AMD is halting support for numerous GPU series, ranging from the HD 7000 to the Fury series

[jsilva]

In brief: AMD's latest Adrenalin beta graphics driver is already available, and with it comes new features to improve the gaming experience and the usual slew of fixes. However, this driver also removes some features, including support for AMD Radeon HD 7000, HD 8000, 200, 300, Fury, and more.

AMD has moved some of its older graphics cards to a legacy model, meaning that there won't be any additional drivers supporting them. According to AMD, the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.5.2 will be the last supported driver planned for these GPUs.

AMD's list of GPUs moving to a legacy model includes 9-year-old GPUs such as the HD 7000 series, but also other more recent ones like the GCN-based R7 M400 series, which is just five years old.

Desktop	Mobile
AMD A-Series APUs with Radeon R4, R5, R6, or R7 Graphics	AMD A-Series PRO processors with Radeon Graphics
AMD Pro A-Series APUs with Radeon R5 or R7 Graphics	AMD FX-Series APUs with Radeon R7 Graphics
AMD Athlon™ Series APUs with Radeon R3 Graphics	AMD E-Series APUs with Radeon R2 Graphics
AMD Sempron™ Series APUs with Radeon R3 Graphics	AMD Radeon R7 M400 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 Fury Series, R9 Nano Series Graphics	AMD Radeon R9 M300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 300 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon R7 M300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 200 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon R5 M300 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R7 300 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon R9 M200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R7 200 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon R7 M200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R5 300 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon R5 M200 Series Graphics
AMD Radeon R5 200 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon HD 8500M - HD 8900M Series Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 8500 - HD 8900 Series Graphics	AMD Radeon HD 7700M - HD 7900M Series Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7700 - HD 7900 Series Graphics

We are not surprised to see decade-old graphics cards such as the HD 7000 series being moved to legacy models. Nvidia also announced it's ceasing support of its Kepler GPUs, but unlike AMD, it gave a few months for customers to prepare for it.

As for the 300, Fury, Nano and R7 M400 series, it would be nice if AMD kept supporting them. These GPUs are still fairly recent, with 5 to 6 years on their legs. Some of them were actually quite expensive, with the Fury and Nano cards releasing with an MSRP of $649 back in 2015. For that kind of price, some would expect to have a longer support period.

The graphics cards are not the only thing moving to legacy support. AMD's also informed that Radeon Software support for Windows 7 64-bit based OS will also be removed, more than a year after Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7.

This latest hotfix driver update does more than remove support for older cards, AMD's beta introduces game optimizations for Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, support for AMD Radeon RX 6800M graphics (our review), and FidelityFX Super Resolution, a.k.a. FSR (our review).

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90151-amd-halting-support-numerous-gpu-series-ranging-hd.html

 

[DZillaXx]

Bad Move AMD.

A R9 290 is easily still comparable to higher end entry level cards.

 

[Shadowboxer]

This is not really news. AMD have never supported their GPUs for very long.

 

[Adi6293]

This is not really news. AMD have never supported their GPUs for very long.

Anything above 5 years is pointless and that goes for both AMD and nVidia, after the first few years you won't see any performance improvements anyway. GCN came out in 2013? That's 8 years its been long enough

 

[RudyBob]

Bad Move AMD.

A R9 290 is easily still comparable to higher end entry level cards.

Yep My RX 280 still shines but I don't do new games.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Bad Move AMD.

A R9 290 is easily still comparable to higher end entry level cards.

The 3050ti is not a higher end entry level card. The r9 290 was comparable to a base geforce 970, which as beaten by the 1060, which is a 5 year old mid range card. The 2060 obliterates the 290 in performance, so does the 1660 super.

