AMD drops Windows 8 support for Radeon HD 4000 and older

Great way to alienate your established customer base AMD! Forcing people to buy your product by not supporting a video card I paid good money for and have no reason to upgrade is only going to hurt you in the long run. When I finally decide that I MUST replace my HD 4870 I will remember your little scum-bag ploy and I'll buy Nvidia to spite you! Boycott corporations that abuse their customers!!!!!!

Lol I have a 4850, which after getting paired with a 2600K can play pretty much any game at 1920x1080 at a high or acceptable framerate (above 28-30). I have no reason why to upgrade this graphics card, so this move by AMD just simply makes me wish for a Nvidia card for my next upgrade.

For those of you that posted that Win8 will support the cards by default, that is correct, but what happens when a badly optimized game comes out? I've seen 15-30% gains in such titles in less than a month after their release, done with a simple driver update.

I just got happy I moved to Nvidia... My older PC has an ATi 9600XT, and it still works flawlessly, but AMD decided to stop supporting it. My old Geforce 6200 still has full updated drivers, and it's slower than that Ati card!

So I installed windows 8 and then came across this problem which can only be solved by the Catalyst Control Center. A problem where my HDMI out to display sets the overscan by default to a setting which doesn't use a 100% of my monitor.

And then after some trial and error I came across this article. I was kind of mad to find out ATI would do something silly like this. I have a mobility 4000 series and I know its more than capable of handling the basic needs of any operating system.

Luckily, I remembered installing the standard ATI Catalyst for the developer Version when I tried Windows 8. Its only now that the install tool wouldn't recognize my operating system (Windows 8)

Solution: In explorer jump to your windows 7 Drive. Find the AMD/ATI folder in C: Run the setup from there. It should install the latest drivers from windows 7 and the catalyst center as well no problems. And it works just fine. I haven't tried gaming and intensive 3D applications. But everything else just works.

CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG - ATI/AMD plan to release regular drivers for windows 8 which would support those cards correct ? I mean they just won't release optimized or improved drivers for those cards mentioned right ?

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.

Liar?

http://www.techpowerup.com/166936/No-More-Monthly-AMD-Catalyst-Updates-.html

You forgot the most important part of the source article:

However, there is an additional wrench thrown into the works. It seems users of these older products won’t get continued driver support and updates when they are using their cards in a Windows 8 environment. To put it simply: Windows 8 ships with an included AMD driver and from our understanding, that won’t be updated. If you have a HD 2000, HD 3000, or HD 4000 series card, be prepared to make do with the default AMD driver package that Microsoft ships with their new OS.

I hope AMD is reading this. For me this is a bad decession and smells faulty.. Sorry AMD, but this ain't gonna happen again. Should have supported crossfire & 4780 x2 radeon family for the standard software and Windows 8 support. I spend a lot of money!

I attent to all AMD GPU users: Shall we boycut? Nvidia gives full driver support to all their legacy cards in Windows 8. I can not even use Cross-fire, so I basically run 1 4870 card, which is constantly crashing with standard Windows Drivers. This is outrageous and should be boycot!

This doesn't look like much of a problem:- a) There is support, just not frequent & ongoing
b) It only matters at all if you're misguided enough to use Windows 8!

I'm a GNU/Linux user and AMD are doing something similar there - I.e. dropping support for HD 5xxx and older. Historically I was always an AMD supporter but no longer recommend AMD and I will not buy their products again. To get AMD to change their ways, the people that historically supported them - gamers and "power users" - need to vote with their wallets.

AMD dev does not seem to get the problem. The problem is NOT the driver support!
It's CCC and Overdrive. I need to downclock my GPU because the 4870x2 OC version artifacts on 790 engine clock. I need to downclock to 765, so it works properly.

Again, we need CCC support.

Already found an issue with my son's pc, the default Windows 8 driver and a HD4890... not mentioning overscan or any of the advanced features missing from Catalyst. With Mass Effect 3 it does not reconcile the video card or the driver correctly and the game even with compatibility mode setup will not start. Works fine in Vista and Windows 7, it's just strange that they would drop support on a good card so soon.

