AMD Will Continue Game Optimization Support For Older Radeon GPU's After All (tomshardware.com) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: After a turbulent weekend of updates and clarifications, AMD has published an entire web page to assuage user backlash and reaffirm its commitment to continued support for its RDNA 1 and RDNA 2-based drives, following a spate of confusion surrounding its recent decision to put Radeon RX 5000 and 6000 series cards in "maintenance mode." This comes after AMD had to deny that the RX 7900 cards were losing USB-C power supply moving forward, even though the drive changelog said something quite different.
Just last week, AMD released a new driver update for its graphics cards, and it went anything but smoothly. First, the wrong drivers were uploaded, and even after that was corrected, several glaring errors in the release notes required clarification. AMD was forced to correct claims about its RX 7900 cards, but at the time clarified that, indeed, RX 5000 and 6000 graphics cards were entering "Maintenance Mode," despite some RX 6000 cards being only around four years old. Now, though, AMD has either rolled back that decision or someone higher up the food chain has made a new call, as game optimizations are back on the menu for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 GPUs. "We've heard your feedback and want to clear up the confusion around the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 driver release," AMD said in a statement. "Your Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series GPUs will continue to receive: Game support for new releases, Stability and game optimizations, and Security and bug fixes," AMD said.
Just last week, AMD released a new driver update for its graphics cards, and it went anything but smoothly. First, the wrong drivers were uploaded, and even after that was corrected, several glaring errors in the release notes required clarification. AMD was forced to correct claims about its RX 7900 cards, but at the time clarified that, indeed, RX 5000 and 6000 graphics cards were entering "Maintenance Mode," despite some RX 6000 cards being only around four years old. Now, though, AMD has either rolled back that decision or someone higher up the food chain has made a new call, as game optimizations are back on the menu for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 GPUs. "We've heard your feedback and want to clear up the confusion around the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 driver release," AMD said in a statement. "Your Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series GPUs will continue to receive: Game support for new releases, Stability and game optimizations, and Security and bug fixes," AMD said.
Re: I've never understood... (Score:3, Informative)
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It's the fastest way to get a game running on your hardware without major bugs. Yes the developers push out buggy, non-standards-compliant code. Driver hacks make it easy to compensate for problems even if game devs are ultimately responsible for said problems.
Re: I've never understood... (Score:3)
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The thing that many people do not realize is how many different functions are in the different programming APIs, including a fair number of redundant functions and stuff from previous versions. As a result, a bug in the drivers may be there, but only shows up in a TINY number of games or programs that use a particular function. DirectX 12.x being the latest, but there is support for the old function calls from older versions. If they CHANGE functions, that can break older programs, so, new versions ge
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"confusion" (Score:2)
Dear AMD,
There wasn't any confusion. We heard what you said.
Now you're backtracking - so it seems like the only confusion was with amd.
And it's temporary (Score:4, Informative)
AMD will just do the same shit later, it's not like they won't still want to do it.
I will be the first to admit that Nvidia drivers are problematic on Linux. There are still problems with sleep, for example, and even the installer sucks rocks. (Having to set TMPDIR and specify --tmpdir is a bad sign, right?) But Nvidia has got something right — they give full support for very old hardware. This is something that ATI never had right, and neither does AMD. If you want customers to trust you enough to give you their money, you have to demonstrate a willingness to support what you sell. AMD has just fundamentally not done this. The only reason ATI graphics work well on Linux is that AMD didn't write the driver!
So OK, since I'm on Linux I mostly don't care, but since only 3% of Steam users are, maybe AMD still needs to get their shit together a little better. They've been half-assing drivers for as long as I can remember, and again, ATI was half-assing drivers before AMD bought 'em, and their drivers sucked before the cards even did 3D! Frankly, so did the hardware back then, but now the hardware seems quite good actually. Why are they still letting their silicon down with their software?
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they give full support for very old hardware
This is a blatant lie. What the fuck is wrong with you lately? AMD and ATI before them have typically supported hardware for way longer than Nvidia ever has.
The RX 580 line was extremely well supported (Score:2)
The problem is the 6700 series. AMD was still manufacturing chips for it and you could buy brand new gpus that weren't Old stock as of last year so pulling support would have been a giant fuck you.
I can deal with five or six years of support on a GPU. That's about how long most consoles last. So anything after that is gravy.
But when you are actively
Erm, no (Score:4, Interesting)
At least AMD provides proper Linux support these days, unlike NVIDIA, and now AMD have stepped aside on AMDVLK to help contribute to RADV instead, things should get even better,
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Many people misunderstand the concept of a "support lifecycle". Products can be supported without driver updates, or game optimizations, and people get confused about the difference. Optimizations are NOT going to get the same level of attention for products even one generation older, so even if they get optimizations for games, they won't necessarily get them at launch. The more of a difference there is between generations, the more effort there is to optimizing as well.
NVIDIA didn't change all that
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NV just cut off support for the 1080Ti, while AMD just cut off support for....
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How long does AMD support GPUs?
Let's put it this way- there are devices being manufactured by AMD, right now, with now-deprecated GPUs.
If you have a handheld PC, you have one of them.
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On the flip side, you should be able to get a good deal on RX 6000 series cards considering that now we know that AMD has no real interest in supporting them long term.
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Support for a product is different than giving older products the same level of game release "optimizations". It's not a difficult concept, the current generation gets the focus when it comes to game release optimizations and bug fixes. The last generation also gets a lot of attention. Go back two generations, those products are STILL SUPPORTED, and will continue to be supported, but things like optimizations won't get as much of a focus, and some improvements won't show up for weeks, a month, or long
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RDNA2 is the SOTA in AMD APUs.
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There wasn't any confusion. We heard what you said.
The difference between hearing, understanding, and actual intent is the confusion. Honestly the release notes were absolutely confusing.
They explicitly used "maintenance mode". If this didn't confuse you then you must have access to some internal glossary from AMD documentation, please share it as this language we heard is insanely imprecise and doesn't describe how driver development will occur or what driver releases will include. In fact nothing has been backtracked on and the original statement remains,
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No, your reading comprehension missed what was said, because you wanted a reason to be upset. Having game optimizations at game launch is expected for the current and previous generation products. Products that are a bit older will still get updates, but may not get "optimizations" for games at game launch. This is how the industry works, including from NVIDIA where you can't expect RTX 3000 series cards to get the same level of attention when it comes to new game releases. You can expect fixes for
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RDNA1 and RDNA2 were specifically listed.
There are RDNA2 APUs in production by AMD right this very minute.
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First off, 5000 and 6000 series cards are EoL. They aren't sold "in normal stores" except as old product.
Secondly, AMD has likely diverted their software and driver teams to enterprise hardware support. So believe it. They spend far more time and money on high-margin datacentre products.
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As standalone dGPUs? Highly doubt that, unless OEMs are pimping old product. Some RDNA2 is probably still in some of their SoCs but that's an entirely different matter than a 6000-series Radeon.
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