Did AMD discontinue support for HD6000 series?

[taltamir]

I have an XFX AMD HD6950 card, its 1 gen old.

AMD releases updated drivers every month, but there has not been a new drive since 12.08 for my card even though driver updates are supposedly released monthly (so, 2 updates missing)

Did AMD really discontinue support for a card only 1 "generation" behind.

 

[blastingcap]

Is there something broken with your existing drivers? I don't think they will try to increase performance on 6xxx anymore, but will try to fix bugs still...

 

[hyrule4927]

There was no official release of 12.9 and 12.10 certified drivers. 12.11 betas are coming today and certified should be out in another month or so. Not really sure why you think 6000 series isn't supported anymore . . .

New drivers still apply to 6000 series, there just isn't much left to fix.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

There was no official release of 12.9 and 12.10 certified drivers. 12.11 betas are coming today and certified should be out in another month or so. Not really sure why you think 6000 series isn't supported anymore . . .

It's AMD. Eventually it will not be supported.

 

[SPBHM]

no, it still being fully supported, only HD4K and lower are stuck with 12.6 or lower..
12.9 works normally with HD5K and higher, as will 12.11 beta and the new drivers.

 

[taltamir]

There are actually some serious issues with the drivers.

For example http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1598275
To save you from reading it... AMD drivers do not allow you to set "maintain aspect ratio" unless you are currently at a resolution lower then native.
And even then, it will not properly SAVE that setting so it automatically goes back to nasty stretching that does NOT maintain aspect ratio.

EDIT: Almost forgot, they also have a buggy implementation of openGL. So if I want to play NWN1 I can do so just fine on nvidia but have to use some hacked dll fixes (on a per game basis) for AMD which are only semi reliable (it still crashes, just less often)
Although to be fair nVidia has its own fair share of bugs there that they wouldn't fix. (enabling shiny water in nvidia on that game replaces water with flickering untextured polygons) /edit over

Interestingly going to http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
And clicking on "AMD Issue Reporting Form" brings me to a page containing nothing but the AMD logo and the message "This survey is now closed. Thank you for your interest." (related to their massive layoffs maybe?)

 

[hyrule4927]

It's AMD. Eventually it will not be supported.

Oh, because Nvidia supports every GPU no matter how old for ever and ever? Neither company is going to straight up stop supporting the previous generation, but obviously performance improvements are going to be minimal when drivers are pretty much as optimized as they can get for a given series.

Edit: But what specific problems are YOU having? And nobody in that link mentions using anything newer than 11.5 . . .

 

[taltamir]

There was no official release of 12.9 and 12.10 certified drivers.

Ah, ok. you are right I just checked and they didn't release any drivers those 2 months for any card.
so they aren't discontinuing support for 1 gen old cards.. thats good.
But what happened to their promised monthly release schedule? Did they drop that plan for a release every 3 months?

 

[Leyawiin]

AMD really jumps the gun on discontinuing support. Nvidia is just now getting ready to legacy the Geforce 7 and 6 series. (edited - thanks Magic Carpet).

 

[Magic Carpet]

Oh, because Nvidia supports every GPU no matter how old for ever and ever?

No, but the ancient Geforce 6 series is still supported with the newest drivers

If you want longevity, go with Nvidia. Simple as.

AMD really jumps the gun on discontinuing support. Nvidia is just now getting ready to legacy the Geforce 7, 6 and 5 series.

Correction, it's just the 6 & 7. The FX Series have been discontinued in 2008.

 

[hyrule4927]

Ah, ok. you are right I just checked and they didn't release any drivers those 2 months for any card.
so they aren't discontinuing support for 1 gen old cards.. thats good.
But what happened to their promised monthly release schedule? Did they drop that plan for a release every 3 months?

A few months back they announced that they are going to be releasing new drivers less frequently, but including a whole lot more optimization and bug fixes in each update.

 

[WelshBloke]

... But what happened to their promised monthly release schedule? Did they drop that plan...

Yes.

 

[taltamir]

A few months back they announced that they are going to be releasing new drivers less frequently, but including a whole lot more optimization and bug fixes in each update.

thanks for the explanation, I missed the announcement.

 

[hyrule4927]

thanks for the explanation, I missed the announcement.

No problem!

 

[Arkaign]

No, but the ancient Geforce 6 series is still supported with the newest drivers

If you want longevity, go with Nvidia. Simple as.


Correction, it's just the 6 & 7. The FX Series have been discontinued in 2008.

This is true.

It's utterly meaningless to most people, but for me it means a great deal.

For example I get access to non-profit editions of Windows 7 for a charity I volunteer for, and we load up refurb PCs or spare parts rebuilds with Win7 whenever we need.