I am fine with my 5870 but starting to worry on how much life it has left, luckily not planing to upgrade my system or the wife's (both Win 7 pro). I was looking at Win 8 for three of my kids systems, as it is now they may stay with Vista a bit longer. I am not a big fan of the Metro interface but mostly the reason to stay away right now is for the issues I have encountered with the AMD "default" driver. One system has a HD4850, the system mentioned above with the HD4890, and the lucky child that has a HD5770.

I have a Radeon 4200 graphics card in my HP p6654y tower. I have tried at least 2 dozen different ways to download driver updates to load the 12.6 Catalyst driver. The only way to get the AMD Catalyst graphics card to function is to regress to the 12.1 driver. I PROMISE I will never buy another AMD/NVIDIA product ever again...PERIOD ! A company that does not support its customers does not deserve repeat business, it's just that simple.

Good luck with all your other choices. You just eliminated the top two graphics card providers available.

nVidia has nothing to do with AMD dropping support for HD 4000 and older cards. nVidia is still supporting GeForce 6 Series cards which launched April 2004. I'm confused as to your inclusion of nVidia on this topic.

The 4000 series Radeons are substantially different from the 5000 series. Specifically, the 4000 is missing some compute features which are impossible to work around or emulate. For instance, unlike 5000, it cannot support OpenCL image buffers, has very low limits on workgroup size and does not have local memory. The driver would have to be significantly more complex to take this into account. AMD is working really hard on breaking into the lucrative compute market, so it's logical to focus only on the compute-capable cards.

If they will support 4xxx series then why the f.k they removed it from 12.6 and 12.7 releases? Do they alternate general driver package with the series support so one month I can install my system and newest drivers from their site and other can't? It's madness... Support is completely dropped.

Anyway HD4870+ still able to handle most modern games on high settings. And it's like they forcing people to buy new cards just for the fun/profit of it. Driver is near ideal already? As a software developer I can say that it's marketing BS. I can see how it's cool to advance OpenCL, but this aggressiveness I don't approve.

You *****. For HD4000 and under, there is no Catalyst Control Centre, so you cant adjust antialising, anisotropic filtering, vsync, clock speed, display settings .. etc and no opengl, so some applications just wont work. Yes, out of the box, WIndows 8 will work with these "legacy" cards, but the above mentioned functions will not. If Nvidia can support old hardware like the 6600GT properly on Windows 8 then wtf is up with AMD. Also, no way you can consider HD2000, 3000, 4000 as "legacy" hardware and if you do, because AMD says so, then you are an arsehole. They are too new. Something like the ATI8850 or ATI9800pro would be the proper hardware to categorise as legacy. So, what is the answer, if AMD drops proper support for "legacy" cards, then you should drop support for AMD cards. To avoid similar problems in the future and get a fully functional OS , graphically, BUY NVIDIA. AMD cards only look good on paper.... Once the sales start to "drop", the stupid ****s will get the message, that they cannot dictate to customers. I am angry because I have HD4xxx hardware that if I accepted the AMD philosophy, I should discard and buy a new AMD card. Well **** YOU AMD, my next card will DEFINITELY be an NVIDIA card.

Last guest, if you calm down from your ranting, you might notice that nearly everything in your post is factually flawed - I'm not trying to be comical here, but I genuinely suspect you didn't read it before you hit the Reply button!
(spotted it yet? )

Last Guest, nothing in my post is flawed, except the bit where it reads "ATI8850", that should read "ATI8500". Everything else is accurate. I have tried various drivers from AMD (11.1,11.2,12.1,12.6) on Windows 8 all with the same result ie: No Catalyst Control Centre, and no OpenGL functionality. There was some third party registry patch to enable OpenGL, but the OpenGL performance is super flawed with black sync bands running from top to bottom of the screen and the fan can be heard going to max when running OpenGL apps. All you get is the "AMD Vision Control Centre" and thats it. So, no, almost all of my post was and still is accurate....

AMD ... you are not going into the right direction

AMD you suck, I own an 4650 mobility. And when hearing this news I was so disappointed. Practically, the shipped driver in Win8 RTM has lowered my graphic score in WEI down from 5.8 to 5.5. And playing games this time is more laggy than before. Wtf AMD? Look to NVIDIA and see what they're doing with your old customers, so u could see how suck are u?