Is AMD ever going to throw pre-GCN APU owners a 'bone'?

[VirtualLarry]

Newest drivers for my FM1 APUs is 15.7.1, with a beta Crimson 16.2.1, which apparently isn't fully stable.

Sure would be nice if maybe, they could tweak up and build a few newer drivers.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Newest drivers for my FM1 APUs is 15.7.1, with a beta Crimson 16.2.1, which apparently isn't fully stable.

Sure would be nice if maybe, they could tweak up and build a few newer drivers.

What benefit would there be to AMD to invest in newer drivers for those parts?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Because AMD dropped support for VLIW cards and APUs like a hot-potato, whereas NV supported Fermi for like forever.

I just want some sort of updated, WHQL, drivers for Win10, for FM1 and FM2 APUs. It's the right thing to do.

I don't care about gaming fixes and tweaks (game-specific), I just want a solid, reliable, non-beta driver, for Win10, that will allow me to use an FM1/FM2 APU to browse the web and watch online videos and DVD/BR, without BSODs or crashes.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Don't count on it. There's probably very few VLIW product left running in the wild on a modern OS.

 

[SPBHM]

the old stuff gets abandoned, and you kind have to feel lucky when it works OK.

I've mostly replaced my HD 5850 with a GCN card because of compatibility, the performs on the games I cared to play was OK at low settings, but then it would crash or have visual issues (the card was fine with older games).... it's frustrating because games are mostly still DX11,

but checking the steam survey is very hard to find anything pre GCN, you have "HD5450" with 0.20% or something, and that's one extremely slow GPU, so I guess no one uses these cards anymore....


but I didn't have many stability problems with the 5850 in terms of video decoder or desktop use on windows 10 with the windows update drivers.
there was the bug with corrupted mouse cursor, but this one is pretty old and was fixed and re introduced a few times since the early days and didn't bother me much.

 

[Spjut]

I haven't had any issues with basic usage like browsing and video decoding on the HD 4870, various HD 5000 GPUs and the A10 3870k with the built-in driver on Win10. I threw a fuss back when these cards were abandoned and still relevant for gaming, but today the drivers do seem to work fine if not playing games.

Users who have compared the last drivers do claim that the 15.7.1 WHQL driver is what developers target when supporting these GPUs though.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Is VLIW GPU support under Linux any better with the free drivers?

 

[SPBHM]

I haven't had any issues with basic usage like browsing and video decoding on the HD 4870, various HD 5000 GPUs and the A10 3870k with the built-in driver on Win10. I threw a fuss back when these cards were abandoned and still relevant for gaming, but today the drivers do seem to work fine if not playing games.

Users who have compared the last drivers do claim that the 15.7.1 WHQL driver is what developers target when supporting these GPUs though.

yes I think those are the windows update drivers and they work fine, anything else seems to be a waste of time on win 10.