies and licenses to use it - design age is immaterial from a support perspective. My car is 2 year old, this model was released 5 years ago. That doesn't mean my car is 5 year old, mine is just 2 year old. From support perspective, 2 years is what matters, though if the design has some inconvenient feature that wasn't fixable 5 years old technology, one might not find fault with the car manufacturer that mu
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So FreeDOS is a new OS?
XP is about a few minutes old (I still see it sold - distributed - in plenty of places nowadays).
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That is mostly a non-issue nowadays if you consider Virtual Machines are a thing (and as far as I know you don't install AMD/NVidia drivers on the VM), and that gog.com is a thing. I do get your point, though.
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But you won't be able to install a newer card, because it won't have driver support. Current drivers do not have support for yet unreleased cards, which appears to be a big part of grandparent's decision.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Interesting)
After slashdoters wrote posts like WIndows 7 == Vista SP 2 they had an effect. Many assume WIndows 7 must suck too because that lie was repeated so many times everywhere by XP loyalists. Many are hesitant to change thinking it is just as slow and bloated and that somehow XP will run faster 100% of the time (not understanding algorithm changes and extra optimizations from the compiler added to the kernel for newer cpus).
I seriously doubt that Joe Sixpack goes running to Slashdot for advice on which OS to purchase. Joe Sixpack just uses whatever comes with his new computer. If the latest shiniest Windows sales are down it's because desktop computer sales in general are down. Making Windows go faster is no longer the prime reason to buy a new machine like it was when we referred to it as Wintel.
I did briefly try Win 7 because it came with a then-new laptop I purchased. I was impressed, actually. For Windows, it was great. For Windows, anyway. Sadly, copyright issues alone would prevent MS from ever offering a comprehensive centralized package manager comparable to what Linux distros offer. Having to track down hardware drivers (at all, ever) is a nuisance. Being treated like a dumb user at every turn is definitely a nuisance. The fact that good relatively common-sense security practices are not enough to prevent malware is a showstopper for me. Not being able to poke around under the hood and configure damned near everything, well that sucks. So little choice in desktop environments sucks too. Needing additional software to do what are nowadays basic things (like GOOD remote access, a compiler, etc) that are standard features on *nix is a nuisance. PowerShell is too little, too late compared to what Bash and its predecessors have done for decades (!) now. A binary registry is simply a bad design decision. And while you may find some sense of community among other Windows users, you will not share that with the people who actually put it together.
Slashdot users are more likely to care about some, or all of these things, or something along the lines, than the mass market that drives Windows sales. Here, you may have a point. But every last Slashdotter could boycott Windows forever and it would be a rounding error in terms of MS sales figures. That doesn't explain why Win 7 hasn't skyrocketed the way XP did. It's either ignorant or dishonest for you to pretend that it does.
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Microsoft does a fairly good job at maintaining a generally usable driver set available through Windows Update. It's usually not the latest version (and often is a generic driver from a few years ago), but it works. They have an additional problem if it comes from their servers, they get blamed if something goes wrong. Hence the testing and stability requirements before it goes into the repository, because if they break a million systems with a bad driver update, it hits the news even if it is a comparat
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I tend to agree with your other points, though if Linux actually reached a critical level of use, its security practices would start getting tested, too. Attackers love to see Linux systems because they're trusted to be secure, a trust which is often violated. You seem to know what you're doing, but the corporate Linux uses that I've seen have relied on poor understanding of how they should be maintained, often based on arrogant declarations from the sysadmins who do things like boast of not having rebooted the web server in two years.
Security is like a game of chess between two or more people. It's not a game of a person against a machine.
The nice thing about Linux is that any sane configuration means you aren't going to worry about a Web site doing a drive-by installation of malware. That does not mean a skilled and determined attacker couldn't penetrate it.
Corporate users of anything should be letting IT deal with security (and follow IT's policies) and focus on doing their jobs. Also, the kexec syscall means it really is pos
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but you can run ut1 just fine on win7/win8.
a bunch of win98 stuff runs better on win7/win8 than on xp ever.
not that you really need the latest cards/drivers for old stuff anyways.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe 3 years ago this was true, but at this point I literally know zero gamers that still run Windows XP. And I know a lot of WoW players who haven't upgraded their PCs in years. Just look at the Steam hardware survey [steampowered.com]. Windows XP is sitting at ~8% when you combine 32 and 64 bit versions.