I pointed this out on techpowerup as well, the ENTIREITY of the hd 7000 series, r9 200 series, and r9 300 series on steam combined occupies a smaller market then....the geforce 710. The geforce 960, 970, 980, and 980ti each have significantly larger markets, and those are three generations old now. The AMD cards combined have .34% of the market, the 970 alone has over 1.5%

Did you expect AMD to support old products forever? Let's face it, GCN is a decade old now. The 7000 series came out when fermi was still current, technically on an older architecture then the PS4 GPU. The r9 290x is insufficient for maintaining 1080p60 at all high settings in current games, and those demands are only going up with the PS5 generation.

Lets face it, hardly anyone uses these cards anymore, and we've had GCN 1.3 (polaris) GCN 1.4(vega), the newer versions of vega in the iGPUs (GCN 1.5?), rDNA, and rDNA2. Take a closer look at what was dropped, outside of doubled VRAM hawaii chips from the likes of sapphire, every card on this list as 4GB of VRAM or less. It's time for these cards to be put out to pasture, they havent made money for AMD in over half a decade and are, quite frankly, obsolete. The RX 580 puts most of these cards to absolute shame, and that came out 5 YEARS ago.

It's time to move on. If you're still using these cards there's no reason to use newer drivers, new games are beyond your card's capabilities anyway.

Anything above 5 years is pointless and that goes for both AMD and nVidia, after the first few years you won't see any performance improvements anyway. GCN came out in 2013? That's 8 years its been long enough

GCN first came out in late 2011 with the 7970

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One

www.anandtech.com

 

[Adi6293]

The 3050ti is not a higher end entry level card. The r9 290 was comparable to a base geforce 970, which as beaten by the 1060, which is a 5 year old mid range card. The 2060 obliterates the 290 in performance, so does the 1660 super.

I pointed this out on techpowerup as well, the ENTIREITY of the hd 7000 series, r9 200 series, and r9 300 series on steam combined occupies a smaller market then....the geforce 710. The geforce 960, 970, 980, and 980ti each have significantly larger markets, and those are three generations old now. The AMD cards combined have .34% of the market, the 970 alone has over 1.5%

Did you expect AMD to support old products forever? Let's face it, GCN is a decade old now. The 7000 series came out when fermi was still current, technically on an older architecture then the PS4 GPU. The r9 290x is insufficient for maintaining 1080p60 at all high settings in current games, and those demands are only going up with the PS5 generation.

Lets face it, hardly anyone uses these cards anymore, and we've had GCN 1.3 (polaris) GCN 1.4(vega), the newer versions of vega in the iGPUs (GCN 1.5?), rDNA, and rDNA2. Take a closer look at what was dropped, outside of doubled VRAM hawaii chips from the likes of sapphire, every card on this list as 4GB of VRAM or less. It's time for these cards to be put out to pasture, they havent made money for AMD in over half a decade and are, quite frankly, obsolete. The RX 580 puts most of these cards to absolute shame, and that came out 5 YEARS ago.

It's time to move on. If you're still using these cards there's no reason to use newer drivers, new games are beyond your card's capabilities anyway.

GCN first came out in late 2011 with the 7970

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One

www.anandtech.com

I agree with you on most points apart from the 970 vs 290, I think in newer games the Radeon will win due to somewhat better DX12 support.

2011!! Jesus time is going fast..... yeah these cards deserve to retire, I will just put my spare 290X into a frame and get something newer : - P

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I agree with you on most points apart from the 970 vs 290, I think in newer games the Radeon will win due to somewhat better DX12 support.

2011!! Jesus time is going fast..... yeah these cards deserve to retire, I will just put my spare 290X into a frame and get something newer : - P

Heavy doubt. DX12 isnt magic, after all. People said the same thing about vulcan and mantle, neither of which granted AMD magic performance pills. What DID work for them was finally putting more then 4096 cores on a GPU.

