Shame on you AMD .... !!!!

No offence but some of you complaining about drop support for an 5-6 old card then go to nvidia or remain on iGpu.

They will support you very well (especially Nvidia) when your 1-half year card is crippled by drivers or by "amazing" amount of Tessallation.(Gtx 780 users)

These old cards dont have to be improved,nothing to support on them.Last Whql driver work very well with old apps or old games.Do you wanna play next-gen games with them???

Remember from nvidia:this is bussiness!!!
GCN need to be supported untill next tech will be out.

 

Do Nvidia drivers have the same feature to limit tesselation?

 

No, not really. It would be very helpful for Kepler owners if they could.

 

Are you guys complaining about your 2009-2011 android phones too, not getting an official kitkat/lollipop/marshmallow update, because Apple releases updates for their old iphones?
Or is it just an AMD/nVidia fanboyism thing?

 

I'm not the type that has to have the latest phone/card/device every 6 months to a year. I like to buy quality that lasts 3 - 5 years.

 

Since we are into comparisons with different things, why not compare to older Toyota Corollas? Some of them are older than me, and they will outlive me most likely.

We compared to what the direct competitor (NVIDIA) does. I really don't understand how people can defend AMD on this.

 

Ofc not.Very good for Amd to have it.

 

Why are you complaining

AMD did it before, so you should have realized that they would do it again, so why are you getting upset, any reasonable person should not have been surprised with their announcement, it was only logical that AMD would do it again, so don't start crying just because they announce

AMD Ends Driver Support For Radeon HD 8000, 7000, 6000 and 5000 Series Cards

That is why when AMD did it the first time, I saw the future and haven't purchased or recommend the purchase or use of any AMD product since.

So enjoy Legacy

 

Gotta have something to talk about

Probably won't be too much longer for GCN 1.0 and 1.1 stuff either; AMDGPU on Linux is already only available for GCN 1.2 and future cards.

As long as the OSS driver keeps existing though, I couldn't care less what AMD calls "legacy".

I don't want to tread through 3 other pages to see, but is there really anything more that needs to be done with pre-GCN hardware on Windows (aside from fixing switchable graphics), or is the outcry more for new future stuff?

 

again, they are not dropping support just for the HD 5800 they are also dropping for the HD 6900, Richland APU and so so on, which are a lot newer no to mention all the rebranded VLIW cards,

as you said the card is capable of playing new games like Battlefront, it just shows it's not totally irrelevant for current gaming, and it's even more obvious with a 6900 2GB; so to have potential bugs and crossfire being worked on is important.

now apart from DX12, which is something Fermi (older than the 6900s) will support, you have to see that currently all games are using DX11, so, why is it absurd to expect your DX11 card to be supported? specially when the competition can do it,

legacy support from AMD means pretty much 0, ask the HD 4800 cards owners

 

Well coming from a current 4870x2 users standpoint in 2015, the best drivers for that card to tolerate the broadest compatibility/performance were either 9.8 or 10.3, none of the 11.x, or godawful 12.x series of catalyst or the token offerings thereafter that just made more bugs/mess and worse performance for the card despite the same claims being made now, as they also were in 2012, that cards "have already reached their maximum potential from a performance and feature standpoint"....thankyou and goodnight.

How did that compute when older drivers performed better, were more stable and less buggy ?

So it's basically a nice way of saying that you are being fobbed off if your unlucky enough to now not own exlusively GCN.

So then you have to worry about switchable gfx, and mobility chipsets as well lack of support for discrete cards, but let's not get into that here.

The way I see it, whether your card/cards is/are irrelevant or not for today's gaming doesn't even factor into the equation. Just because driver support is stopped doesn't mean your hardware is going to stop working overnight, and you still have some time before the lack of driver updates begin to bite multigpu setups. And even THEN you can find workarounds most of the time, by profile renaming and injecting working .dll's into folders. I did.