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No, I don't know you. Also, welcome to the (presumed) 8%.
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1. Any real architectural improvements done to vista were obscured by the clusterfuck that is the new GUI/explorer. ..and what justifies the huge memory footprint increase over xp? Not a damn thing, even accounting for superfetch. Turn it off and it's still a crazy large footprint. So no, it is not a stretch to see that windows 7 really is vista sp2 with a few mild aesthetic changes.
2. 2k/XP's configurability was never something to write home about, but it's sure as hell a lot easier than vista/7..and 8
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Re:Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because in the world of technology, things advance whether you like it or not.
I see this bullshit all the time, and it sickens (and saddens) me. You have completely and entirely have forgotten the purpose of computers (re: technology): to solve problems or accomplish purposes that would otherwise be extremely time consuming or too difficult to do otherwise. If what you have works, there is no reason to change it. Most software today changes solely for the sake of change.
Some things don't "advance" because they just work. [adafruit.com]
I would love to see you argue your point with the individuals/companies mentioned in said article. I can assure you completely they would say the same thing I have.
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XP was the end of the line in actual end user experience improvement.
Funny, I felt that way about Win2K.
But WinXP does hold a special place in my heart... Seeing that Fisher-Price UI on other people's machines helped goose me into switching to Linux full-time.
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XP64 is a joke- there's very little driver support for it and things were wonky. It was more of a beta test by Microsoft than anything really significant.
The new driver model is much better - and if you're going to do a 64-bit driver, you might as well start afresh with the new driver model than to try to maintain a dead 64-bit port as well.
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XP64 worked just fine as long as you ran it on supported hardware and used only supported software. It was never mainstream, but it sure wasn't a joke.
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You make it sound like getting supported hardware was a hard thing.
My mum bought her computer about 5 years algo, and XP x64 worked fine without any issues. We never consulted if it would work or not - you could just assume it would, much like XP would run on almost any machine you could build at the time.
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not entirely.. (Score:5, Interesting)
..just because the system is an amd system doesn't get any new/bugfixed drivers, the summary makes it sound like you can't get new network controller drivers for your intel nic if you are running it an amd system..("or any other drivers").
I'm more surprised that they were still producing new drivers for xp, actually, than them dropping the support. it's not like they, or nvidia, are known to bringing on package mentioned features to older cards by driver updates even.
as always, you're only certain to get what you get when you buy the thing.. trusting them to bring newer features to older cards newer worked out.
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Oh no, my old laptop will no longer be able to play the latest games! Oh wait, it never could handle anything past Sim City 3000 anyway...
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XP service Pack 3(XP was awful pre service pack 2 and delayed Vista for years) only had replaced by Vista Jan30 2007 and only then was not a viable replacement (XP continued to be sold on Netbooks)
And how many netbooks have ATi/AMD graphics chips? Didn't they almost all have crappy Atom CPUs with equally crappy Intel graphics processors on the northbridge/PCH? (Most of them didn't even support hardware decoding of H.264 and other common video formats; Atom was the last PC platform to not include this feat
Non-story (Score:5, Interesting)
So if you own a AMD system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version.
Ummm, yeah. Microsoft is going to stop releasing security patches for the OS. If you're still running XP, using older video drivers should be the least of your concerns.
Except that is not hapening yet (Score:2, Interesting)
Ummm, yeah. Microsoft is going to stop releasing security patches for the OS. If you're still running XP, using older video drivers should be the least of your concerns.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx [microsoft.com] except that is not happening for another year. The initial date (although I suspect it will be pushed back) April 8 2014.
Its also the date of the end of support for Office 2003. Most of the i915 and above machines (with 1GB of Memory) should simply be moved to Ubuntu and Libreoffice.
But the reality is as the summery states AMD are jumping the gun on this.
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It's not going to be pushed back. It's already been pushed back once as it should have ended in 2011 (10 years after release date) and it's less then 12 months till April 2014 so yes, less then year.