AMD R9 290X in 2019: Benchmark vs. RX 590, GTX, RTX, & More

The AMD R9 290X, a 2013 release, was the once-flagship of the 200 series, later superseded by the 390X refresh, (sort of) the Fury X, and eventually the RX-series cards. The R9 290X typically ran with 4GB of memory, although the 390X made 8GB somewhat commonplace, and was a strong performer for...

www.gamersnexus.net

The 290x barely maintained 60 FPS when retested, and that was in 2019.

The 970 was slower overall, but that is against the 290x, not the 290. Of course this is also overlooking the crazy OC potential of the 970 vs the 290/x which didnt have as much headroom.

 

[DZillaXx]

The 3050ti is not a higher end entry level card. The r9 290 was comparable to a base geforce 970, which as beaten by the 1060, which is a 5 year old mid range card. The 2060 obliterates the 290 in performance, so does the 1660 super.

I pointed this out on techpowerup as well, the ENTIREITY of the hd 7000 series, r9 200 series, and r9 300 series on steam combined occupies a smaller market then....the geforce 710. The geforce 960, 970, 980, and 980ti each have significantly larger markets, and those are three generations old now. The AMD cards combined have .34% of the market, the 970 alone has over 1.5%

Did you expect AMD to support old products forever? Let's face it, GCN is a decade old now. The 7000 series came out when fermi was still current, technically on an older architecture then the PS4 GPU. The r9 290x is insufficient for maintaining 1080p60 at all high settings in current games, and those demands are only going up with the PS5 generation.

Lets face it, hardly anyone uses these cards anymore, and we've had GCN 1.3 (polaris) GCN 1.4(vega), the newer versions of vega in the iGPUs (GCN 1.5?), rDNA, and rDNA2. Take a closer look at what was dropped, outside of doubled VRAM hawaii chips from the likes of sapphire, every card on this list as 4GB of VRAM or less. It's time for these cards to be put out to pasture, they havent made money for AMD in over half a decade and are, quite frankly, obsolete. The RX 580 puts most of these cards to absolute shame, and that came out 5 YEARS ago.

It's time to move on. If you're still using these cards there's no reason to use newer drivers, new games are beyond your card's capabilities anyway.

GCN first came out in late 2011 with the 7970

AMD Radeon HD 7970 Review: 28nm And Graphics Core Next, Together As One

www.anandtech.com

Actually with how the GPU market has been, These GCN cards easily deserve another year. Consider there are a f%*c ton of them. Steam survey is a poor representation of what is actually in use. AMD's GPU division didn't start down trending till Fury released. If it wasn't for miners the GTX700 series would have sold a lot less. AMD cards during this time were scooped up by miners faster than they were being made.

ATM the GTX1050 is still a popular card being sold, despite its age. I'm sorry but you can hardly get a new Nvidia GPU without paying crazy prices. Luckily the R9 290/390 actually have held up way better than the GTX700 ever did. For a temp GPU the R9 390 is a better buy than something like a GTX1050.

Most games released are not pixel pushers, or can scale down pretty well. I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

That being said, drivers these days hold up much better with age compared to a decade ago. Keeping upto date with nvidia drives would make or break new games. Not so much anymore.

Point is 99% of games are still going to run without issue even on something like a R9 290 @ 1440p. 80% of the new games worth playing over the last couple years have been lower budget games.

AMD simply made too good of a card back in the day, and them having 4GB of VRAM has been a big reason why it still does so well on modern games. There isn't a game made that needs more than 4GB of VRAM to perform at a decent level. Hell you'd be surprised what 2GB will still accomplish.

 

[DZillaXx]

Heavy doubt. DX12 isnt magic, after all. People said the same thing about vulcan and mantle, neither of which granted AMD magic performance pills. What DID work for them was finally putting more then 4096 cores on a GPU.

AMD R9 290X in 2019: Benchmark vs. RX 590, GTX, RTX, & More

The AMD R9 290X, a 2013 release, was the once-flagship of the 200 series, later superseded by the 390X refresh, (sort of) the Fury X, and eventually the RX-series cards. The R9 290X typically ran with 4GB of memory, although the 390X made 8GB somewhat commonplace, and was a strong performer for...

www.gamersnexus.net

The 290x barely maintained 60 FPS when retested, and that was in 2019.

