Amd /ATI 4800 series no longer supported in 12.6 Drivers. :(

[eternalone]

Hopefully this helps some people.

12.6 release notes no longer supporting 4800 series.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

The last Drivers for the 4800 series is 12.4 you can still download them here.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

I would suggest saving the file for future refrence. Hopefully they will update but it looks like its done for the 4800 series as far as driver updates.

Good luck.

 

[Durvelle27]

ok but ATI Catalyst keeps telling me i need to upgrade to 12.6 ?

 

[GotNoRice]

I would suggest saving the file for future refrence. Hopefully they will update but it looks like its done for the 4800 series as far as driver updates

4800 series is not "done" as far as driver updates go, nor are they no longer supported. They've simply been moved to the Legacy driver.

AMD will be moving the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series of products to a new driver support model. We will continue to support the mentioned products in our Catalyst releases, but we’re moving their updates to a quarterly basis, whereas our AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later products will continue to see monthly updates. The Quarterly Catalyst releases will focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates. The reason for the shift in support policy is largely due to the fact that the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series have been optimized to their maximum potential from a performance and feature perspective. The 8.97 based driver, released in May 2012 will be the first driver for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series under the new support model; it is an extremely stable and robust driver branch for these products and will be the baseline for our quarterly updates.

12.6 should still install onto 4xxx series cards, but when you look at the driver that it actually installed, you'll see it installed 12.4.

It's also worth noting that you can continue to use the latest CAPs even if you are stuck using a slightly older driver, in many cases giving you most of the benefits that come from newer drivers anyway.

There is no need to hoard old drivers or download them from 3rd party sites as AMD makes available all of it's older drivers:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

 

[borisvodofsky]

LOL ,, digital Hoarders,, there are lots of them on this forum..

 

[Homeles]

This is old news.

 

[Red Hawk]

Hopefully this helps some people.

12.6 release notes no longer supporting 4800 series.
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystSoftwareSuiteVersion126ReleaseNotes.aspx

The last Drivers for the 4800 series is 12.4 you can still download them here.

http://download.cnet.com/ATI-Cataly...it-Windows-7-64-bit/3000-2108_4-10607879.html

I would suggest saving the file for future refrence. Hopefully they will update but it looks like its done for the 4800 series as far as driver updates.

Good luck.

Whoa whoa whoa, STOP. Do NOT use Cnet's adware installer for drivers. It's not necessary and you could end up installing something you really don't want. Just download the drivers from AMD's website; they're still hosted there, along with a backlog of drivers from the past few years. The latest driver that officially supports the Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series is the 12.4b Hotfix driver: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/amdcatalyst124bhotfix.aspx (this is the 64 bit Win7/Vista download)

 

[BrightCandle]

AMD stopped supporting the card and its drivers long before the card was moved to legacy. My guess is the support stopped about 6 months before they released the 5000 series cards and they have simply gone through the motions of releasing unchanged drivers since.

I used AMD for a long time (4870->5970->7970) and their contempt for their customers knows no bounds. My aged laptop has an Nvidia 360m in it which still has support in Nvidia's latest drivers.

Took me a while to realise that AMD has never really competed with NVidia on anything other than price.

 

[Red Hawk]

Eh? I'm pretty sure AMD keeps supporting its cards after the next series is released. They phase out improvements over time, but not immediately. I recall a driver set from last winter that specifically improved 5000 series performance in games and forced MLAA along with the the 6000 series. Not to mention the 12.4b hotfix driver specifically fixes an issue unique to 4000 series cards and earlier. They certainly haven't been "releasing unchanged drivers" the whole time.

 

[GotNoRice]

AMD stopped supporting the card and its drivers long before the card was moved to legacy. My guess is the support stopped about 6 months before they released the 5000 series cards and they have simply gone through the motions of releasing unchanged drivers since.

That has got to be one of the most uninformed things I've read in quite some time. There have been quite a few drivers that directly fixed issues or improved performance with 4xxx series hardware. 12.4 itself gave me a nice performance boost on my 2x 4870x2 setup.