I think what concerns people more, is how many outstanding bugs still get left behind every time an entire series support is abruptly cut off, forcing most often people into having to play the switcheroo using older drivers where some things work, while others remain broken or performance goes backwards, and the fact that long standing bugs and annoyances will from now on never be fixed.

If things were more robust, consistent, and regression tested nobody would really care as they would be left with solid drivers, but there are those that know that the latest drivers are not always the best, perfect, have strange oddities, or do not give you the optimal performance across the board etc.

So yes, nothing outstanding will now ever be really fixed anymore for the entire HD VLIW terrascale based range from here on in, and I think it's this critical realisation that irks people most of all.

And how as a result even worse, if you have invested into some kind of expensive exotic crossfire setup instead of a single GPU to worry about,
that you are now out in the cold insofar as crossfire new game update support goes.

The lack of driver updates since 2012 didn't bite quite so hard for my 4870, instead of opposed to my 4870x2 multigpu card.

I can understand AMD logic though, wanting the segregation of VLIW and GCN based drivers from a logical standpoint with the release of Windows 10. But it will be some years yet before the DX12 exclusive titles become the norm.

Or indeed even Windows 10 itself becomes the norm, as most on other OS's have no compelling reason to upgrade, or even want microsofts bundled creepy doll...

If Windows 10 was "doing so well" it wouldn't be a recommended update starting 2016 for older OS owners, nor have a market share less than XP (an OS without inbuilt ASLR, almost 2 years out of support, nigh on impossible to get a working AV, and prob now riddled full of security holes) doing better than Win 10 speaks volumes.

It isn't always best to be putting all your eggs in one basket just in case things backfire.

 

(more or less restating this for people just entering this thread) This only applies to Windows and the proprietary Linux driver. AMD and other entities provide daily updates to the graphics stack with the OSS driver on Linux across both old and new graphics cards.

If your card is actually suffering from some unfixed bug on Windows, and you do nothing to require DX10+, why not give Linux a go? I'm certain not every DX9 game in-existence would work, but for the ones that do work, all you'd need is Wine, the OSS driver, and gallium-nine patched stacks for both (much easier to acquire than it sounds), and you'd be good to go. And even if you don't care to play Windows games, Linux does have native games available.

My AMD VLIW switchable graphics laptop works much-better under Linux, and even my 7850 works better too (I can suspend my monitors without fear of the entire OS locking up)

I know it might sound like I'm shilling for Linux (that's not my intent), but I would legitimately like to see people not putting up with Windows if they don't have to...

I would hope Windows 10 never becomes "the norm"; but then again, I'm not sure what kind of person would willingly accept pre-installed and official update spyware (maybe someone who is totally unaware to technology news to know this is going on). And using DX12 as a developer would only be a "good" idea if Windows 10 itself had a large enough userbase to actually use the tech.

Why is Vulkan not being mentioned? I would think people would be much-more receptive of it over DX12 considering the former doesn't lock you to a single malware-haven OS, whereas the latter would run on that OS (should you choose to use it for some reason) and other systems (like Linux or even Android).

 

I suspect another reason for the dropping of the legacy cards could be from download volume. Most people interested in updating drivers period are people who play games. Most people at home will install their driver disk, which I believe still existed back then, or at most, download from the manufacturers website (hello 2010 driver), and never download a recent driver.

People who play games on the other hand, well, the games affected by not having the latest drivers are the latest games. A HD4870 or whatever simply won't cut it in the latest titles. Not to mention many of them are probably still on XP, or 32-bit Windows. Most people would have updated their video cards now, and also have upgraded the rest of their system in order to play games.

So, this all adds to the information that AMD has in regards to usage of older cards. I guess another metric is the Steam stats and whether these people are playing any games that could benefit from a later driver. I'm talking realistically here, not someone who tries to play a newer game on an old card, claims to everyone that it plays perfectly, and it be at the lowest resolution, all the features turned down, and still drops below 30 fps in intense areas!