The 970 was slower overall, but that is against the 290x, not the 290. Of course this is also overlooking the crazy OC potential of the 970 vs the 290/x which didnt have as much headroom.

What are you smoking.

The 290x had massive OC headroom. It just needed good cooling and a modified BIOS. I used to run 1250mhz all day long. From a stock *1000mhz*. GCN cards gained much more from a OC than Nvidia cards did. The 970 would never have a chance in a OC to OC battle. Not even at release.

Doesn't help most stock ref 290x's ran sub 1000mhz in reviews.

But even at small OC of 1100mhz on a 290x would pretty much put a 290x on a equal if not better performance level when the 970 was new.

In most modern games even a 780ti falls short of a stock 290x

 

[bandit8623]

Besides the fact that amd has an infererer product... My hd6950 was retired for drivers way too soon and lost support... At least for awhile. So not surprised again.. Nvidia at least let's you update the main driver controller app.

 

[GamerNerves]

This doesn't matter a thing at this point. Reasonable move.

 

[Tantor]

Anything above 5 years is pointless and that goes for both AMD and nVidia, after the first few years you won't see any performance improvements anyway. GCN came out in 2013? That's 8 years its been long enough

Where do you get the idea that 8 years is a long time? The only thing that matters is functionality. Age is irrelevant.

 

[Puiu]

Heavy doubt. DX12 isnt magic, after all. People said the same thing about vulcan and mantle, neither of which granted AMD magic performance pills. What DID work for them was finally putting more then 4096 cores on a GPU.

AMD R9 290X in 2019: Benchmark vs. RX 590, GTX, RTX, & More

The AMD R9 290X, a 2013 release, was the once-flagship of the 200 series, later superseded by the 390X refresh, (sort of) the Fury X, and eventually the RX-series cards. The R9 290X typically ran with 4GB of memory, although the 390X made 8GB somewhat commonplace, and was a strong performer for...

www.gamersnexus.net

The 290x barely maintained 60 FPS when retested, and that was in 2019.

The 970 was slower overall, but that is against the 290x, not the 290. Of course this is also overlooking the crazy OC potential of the 970 vs the 290/x which didnt have as much headroom.

To be fair, DX12 and Vulkan did something good for AMD: it destroyed the lead Nvidia had in terms of driver performance optimisations. The CPU overhead AMD had in DX11 was much bigger than what Nvidia had, but now it's kinda reversed for DX12. Any % will help AMD stay relevant.

 

[Adi6293]

Heavy doubt. DX12 isnt magic, after all. People said the same thing about vulcan and mantle, neither of which granted AMD magic performance pills. What DID work for them was finally putting more then 4096 cores on a GPU.

AMD R9 290X in 2019: Benchmark vs. RX 590, GTX, RTX, & More

The AMD R9 290X, a 2013 release, was the once-flagship of the 200 series, later superseded by the 390X refresh, (sort of) the Fury X, and eventually the RX-series cards. The R9 290X typically ran with 4GB of memory, although the 390X made 8GB somewhat commonplace, and was a strong performer for...

www.gamersnexus.net

The 290x barely maintained 60 FPS when retested, and that was in 2019.

The 970 was slower overall, but that is against the 290x, not the 290. Of course this is also overlooking the crazy OC potential of the 970 vs the 290/x which didnt have as much headroom.

DX12 and Vulcan isn't magical but AMD's problem wasn't not having cards with more than 4096 Cores but actually being able to use all these cores, this is where those api's come in, Fury X wasn't exactly that much faster than 290X and it had HBM plus additional 1200 SPU's, Vega 64 was just a little faster than Vega 56 and then came RDNA with 2560 cores beating any GCN card because it was built with to actually saturate all these cores : -)