AMD to Drop Support for Pre HD 5000 GPUs

[Jaydip]

Great titles are simply rare in the past, present and probably future, imho.

Probably rarer today for the PC at least

 

[d3fu5i0n]

There are both benefits and disadvantages to AMD's decision.
On a basic level, whilst AMD will now have the opportunity to focus on the present products rather than supporting legacy ones, there are still plenty of reasonably powerful GPUs from the older GPU generations - 4870, 4890, 4870X2.
This means that although they may have squeezed all of the performance out of the GPUs, optimisations are quite often necessary to run games at optimal levels and more importantly, playable levels. Game support still needs to be provided. However, all good things must come to an end and they can't support [just used as an exaggerated example] two-decade old GPUs in the far future.

 

[RU482]

bout time. any chance the size of the driver suite will shrink accordingly?

 

[Leyawiin]

The last time they moved products to the legacy driver, that started with 9.3 and ended without explanation at 10.2 - less than a year total.

You know, I had an old AMD Athlon64 system with an X850 XT AGP. Kept it in the living room and would play WoW on it while I watched TV. It was perfectly fine for the task on a 1280x1024 monitor. Then Cataclysm came out and I had some problems with the graphics and AMD had moved the DX9 cards to legacy. Months went by and no driver update past 10.2. I emailed AMD several times reporting the problem and asking if they would please update the driver for one of the most played game out there. Nothing. Found a used Nvidia 7800 GS for cheap, popped it in and installed the current drivers - problem solved.

 

[GotNoRice]

Was anyone really expecting them to squeeze anymore performance out of these 4+year old cards anyways?

I've got noticeable improvements with my 2x 4870x2 setup over time with new driver updates. My Vantage GPU score for example has gone up almost 2k since last September when I first put this computer together, with almost 1k of that coming from the most recent 12.4 drivers. I don't know how much of that is hardware optimization vs crossfire optimization, but clearly my old hardware does continue to benefit from regular updates. At least CAPs will still be able to be installed on top of the legacy driver.

I recall back when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out for World of Warcraft, they introduced a new shadows engine vs what came with the game. You could still revert to the old shadows engine by dropping the shadows slider in the video settings but there was a good month or two that went by where the shadows would flicker, etc on the new engine. It was a driver update that fixed that. I'm mainly worried about similar bugs coming out in the future, and those bugs not being fixed in a timely manner - even when you're talking about cards that were AMD's top offering 2 and a half years ago.

 

[2is]

But I honestly see no reason to support the 4xxx series any longer. IMO even Windows 8 should drop support for pre Dx 11

You can always use old software/drivers if you use that hardware. The lesser variety and number of devices they have to focus on, the better quality we can expect for them. It is like a console is perfect only because it is a single device, no permutations or combinations.

Just focusing on Radeon 7xxx and 6xxx while doing little work on 5xxx while not supporting the older stuff actually gives them a chance to give pure quality for supported hardware. That is what we actually want. Provided they don't make that a reason to not deliver quality to any user and do even less work by becoming lazy about it

As an owner of both newer and older cards I can't say I agree. If a card has enough power to still be a viable gaming device, support should not be dropped. The three most powerful cards I currently own are:

GTX 680
HD 5870
HD 4850

My 4850 can still handle almost any game at perfectly acceptable fps at 1080p with the exception of games like Crysis and Metro. Even BF3 runs well at reduced settings and other games like COD run well even with higher settings at 1080p. Now I fully understand not optimizing your drivers for older cards but to drop support all together is a mistake IMO.

One of the main barriers to PC gaming is cost. One of the biggest is the GPU. Even some of the cheapest retail PCs are capable of decent gaming once paired with a capable GPU. Ive gotten many of my friends into PC gaming by giving away my older yet still capable cards. My 4850 is one such candidate and it would be unfortunate if AMD renders it a paper weight with the intro of Windows 8.

 

[mak360]

AMD have already stated; AMD ARE NOT DROPPING SUPPORT FOR ANY CARD but will move 4/3/2 series gpu`s etc, to anther section (4-2 driver section etc) and they will receive quarterly updates vs monthly

 

[VirtualLarry]

AMD have already stated; AMD ARE NOT DROPPING SUPPORT FOR ANY CARD but will move 4/3/2 series gpu`s etc, to anther section (4-2 driver section etc) and they will receive quarterly updates vs monthly

But isn't that exactly what they said for their legacy DX9 cards? That they were moving to quarterly updates? And then a year later, silently, they just stopped updating the DX9 drivers?

 

[GotNoRice]

My 4850 is one such candidate and it would be unfortunate if AMD renders it a paper weight with the intro of Windows 8.

This isn't about anything being rendered a "paper weight". Windows 8 isn't going to require special or unique drivers. It's basically Windows 7 with metro stuffed down it's throat. You can use Windows 7 or even Vista drivers just fine. The main concern here is lack of game support / bug fixes down the road.

 

[sandorski]

Title is inaccurate.

 

[JBT]

Eh I can get a x600 to run in Windows 7 64 bit. I'm not to worried about this..


EDIT: Fail title of thread has fail thread title.