So, if AMD goes okay, 500 people (probably overestimating it) have downloaded the last legacy driver, is it cost effective to continue to support these people and spend resources doing so, even if the benefits are extreme minimal or non-existent? The answer obviously was a simple 'no'.

 

Just my opinion but i always felt investing in a gaming laptop is just a huge expense and not worth the money. Generally your paying a lot and losing a lot of ability to upgrade compared to a decent desktop. Just saying, you then have to live with your stuff going obsolete even sooner.

 

Yup I am wrong. Opengl sure that won't work like it has troubles working from the get go. directx games should be another story. AMD should provide basic support for older cards for new windows that is pretty much all needed. There is none.

I have no clue why they drop support is it because of money, it could be it's not like they have any profits. My dates were comparing 285 vs 5000 series which came rather close to each other in the end. I did check the dates for the drivers legacy should provide basic support which nvidia does until april 2016 which I did mention. But yeah wrong I was.

 

Now if you want to have those spywares and what not on your computer stop using windows all together they did update w7 and 8 with the same stuff. Unless of course you haven't updated the "important" patches

 

That's something I don't see often anywhere (the admission) . DX games should be better, but not really good.

For people saying that they'll drop GCN 1.0, I don't see it in the close future. They have released a GCN 1.0 card 4 months ago and it's part of the 300 series.

 

As an owner of more than few HTPC's mostly based on 6450/5770/6770 dropping support for those cards doesn't touches me much. Those cards served me well for years and still they are, mostly on Win7 or Win8.1. Eventually on some of those I'll jump on the Win10 bandwagon when I feel the need for it and honestly can't say AMD didn't provided good/stable enough Win10 drivers for those cards for their main use as a web browsing rigs, wathcing movies, Youtube, Skype...

Hell I even have one (OK, not me but my kids) 6970 based gaming rig at home. Tbh it's mostly used as a backup rig when house fills with other kids from our neghbourhood or family and when dozen of other gaming rigs at home aren't enough for all those kids. After all those years that 6970 rig is still very capable for 1080p gaming if you ask me, if you know what to tweak here in there in game graphics options to maintain high enough/stable framerate.

Just to add this also... Yesterday late I did some Heaven 4.0 and Valley 1.0 testing with previously installed Catalyst drivers (mostly Catalyst 14.12 Omega or AMD Catalyst 15.x (15.200.1036.0 May 22)) on few of those above mentioned 5770/6770 rigs and that one with 6970, then wiped those drivers with latest DDU 15.7.0.1 and did a clean install of latest AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta drivers 15.11 (v.15.30.1025) for legacy cards. Although final score was mostly the same as with previous Catalyst drivers there are some improvents in min Fps and max Fps region, about 2% to 3% more in every single case: can't complain about that. And there's also a nice new looking Radeon Settings GUI.

On the other hand I can understand the rage mostly coming from CF users with 6950 2GB, 6970 2GB and 6990 4GB cards. Those cards in CF are still very capable for more than decent 1080p gaming. Droping support for them's gonna leave a bad taste in their mouth for sure. Hope that community of Catalyst driver modders will provide them a solutions to keep em going for another year or two.

There's no reason to hate either AMD or NVidia because of dropping support for few years old GPU's: that's the way business/progress goes. Just imagine how bad for us end users would be if there's just one big player on GPU market, I don't even want to think about that... We need them both either with ther good and/or bad sides. It's not the first time AMD or NVidia made moves like that and it's not the last for sure.

Nothing lasts forever I guess. Heads up, make your wallets fat enough for holiday discounts that comes and made yourself happy with some brand new or 2nd hand GPU from AMD or NVidia.

cheers!

 

Most certainly not in the close future, but following AMD's history, GCN 1.0 users shouldn't feel too safe. HD 2000-4000 was dropped despite still being used in laptops currently being sold, likewise AMD's Richland APUs are just three years old and still being sold, and still just dropped.

 

Until Amd will develop another tech and make GCN obsolete they will support all GCN cards.
No doubt about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB6tb8uujoQ