XP is finished and Microsoft is determined to take it out back and shoot it. At this point, I can't really blame them. Which happened first, 9/11 or XP GA date? XP GA. Mainstream Linux Kernel was 2.2 branch. If you tried to get support for an application on Linux 2.2 these days, everyone would laugh you out of s
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It's not going to be pushed back. It's already been pushed back once as it should have ended in 2011 (10 years after release date) and it's less then 12 months till April 2014 so yes, less then year.
I think it will be pushed back again. Microsoft doesn't want to, but a *lot* of large corporations (and, perhaps more importantly, governments) are still on XP and are going to shit a brick if support is ever dropped. Many of these organizations are still mired in IE6, due to applications that were written for
Re:Except that is not hapening yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would anyone buy a newer version of Windows if they can have XP forever. Microsoft could never compete against a free version of XP. Very few people would upgrade beyond it.
Exactly. This is why my Linux systems are all still running kernel 2.2.
except when there's a security bug (Score:4, Insightful)
It won't really be a problem if you're not running into security problems. However, if someone finds a way to use the video driver to get SYSTEM or Administrator access to your computer, you'd really want the vendor of said video driver to come with an update. Since MicroSoft is still supporting the OS in terms of security updates, you'd expect the video driver vendor to do the same.
Mind you, just because there's no XP support in the latest beta driver doesn't mean AMD won't fix security flaws if those would arise. It's pure speculation to suggest that something like that might or might not happen. I have a gut feeling that the people at AMD would be smart enough to at least just fix the bug and do a minor version bump if something like that would happen in the period that MicroSoft still supports XP.
Re:except when there's a security bug (Score:5, Funny)
Using a display driver exploit on XP is like using C4 explosive to open a screen door.
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That may be true for home users but in many office and education situations it's common to see locked down accounts on XP
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Shouldn't that be a screen window?
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No, modern versions of Windows have only unprivileged users by default. "Administrators" is the equivalent of the sudoers or wheel group on *nix.
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I seriously doubt that many people are running WebGL on xp. seriously. other than that, if you're running code that gets to talk to the gpu in feasibly exploitable way, there's no need for the process to exploit bugs in the gpu drivers anyways.
Ugh. Another Timothy Lord post (Score:4, Insightful)
Total non-issue. If you're still using Windows XP, then you're also stuck on DirectX 9 and all the other outdated technologies. New code means new risks, which you're avoiding by sticking to Windows XP, anyway. Also, the submission is wrong; this affects only the Catalyst drivers, which handle video and HDMI audio.
Then I noticed that this is a timothy story. Sometimes I think he posts the most inane story submissions just to get the Slashdot readers all riled up and posting comments, thus generating hits and ad revenues.
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Catalyst includes AMD chipset drivers as well. I use it on my AMD based system.
Where is the problem here? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have an XP system, you either:
1. Have an old hack that you are never going to update, since it just works, or
2. Are a corp user with (hopefully) a decent tech team which will ensure you don't buy & support hardware where this will be an issue...
Or (obscure security-related issues aside) am I missing something?
20% of users still use XP (Score:3)
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201205-201305 [statcounter.com] you will be one in five users who have not updated from XP
People aren't updating because computers are expensive, Intel and Microsoft take all the profits and walk away with a gross profit margin of over 70%...and new versions of the Microsoft Windows software, are poor tablet interfaces.
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Computers are expensive? Really? When I'll bet those same people are willing to drop $500-600+tax for a console. They don't want to spend the $400-600 to build themselves a new computer. Yep, genius level thinking there.
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Way to make an assumption then accept it as correct without any further consideration you dick.
Awww. Anonymous troll gets burthurt when facts are presented, big shock.
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Old AMD Catalyst drivers pretty easy to find (Score:3)
Find old versions right here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx [amd.com]
I went to AMD's driver site, which I found with the google search, "amd catalyst download". I clicked on "Windows XP (32 bit)". Then I clicked on "Previous Drivers and Software."
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And if it's about older hardware i.e. a retro XP system for playing troublesome games like Republic Commando, then this news holds no relevance.
