Sign up for a new account or log in here:
also @ TechSpot: Microsoft officially announces Xbox One: here's what we know so far
Alongside recent news that AMD is dropping official legacy card support for Linux, it appears that AMD will also be dropping support for aging Radeon products in Windows 8. Although the next iteration of Windows is expected to ship with driver support for some legacy Radeon cards, AMD will not be providing future driver updates for those graphics cards. The company makes that clear in this following paragraph from a purported press release.
Also with regards to Windows 8 support for the AMD Radeon™ HD 2000, 3000, 4000 Series of products; the In-the-box AMD Graphics driver that ships with Windows 8 will include support for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series, and it will support the WDDM 1.1 driver level features. The AMD Catalyst driver for Windows 8 will only include support for WDDM 1.2 support products (AMD Radeon HD 5000 and later).
Source: hardwarecanucks.com, ATI press release
It's important to note what AMD considers "legacy" may not align with everyone's preconceived visions of what "legacy" means. To AMD, legacy products appear to include the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000 and HD 4000 series graphics cards. Interestingly, the HD 4000 series sports the R700. For anyone blessed with a good memory and reasonable powers of recollection, they may remember finding the R700 CPU in ATI's flagship Radeon products as little as four years ago. Only HD 5000 cards and newer will be spared from the recent changes.
Unfortunately for customers with legacy Radeon cards, there is more bad news. Currently, HD 2000, HD 3000 and HD 4000 products receive updates with every monthly Catalyst release. However, beginning in May, AMD plans to include updates for legacy products on a quarterly basis. The company explains that moving to a slower release schedule for its older series will help them focus on their newer and existing line-ups. The company also reasons that older products have plateaued in terms of performance and functionality. After so many years of development, AMD claims, there is little room for optimization or additional features.
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. The Quarterly Catalyst releases will focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates. The reason for the shift in support policy is largely due to the fact that the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 Series have been optimized to their maximum potential from a performance and feature perspective.
User Comments: 47
Got something to say? Post a comment-
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.
-
I PROMISE I will never buy another AMD/NVIDIA product ever again.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.
-
Tweenk said:
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 fucks 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....
-
(n)AMD ... you are not going into the right direction
-
Qdezi said:
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?
-
^ temper your rage. Nvidia and XP didn't work well together for many years. Google nv4_disp.dll bsod and put some time limits on that search, I don't think it ever got fixed, I think people just gave up and got new nvidia cards, early XP and nvidia were a horrible mix.
-
I have a Radeon HD 4870 and I need overdrive for Window 8 (so that I don't have the amazing 65C idle temperature that can only be solved with a lot of fan noise). Where is it? Release it. One time is enough... It's a shame that AMD abandon their customers like that. Be sure that I won't forget this the next time I buy a video card...
-
I have a hd 4890 card and I am happy with it, maybe I would use win8 but I cant get fullscreen on my TV without ati catalyst ( scaling options ). AMD, thats not a good move.....
-
Kotamy said:
Quarterly updates for older cards isn't too bad but I'm surprised the 4000 series didn't at least make the windows 8 cut.Since the HD 5000 series was basically a die shrink of the 4000 with added DX11 support, I simply don't see a technical reason for this.
One might argue that HD 4000 cards support DX10 while HD 5000 support DX11. However, DX11 is supposed to be backwards compatible with DX10, right? And what could Windows 8 possibly demand that any Radeon HD 4000 series couldn't handle?
Smells like planned obsolescence to me.
Check out ..
[link]
-
Great news!
I will install win 8 this afternoon and try this driver!
Thank you for hearing us ATI!
-
I solved the problem with overscan on my LCD monitor with a Radeon HD 3300 card running Windows 8. And without catalyst drivers.
A bit is based on this post: [link]
However change registry key "TVEnableOverscan" from 1 to 0.
Restart your computer and de overscan on LCD monitor is set to zero. So no more black bars...
Regards Koen
mod edit - removed blogspam
-
George_L.A. said:
I have HD4870, Win8, 5GB RAM and i7 processor. At he moment I don't have money to buy 6xx or 7xx series card. My video card works flawlessly with all the new games, I don't care about directx11. Where is the support from ATI regarding drivers for Win8? Is this an extortion for the costumers of ATI to buy another card?
I'll wait couple to see if ATI will update the drivers for Win8. If not, when I save money I'll go straight to NVIDIA. I hate the blackmails!!
-
I can understand things get old and dis-continued but I would have hoped that HD4000 (I have HD4830) would be supported in Windows 8. The driver provided here didn't let me do things that I was able to do on Windows 7, so I had to use the Windows provided driver and there is a huge difference. I guess a new card is in the thought, don't know if I will stick with AMD or move elsewhere...
Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
Featured on Keyboards
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.