AMD to Drop Support for Pre HD 5000 GPUs

[Ryan Smith]

We'll have a news post up in a bit, but I did want to quickly post this here. It's an official statement from AMD on the matter.

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.

Our main development and testing efforts will now be focused on the AMD Radeon™ HD 5000 and later products. This is the best use of our resources, as the AMD Radeon HD 5000, AMD Radeon HD 6000, AMD Radeon HD 7000, and future products have the greatest potential for further performance and feature enhancements.

Also with regards to Windows 8 support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, 3000, 4000 Series of products; the In-the-box AMD Graphics driver that ships with Windows 8 will include support for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series, and it will support the WDDM 1.1 driver level features. The AMD Catalyst driver for Windows 8 will only include support for WDDM 1.2 support products (AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later).

Edit: Full article

 

[OCGuy]

^ Well that answers that, good work. That is all that is needed for older cards: OS support/critical updates.

 

[iCyborg]

The 6450 actually had a performance boost over the 5450.

I wonder if the 7350 has a little boost as well?

Not that it really matters. Great HTPC cards (6450).

6450 is a different GPU - Caicos vs Cedar that is 5450. 6450 now also goes under 7450
If you look at wiki for Evergreen, NI and SI, you can see that 6450 and 7350 are identical in all columns. So are 6450 and 7450. I think these are the exact same cards.

 

[dennilfloss]

Not gonna affect me much. My 4870 is still using its original Diamond driver without problems.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

...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.

Right...except that new releases need further optimization and there are still several features that could be added over time that don't require newer hardware (post-process AA, ambient occlusion, adaptive V-Sync, etc..).

To say that older cards don't need to be supported is ridiculous. My GTX 260 will be four years old this year and it still runs most games fine. In fact, thanks to Nvidia's driver support, BF3 went from unplayable (terrible stuttering, very low FPS, graphical anomalies) to very playable. 296.10 also brought huge performance increases in Skyrim. Why bother upgrading when no games require it? Most of the people here don't even game so they have no clue. I am finally now looking to upgrade to a new graphics card, was considering AMD but not anymore. Makes me remember how my ATI X850XT got dropped and didn't have support for Windows 7.

 

[bigsnyder]

We'll have a news post up in a bit, but I did want to quickly post this here. It's an official statement from AMD on the matter.

Finally a credible source.

 

[GotNoRice]

Makes me remember how my ATI X850XT got dropped and didn't have support for Windows 7.

Yeah this is very similar to that. 9.3 was the first legacy driver after the DX9 series cards were dropped. They were supposed to update those on a quarterly basis also but that ended unceremoniously with the 10.2 drivers, the last legacy driver to support DX9 cards.

These cards should work just fine on Windows 8 though, using Windows 7 drivers. Just as DX9 series cards work fine on windows 7 using the 10.2 Vista drivers.

Vista drivers are WDDM 1.0, Win7 is WDDM 1.1, and Win8 is WDDM 1.2. More features come with a higher WDDM version but overall they are still compatible. You could even install Vista drivers on Windows 8 if you wanted.

I'm sad to see this happen as I don't feel held back by my 2x 4870x2 setup in any way, and in fact, the setup already gives me 7970 level performance in the games that I care about. I prefer to upgrade my system by replacing bottlenecks over time, and my GPUs just haven't become the bottleneck yet.

 

[Blitzvogel]

How long will 5000 series last now?

Probably as long as DX11 remains the semi-defacto API it sort of is (and even then....), I'm sure it will receive support. There are too many VLIW5 rehashed GPUs out there, with most of the 6xxx and very low end 7xxx series as well as Llano GPUs being VLIW5. It just wouldn't make sense to drop the 5xxxs when the architecture is still being used in current products.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

We'll have a news post up in a bit, but I did want to quickly post this here. It's an official statement from AMD on the matter.



Edit: Full article

Sounds a lot better. All they need are the occasional updates now. Maybe we'll get reduced driver sizes.

 

[Stuka87]

Thanks Ryan for clearing things up!

FYI, I play all the latest and greatest games with a Radeon HD2600 Pro just fine. I just stay away from ovehyped resource hogs, like the FPS and FPSesque RPG cultural garbage that plague the PC game market.

Out of curiosity, what is your definition of "Latest and Greatest"? And I can't help but chuckle at you saying any game that makes use of current hardware as a "Plague on the PC game market".