Also Windows 7 can run a LOT of the stuff XP can just fine. DOS games play nicely in DOSBox (and XP's ntvdm sucks for DOS even with that VDMSound hack anyway). What DOESN'T play nicely is anything needing a fullscreen 8bpp video mode, which can be partially resolved by wrappers for DirectX, but t
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Already commented here, but please, mod parent up. The drivers aren't gone, they just aren't going to be updated anymore.
Vista and later will download video drivers (not latest-and-greatest, but well-tested versions) from Windows Update; I've forgotten whether XP does that as well or not. I don't use MacOS 9, and I don't use XP.
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3) ... or you're Chinese.
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With today's slavish devotion to surveillance, it sounds prudent.
If it works, why worry. (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people have XP systems and are buying new graphics cards?
If it still works, who cares.
If you've hit something where the graphics drivers are obsolete, there's probably a lot more wrong.
keeping up with advances and supporting older systems is EXPENSIVE. AMD made a cost decision, it's not worth it.
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You have a strange definition of "new". That thing has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 chip, which is only twice as powerful as the processor in my phone (Cortex A9 based) but uses 100x more power.
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Ethernet cards, chipsets, and other AMD hardware require ATI catalyst drivers to function properly as they are bundled with it.
Virtually every AMD motherboard I've seen in the past couple of years has had a Realtek NIC (usually 8111E). Likewise, the onboard sound is usually one of the Realtek HD codec chips. All of these drivers are available from Realtek's website, including for XP.
You do need "text mode" AHCI drivers to get past the install screen on XP, unless you switch the SATA ports to legacy mode i
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Don't blame Intel for dropping AHCI on XP. Don't blame AMD for dropping it either. Developing drivers for an OS that Microsoft has been telling people to move away from for over 5 years now is a bad business decision. Driver updates cost money. Not just in developer time but in QA time as well. In AMD's case, it's a completely different model (Kernel vs. WDDM).
Microsoft has always been about poor UI choices. Do you not remember Microsoft Bob or Clippy? Do you not remember a time when people complaine
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They have already been doing it for nearly 2 decades, there are no infrastructure or upkeep costs at this point that would be substantially diminished by removing XP support.
Says someone who hasn't even written software, apparently. Even if nothing else, dropping a configuration removes a bunch of testing costs.
However, it's even more. When Vista was released, Microsoft made a bunch of changes to the driver model -- basically the API that drivers are programmed against -- usually to move stuff from kernel m
Support was already bad (Score:2)
I've recently bought an AMD card, and it had rendering errors in XP, although it was with a 2004 game.
Upgrading to 7 fixed the issue.
So support for newer cards on XP was already rather poor.
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This is a known issue with both NV and AMD cards. Old games aren't tested to ensure compatibility with new drivers. It's not surprising that a nine year old game had trouble on a modern card in an ancient operating system. If you name the title, I might be able to dig up some advice on it.
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It was Rome Total War.
Upgrading to 7 was both needed and an improvement, so nothing of value was lost.
They should at least make a basic driver (Score:2)
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that's a backwards problem from this.
you're asking for them to provide drivers for old ati cards for windows 8...
oh and there is a basic mode, you just wont get accelaration of any kind.
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the SANE-epson driver supports many epson scanners under Linux
Keyword: Beta Driver (Score:5, Informative)
The submitter is reading too much into this. The drivers linked are beta drivers - this is not the first time AMD hasn't published an XP version of a beta driver, due to the relatively low number of XP users on 5000/6000/7000 series video cards (all of which are post-Win7). XP is supported by the current WHQL certified driver (13.4) and I expect the next certified driver will support XP, too. If and when AMD does drop XP support they'll announce it a couple of versions ahead of time, just as they did for Win9x and Win2K.
Probably a non-issue (Score:2)
* Perhaps this release changes nothing that is relevant to XP. Perhaps all the changes are in codepaths only touched under DX10 or later which is irrelevant to XP.
* Perhaps the early testing was done on limited systems. OK so it is odd for a platform to be ignored in beta tests, but I perhaps if the expected impact on XP is low or zero (see above) they didn't publically release the alpha for XP and someone forgot to upd
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Another important thing to remember is that the display driver model was overhauled between XP and Vista. So afaict while they are packaged up in the same installer the XP driver and the Vista+ driver are really two different drivers. While i'm sure there will be some shared code I suspect that a heck of a lot of the code is specific to either the "XPDM" driver or the "WDDM" driver.