Also, AMD themselves has said that they are not dropping support. I already quoted that earlier but perhaps you missed yet, here it is again:

AMD will be moving the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series of products to a new driver support model. We will continue to support the mentioned products in our Catalyst releases, but we’re moving their updates to a quarterly basis, whereas our AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later products will continue to see monthly updates. The Quarterly Catalyst releases will focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates.

I used AMD for a long time (4870->5970->7970) and their contempt for their customers knows no bounds. My aged laptop has an Nvidia 360m in it which still has support in Nvidia's latest drivers.

As stated already, they aren't dropping support for anything, but I guess that fact doesn't go along with your rant

 

[palladium]

Sigh.

The 4xxx series were released in mid-late 2008, around the time I bought my GTX280 (which I am still using, looking to upgrade with win8). They stopped supporting it about 4 years later, while nV still supports cards as old as 2005 (albeit probably without any bug fixes/optimisations in the older cards). Does this mean that if I get a 7970 today, my GTX280 will probably still get driver updates in 2016 once AMD discontinues the 7970?

 

[3DVagabond]

I'll post this again for the factually challenged.

Originally Posted by AMD
AMD will be moving the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series of products to a new driver support model. We will continue to support the mentioned products in our Catalyst releases, but we’re moving their updates to a quarterly basis, whereas our AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later products will continue to see monthly updates. The Quarterly Catalyst releases will focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates. The reason for the shift in support policy is largely due to the fact that the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series have been optimized to their maximum potential from a performance and feature perspective. The 8.97 based driver, released in May 2012 will be the first driver for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series under the new support model; it is an extremely stable and robust driver branch for these products and will be the baseline for our quarterly updates.

Reading comprehension?

 

[Spjut]

That has got to be one of the most uninformed things I've read in quite some time. There have been quite a few drivers that directly fixed issues or improved performance with 4xxx series hardware. 12.4 itself gave me a nice performance boost on my 2x 4870x2 setup.

Isn't the performance boosts more likely to be due to the drivers giving your 2x HD4870x2 the latest caps though?

Sigh.

The 4xxx series were released in mid-late 2008, around the time I bought my GTX280 (which I am still using, looking to upgrade with win8). They stopped supporting it about 4 years later, while nV still supports cards as old as 2005 (albeit probably without any bug fixes/optimisations in the older cards). Does this mean that if I get a 7970 today, my GTX280 will probably still get driver updates in 2016 once AMD discontinues the 7970?

Looks like that...Hopefully though, AMD's legacy support for the DX10/10.1 GPUs will be better than their legacy for the DX9 GPUs

But that AMD won't even release a catalyst for Windows 8 for their DX10/10.1 cards speaks for itself...Nvidia has already released even back to their Geforce 6 cards


It's also bullshit that the HD2000-HD4000 have been maxed out from a performance and feature perspective...AMD doesn't even support multithreaded rendering on those GPUs(nor on their DX11 GPUs yet) whereas Nvidia supports it on all their DX10 and DX11 GPUs

 

[GotNoRice]

Isn't the performance boosts more likely to be due to the drivers giving your 2x HD4870x2 the latest caps though?

It's possible, but usually CAPs are released quicker than drivers. When a driver is released, usually the CAPs that are included have already been released previously. I'm usually on the ball about upgrading drivers and caps asap so I likely already had those caps before I installed the driver.

Looks like that...Hopefully though, AMD's legacy support for the DX10/10.1 GPUs will be better than their legacy for the DX9 GPUs

Yeah we'll see. The previous Legacy driver started with 9.3 and ended with 10.2, so it went about a year. Although in that situation, the barrier between DX9 and DX10/11 cards was pretty steep. You can't play DirectX10 or 11 games on a DX9 card, but you CAN play DX11 games on DX10/10.1 hardware. I would expect them to continue support as long as the older cards remain viable solutions for new games.

But that AMD won't even release a catalyst for Windows 8 for their DX10/10.1 cards speaks for itself...Nvidia has already released even back to their Geforce 6 cards

But you're talking about an OS that aside from Metro is basically a Service Pack to windows 7. The Driver model for Windows 8 is the same as it has been for Windows 7 and since Windows Vista. Windows Vista uses WDDM 1.0 drivers, Win7 uses WDDM 1.1 drivers, and Win8 uses WDDM 1.2 drivers... but they are all forward and backward compatible.