I've learned that the relatively good X800, X850, etc, won't run on Windows 7 with Aero, because AMD never made a WDDM 1.1 driver for them. I can force it to sort of work by using some hacks/workarounds, but it's kinda borky at best.

Get a same-era 6600, 7800, etc? Bam, drivers load, ready to go, Aero glass and all.

The greatest insult? Intel G965!!! It works fine in Win7 x64. I even played 720p MKVs on one of those ancient craps, with a lowly P4 2ghz or some such garbage (old Dell Optiplex).

Anyway, non-issue for most, but good support for old products always impresses me.

As a side-note, I found a guy that makes Windows 7 32/64-bit FULLY featured drivers for the SB Live, SB Audigy cards. They work REALLY good. Sucks that CreativeLabs themselves suck at support, but this guy makes those cards kick butt.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

Oh, because Nvidia supports every GPU no matter how old for ever and ever? Neither company is going to straight up stop supporting the previous generation, but obviously performance improvements are going to be minimal when drivers are pretty much as optimized as they can get for a given series.

Touchy. I didn't say or imply that. Comparatively speaking though, yes. Nvidia seems to have driver support that lasts longer than AMD's driver support. It's not worth getting into a flame war over.

 

[Arkaign]

Touchy. I didn't say or imply that. Comparatively speaking though, yes. Nvidia seems to have driver support that lasts longer than AMD's driver support. It's not worth getting into a flame war over.

True. It's fair to say that AMD's legacy support is at least adequate. I mean you can use a card for several years at least before it's no longer feasible with AMD, and that's plenty for 99% of people out there, especially gamers who won't keep a card all that long anyway.

It's more of Nvidia's long term support being above and beyond the call of duty, than AMD dropping the ball in any way.

 

[thilanliyan]

No, but the ancient Geforce 6 series is still supported with the newest drivers

Too bad the cards don't last that long to need driver support eh?

 

[taltamir]

The greatest insult? Intel G965!!! It works fine in Win7 x64. I even played 720p MKVs on one of those ancient craps, with a lowly P4 2ghz or some such garbage (old Dell Optiplex).

Yea, intel stuff is not for playing video games. But it actually gets support for a proper amount of time and what is there actually works. I respect that a lot.

 

[blastingcap]

Yea, intel stuff is not for playing video games. But it actually gets support for a proper amount of time and what is there actually works. I respect that a lot.

Intel iGPUs screwed up in Chrome web browsers (personally impacted me for a while) whereas others didn't. Was it Intel's or Google's fault? I do not know but my dGPUs didn't mess up.

More clearly Intel's fault was their buggy OpenCL drivers. I spent hours trying to figure out why one of my programs wasn't working until I narrowed it down to the faulty Intel OpenCL drivers that shipped with my mobo.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

It's more of Nvidia's long term support being above and beyond the call of duty, than AMD dropping the ball in any way.

Agreed. Anxiety over this possibility (though unrealistic at this time) could have been what started the thread.

 

[taltamir]

Intel iGPUs screwed up in Chrome web browsers (personally impacted me for a while) whereas others didn't. Was it Intel's or Google's fault? I do not know but my dGPUs didn't mess up.

Did you file a bug report with intel? How did they address it?

More clearly Intel's fault was their buggy OpenCL drivers. I spent hours trying to figure out why one of my programs wasn't working until I narrowed it down to the faulty Intel OpenCL drivers that shipped with my mobo.

Fair point.

Even though AMD and nVidia have their share of old unfixed bugs with OpenGL (I am not really familiar with openCL so I don't know if it also has bugs with those two)... that doesn't serve as a valid counter argument though to what you were saying. It is a black mark against intel and fairly so.

And now that I think about it... its a lot EASIER for intel to provide support longer because they have fewer capabilities to support.

 

[tcsenter]

My complaint with the AMD legacy drivers is that they don't even bother getting the drivers WHQL certified and digitally signed, which is potentially an issue for Windows 64-bit OS.

 

[blastingcap]

Eventually Google changed Chrome. I suspect it was their fault but since I didn't encounter any errors with my other GPUs I can't be 100% sure.

I have generally good things to say about Intel stability and driver support, but they are not infallible.

And I agree that NV goes above and beyond to support unpopular or ancient OSes. Linus may have flipped off NV but I appreciate NV's support for FreeBSD.

Did you file a bug report with intel? How did they address it?


Fair point.

Even though AMD and nVidia have their share of old unfixed bugs with OpenGL (I am not really familiar with openCL so I don't know if it also has bugs with those two)... that doesn't serve as a valid counter argument though to what you were saying. It is a black mark against intel and fairly so.

And now that I think about it... its a lot EASIER for intel to provide support longer because they have fewer capabilities to support.

 

[Majcric]

Too bad the cards don't last that long to need driver support eh?

My fx5500 is still going strong. But I need some new drivers.