Irrelevant news for nerds (Score:2)
Re:Irrelevant news for nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
..and at least one of us is a myopic projectionist who is unable to see past his own shit.
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I use windows XP for doing taxes and running vmware vcenter client for admin of machines remotely.
plenty of tooling, scientific and engineering machines use XP for controller.
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I live in Argentina, and the AFIP (our version of the IRS) has lots of web systems that only run on IE6. YES, IE6 is they only browser they officially support.
Hence, anyone that's self-empoyed and need to constaltly be doing taxes has an XP VM somewhere around.
This includes any freelance developer, quite a nerd, IMO.
And I'm pretty sure plenty of other non-firstworld countries have similar issues.
arbitrary (Score:2)
Seems arbitrary to me. It shouldn't be difficult to maintain the extra package as the code is largely the same anyway. The only thing that changes from 2k/xp to vista/7/8 is the kernel module itself, a tiny part of the whole driver.
Lots of people still use XP, supported or not, and it's stupid to not support the platform even past the OEM's due date. AMD's customer isn't microsoft, it's the people using hardware with their gpus.
Big deal (Score:2)
I've had so many issues with newer Radeon drivers screwing up my system, I stopped updating once I hit Catalyst 12.02. Hardware acceleration under XP-32 is totally broken, IMO.
Last year I bought my first nVidia card in 6 years, and I'm astounded at how many of my old games now work properly. If AMD isn't going to bother making XP drivers that work, they may as well stop updating them.
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Last year I bought my first nVidia card in 6 years, and I'm astounded at how many of my old games now work properly.
It's quotes like this that make me wonder why anyone is dumb enough to buy ATI. Is it worth it to save twenty bucks?
Non issue on Linux (Score:2)
On Linux I just update to the new and shiny new Fedora, Ubuntu or Debian. Zero costs and I get new software versions with added features or fixed bugs. So I don't really understand why it is to update from Windows XP to Windows 7 is such an issue.
How cares? (Score:2)
Honestly, users who are still using windows XP [quite clearly] don't care about getting software updates, why would they care?
Even thought this sounds like flaimbait/troll, I'm being pretty much sincere. Someone who's using an unsupported, 12 year-old OS doesn't seem to be the type of person constantly updating their driver anyway.
Buying AMD (Score:3)
Is getting more attractive by the day...
Ironically I am thinking about buying an ATI card for Linux due to its more open nature(Not intel open), so long term support is built into it. Perhaps AMD is only partly responsible.
Re: Buying AMD? choose cheap old card (Score:4, Informative)
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Make sure you buy an older card. The free software driver driver for 7000+ cards is a broken joke.
I have the 6770. The open source driver worked well when I briefly used the very latest kernel in Arch. I couldn't stand the constant updates and installed Scientific Linux. Now the open driver is back to being slow and horrible again. The proprietary driver crashes instead. I can use the 6770 on the desktop without compiz-like effects and it doesn't crash, but I can't do any gaming in wine. I'm getting an nVidia GT640, it's been ordered. I think it's a bit sad because ATI are clearly working on their open
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I almost forgot about the nice way to enable power management on the open driver. /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
echo profile >
echo low >
You can set it to low speed or full speed. Even on a desktop it's kind of annoying to have to do that manually. I ended up running at low speed all the time because I forgot to change it (except when using Gnome3, but that's a separate rant) and it worked fine, but it's still kind of lame.
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So the proprietary driver at least claims to work with some not so new cards.