In the same way that you can install Vista drivers on Windows 7, you can use windows 7 drivers on windows 8 without any issues. You can even use Vista drivers on windows 8. The tiny subset of very minor features you miss by using WDDM 1.1 drivers instead of WDDM 1.2 drivers is irrelevant because the card probably wouldn't support those features anyway.

 

[Spjut]

But you're talking about an OS that aside from Metro is basically a Service Pack to windows 7. The Driver model for Windows 8 is the same as it has been for Windows 7 and since Windows Vista. Windows Vista uses WDDM 1.0 drivers, Win7 uses WDDM 1.1 drivers, and Win8 uses WDDM 1.2 drivers... but they are all forward and backward compatible.

In the same way that you can install Vista drivers on Windows 7, you can use windows 7 drivers on windows 8 without any issues. You can even use Vista drivers on windows 8. The tiny subset of very minor features you miss by using WDDM 1.1 drivers instead of WDDM 1.2 drivers is irrelevant because the card probably wouldn't support those features anyway.

Haven't read any article about what WDDM 1.2 features can be supported on DX10/10.1 hardware, so can't comment on that.

But surely you must agree though that it is kind of lame that AMD doesn't release Catalyst Windows 8 drivers for their DX10/10.1 GPUs, when Nvidia already supports Windows 8 even back to their Geforce 6 cards?

 

[poohbear]

you're on an enthusiast site complaining about how your 4 year old card isnt supported anymore? don't expect much sympathy dude.

its actually still supported, but they won't be as frequent driver updates as before is all (as numerous others have already posted, no point in reposting a link to that).

 

[Spjut]

you're on an enthusiast site complaining about how your 4 year old card isnt supported anymore? don't expect much sympathy dude.

its actually still supported, but they won't be as frequent driver updates as before is all (as numerous others have already posted, no point in reposting a link to that).

More like 3.5 years. It came during the end of 2008

And well there are many enthusiasts here, but the fact still remains that the HD4000 series is still a decent card. Requirements have slowed down, the HD4850 and up play many console ports on high settings at DX9, even at 1080p.

Not all games are Battlefield 3 when it comes to requirements.

It still remains however, to see whether the driver updates will continue, or if it will be ended after around 1 year, like the last time AMD went with legacy drivers.

As of now though, Nvidia's DX10/10.1 cards(and even DX9 when it comes to Windows 8) has better support than AMD's

 

[Zargon]

Haven't read any article about what WDDM 1.2 features can be supported on DX10/10.1 hardware, so can't comment on that.

But surely you must agree though that it is kind of lame that AMD doesn't release Catalyst Windows 8 drivers for their DX10/10.1 GPUs, when Nvidia already supports Windows 8 even back to their Geforce 6 cards?

its kind of lame they arent supporting an OS that isn't even RTM'd yet?

 

[Spjut]

its kind of lame they arent supporting an OS that isn't even RTM'd yet?

They won't ever release a catalyst for Windows 8, and Nvidia already supports Windows 8 even on their Geforce 6 series. So yes, it is very lame indeed

 

[Zargon]

so what is this then?


eidt: right you are talking 4800 when you say that



http://devgurus.amd.com/thread/158751


a whole one google search led me to the info that 11.12 should work fine for you


while it seems odd they didnt draw the line at pre dx-10, in no way when you buy a GPU do you get promised years of driver support. this is 4 generations ago, soon to be 5 possibly a few months after windows 8 launches

 

[GotNoRice]

They won't ever release a catalyst for Windows 8, and Nvidia already supports Windows 8 even on their Geforce 6 series. So yes, it is very lame indeed

AMD never released Windows 7 drivers for their DX9 cards either, where was the outrage over that?

Could it be that because the Vista drivers worked without any issues, as intended, that this became a non-issue?

I would say so.

There is a reason WDDM drivers are forward and backward compatible by design, and this is it.

while it seems odd they didnt draw the line at pre dx-10, in no way when you buy a GPU do you get promised years of driver support. this is 4 generations ago, soon to be 5 possibly a few months after windows 8 launches

They did "draw the line" at Pre-DX10, those have been on the legacy driver since March of 2009.