 

[Gloomy]

And I can't help but chuckle at you saying any game that makes use of current hardware as a "Plague on the PC game market".

I think he means the community that crops up around games like Oblivion, Fallout, Skyrim etc.

 

[boxleitnerb]

The question is, what are critical updates? Just because cards are "old" (see below) doesn't mean that sometimes updates are absolutely required for proper operation.

For example, CF-Support for Alan Wake was missing when the game came out (as was SLI btw). Now if this happens with another newer game, that would mean that the owner of a 4890CF system would have to wait 3 months in the best case or he would not get a profile in the worst case when this issue isn't seen as "critical". Same with Rage were a fix was required for the game to run properly on AMD hardware.

I believe they should at least still support the 4000 series because that was the first one in quite a while that was really popular and widely sold. 4000 series cards were still sold in the second half of 2009 due to their great price and the bad initial availability of the 5000 series. That will have been roughly 2.5 years that owners of these cards enjoyed regular support. Too little, if you ask me.

 

[3DVagabond]

The question is, what are critical updates? Just because cards are "old" (see below) doesn't mean that sometimes updates are absolutely required for proper operation.

For example, CF-Support for Alan Wake was missing when the game came out (as was SLI btw). Now if this happens with another newer game, that would mean that the owner of a 4890CF system would have to wait 3 months in the best case or he would not get a profile in the worst case when this issue isn't seen as "critical". Same with Rage were a fix was required for the game to run properly on AMD hardware.

I believe they should at least still support the 4000 series because that was the first one in quite a while that was really popular and widely sold. 4000 series cards were still sold in the second half of 2009 due to their great price and the bad initial availability of the 5000 series. That will have been roughly 2.5 years that owners of these cards enjoyed regular support. Too little, if you aks me.

Isn't nVidia's driver support quarterly for all of their cards?

 

[boxleitnerb]

The current drivers support GPUs as early as the 7800GTX that was released in June 2005 - almost 2 years before the 2900XT that is the earliest AMD card that will not be receiving more frequent updates.

While I personally don't think it is necessary to go this far back, in the example provided a 4000 series user would be left alone with a problem while a GTX200 owner would (probably - fix might apply to newer cards only, we don't know that) benefit from a fix.

 

[zebrax2]

Wouldn't CAP be the one handling CF game compatibility?

About the Win8 compatibility it says that

the In-the-box AMD Graphics driver that ships with Windows 8 will include support for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series, and it will support the WDDM 1.1 driver level features. The AMD Catalyst driver for Windows 8 will only include support for WDDM 1.2 support products (AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later).

does this mean that this cards would run under win8 but won't get driver updates?

 

[boxleitnerb]

Are the CAPs completely independent of the installed driver? And do they apply to all Radeon cards alike, not just a specific series?
For example, can you install a current CAP file with a Catalyst 10.x driver?

 

[amenx]

So next year HD5000 series will get the same treatment.

 

[Meaker10]

So next year HD5000 series will get the same treatment.

Nah, Llano is based of the same core tech.

 

[nemesismk2]

It makes no difference to me because I am not a gamer hence why my Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 1GB is more than enough for me.

 

[Skurge]

Makes me remember how my ATI X850XT got dropped and didn't have support for Windows 7.

My old X600 has Win7 support. CAPs work for all cards cause Xfire works in the fundamentally the same way from the 2000series all the way till the 7000series. Nvidia's older cards already only get quarterly updates so AMD's support isn't worse it's just reaching parity now.

I'm pretty sure nvidia just have old drivers for their old cards bundled into their current driver. That's probably why it's 50% larger than the AMD driver.

 

[mosox]

Open source.

 

[blackened23]

The comparisons to GTX 6000-8000 aren't particularly interesting because nvidia does quarterly updates on their main WHQL driver with beta releases in between. So the difference is...what... Tracking their driver release notes, they have not fixed anything on their older cards for quite some time.

So the driver models between both companies are the same as far as I can tell. 2000-4000 will have windows 8 support, AMD isn't dropping support.

 

[SirPauly]

It's hard to fathom the 4xxx series being placed on legacy support.

 

[SirPauly]

So the driver models between both companies are the same as far as I can tell.

Really? While the 4XXX series is receiving legacy support, the GTX 2XX series received/receives multi-monitor support, 3d vision support, PhysX support, new features like FXAA, adaptive V-sync, frame-limiters, etc.

 

[Olikan]

oh... so there will be W8 support
not sad anymore