ATI just supports whatever they want, and fuck you if you don't like it. They still don't provide mobile driver downloads directly. The free driver has never supported R690M properly (I get massive trashing even with accel disabled) and neither has fglrx. When I bought the system with the chipset in it, fglrx already claimed it was too old to be supported. And I can't download a Windows 7 driver from ATI, unlike nVidia which is happy to provide mobile driver downloads and has been for years. Stupid me, this
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I've been an AMD/ATI guy for a very long time... but AMD/ATI has really gotten bad over the past few years. Driver support in Linux is terrible, but I don't really do gaming in Linux anyway... but worse, their support for Hardware Accelerated video decoding is a nightmare. I finally gave up on it with my Media PC and bought my first Nvidia card in 10 years a few months ago. I plugged it in and Hardware Acceleration just worked. I didn't have to do a damned thing. Then there's their Multi-monitor support whi
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I agree that XP x64 is a decent OS. That is what I am running now. Along with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Standard Embedded. I don't like regular Windows 7 because it is so bloated. 12- 50 GB for an operating system? Seriously? My dog could write a more efficient OS. I don't see why an environment for running other programs has to be so big. My Arch Linux install is around 3 GB and that's with lots of stuff installed. My XP x64 install is bloated enough at around 6.6 GB, having grown from around 4 GB at instal
Re:Buying AMD (Score:5, Informative)
Your XP installation is overcomplicated. You only need Service Pack 3, because on XP they were cumulative. Your steps for downloading another browser is the same for any Windows version. As for drivers, you need to research your hardware purchasesefore you buy to ensure driver support (just like Linux).
The reason AMD would drop support for XP is not because it is hard for the user to install, but because they changed the driver model with Vista. If they don't need to support two driver models then it would greatly simplify the development process. They probably have an idea on how many XP users actually update their drivers. Sure the OS still has a large percentage of users, but how many of those feel the need to constantly update their graphics drivers. With more and more games coming out with system requirements that exclude XP, the need to keep such an old system up-to-date is reduced.
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I am going to be buying a new high end video card within the next 4-12 months. Before this announcement I pretty much assumed it would be an AMD card because lately they have been ahead of Nvidia. I am typing this on XP x64. I also multiboot with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Embedded, but find myself using XP x64 much of the time.
I don't plan to give up using XP any time soon. So now AMD is simply giving up on customers like me. I very much liked having a choice between Nvidia and AMD. This is very unfortunate
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Is getting more attractive by the day...
Ironically I am thinking about buying an ATI card for Linux due to its more open nature(Not intel open), so long term support is built into it. Perhaps AMD is only partly responsible.
Since ole Ballmer is playing Santa with the shareholders' money (Nokia, wink wink) he might have made an "agreement" with video card producers to encourage the idea that win XP systems will suddenly cease operating at 12 pm on the night MS ends support. And I have no qualms with that, it's a kind of informed consent: if I want to go on with an unsupported operating system I am on my own. Trouble is, there's somebody out there with a sneaky plan.
. The gist of it is, it's time to quit using basically the sa
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It's outrageous that anyone is dropping bug and security fixes for any software that's still in use. I have an old XP box on my home network that I use to digitize LPs and cassettes with. I'm desperately searching for a replacement for EAC that will work in Linux. Audacity won't quite cut it. With EAC I can record the analog, and five minutes later I have a CD.
Unless I find a good replacement I'll have to take the XP box off of the network and use sneakernet to get the music into the network.
When hardware o
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You should always assume the system's not secure whether you have patches for it or not. Think about it, if there were patches yesterday, and you can assume there'll be patches tomorrow, that means it's still not secure right now. This is true for any software really.
I like XP (Score:2)
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I miss my 1650 (an overclocked 9800 with a smaller die for less heat). The image quality blew my GT240 away. But it couldn't keep up with SFxT much less Arkham. I tried one of the low end 4
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Dude as someone that has to work on PCs six days a week let me make ONE thing clear, there is NOTHING extra you gotta do to pwn XP, that OS is oooolllllldddddd, okay? It has had 3 service packs, God knows how many patches, hell when it came out a decent PC was a 700Mhz P3 with 128MB of RAM!
Look I get wanting to save old gear okay? But XP wasn't great to start with and its practically ancient now, let it RIP okay?
There's nothing wrong with an old OS as long as it is supported. It's actually often a good thing since nothing is perfect and needs time to be proven.
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24 * 7 = 364. There's 365 days in a year (366 on leap years), so adding the extra "365" does make sense. 24/7/52 would be stupid, because you're effectively saying that 1 day out of the year, something different is happening or not working.
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Actually, 24 * 7 = 168. Nice try, though.
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Sorry, 52*7 = 364.
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