AMD drops support for non GCN based graphics cards

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#5195331
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They really try hard to go down under do they? 🙂
#5195343
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I expected this considering AMD's previous support cycles. No new drivers at all is a bit surprising though, previous Legacy cards got drivers for bug fixes for a year.
#5195346
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About time. Good move on their part. Now they can move forward; not that they really gave much attention to the non-gcn cards lately. Now just need to wait for the next crop before upgrading. Guess it is time to start planning to fill the Core X-9 case now.
#5195361
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They really try hard to go down under do they? 🙂
Lol...;) nVidia does the same exact thing. They have to if they are going to make progress. Bear in mind that just as people continue to run XP today, some of them with no overt problems, the same will be true of so-called Legacy 3d cards. Those cards will not stop working with all of the games they work with now, which basically means D3d9/10 & maybe even some 11 games will continue to run on that hardware for years to come. Not a big deal. Nothing is forever--not your cpu, your gpu your motherboard, your ram your hdd's, etc. Or your 3d cards...It's simply the way things work.
#5195369
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about damn time...
And why do you think that? Dropping VLIW won't magically increase GCN performance. They aren't running the same code. The effect this will have for GCN drivers depends on how many engineers AMD still had devoted to the VLIW DX11 cards. Well, at least these cards' support ended at a better time than the DX10 cards did.
#5195397
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I noticed whenever a game or benchmark supports a new version of DX or OpenGL (or in this case, Vulkan), shortly after AMD transitions incompatible hardware to legacy. It seems nvidia does the same thing but they wait several months longer. Nvidia also does a better job at maintaining their legacy drivers. As a linux user, AMD is a decent choice if you want long-term support. The HD2000 series and newer are actively maintained, though it does take a seat behind the HD7000 series and newer.
#5195398
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Makes building drivers for DX12 easier I guess...
#5195403
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Every major hardware manufacturer do this:Intel,Nvidia,Samsung,even Apple. Can't do anything for oldest HW in these days.What to improve?Nothing. The world evoluate to new hw.
Nvidia's Legacy support for its DX10 products will continue until April 2016. Nvidia has very long support cycles for its older products. And drivers aren't just about performance, but also about bug fixes. All new games are not demanding, but may require a driver fix to work correctly. Newer drivers can also mean proper support for newer Windows.
#5195455
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I hope this means better drivers for relevant cards though i am a little disappointed since my richland apu isn't really that old.
#5195479
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when i said about damn time i meant to say they are finally putting the 5000 series into legacy after 6 years of support
And I just don't see how it makes sense to be happy about something being moved to legacy just for the sake of it
#5195482
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Moderator
They had a good run, 5000 series had a long support cycle and really there were no new performance boosts for non gcn cards for a long while now.
#5195501
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because it is time for it.. and tbh the 5000 series did not had any improvements for a long time...
Improvements aren't just performance related The HD 5000 and 6000 series did get official Catalyst drivers for Windows 10. A recent driver also mentioned fixing crashing issues for World of Warships. So there has obviously been some work behind the scenes for these cards this last year. I particularly don't care whether it's mainline or Legacy after six years, but bug fixes and support for new OS should still be provided.
#5195560
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Nvidia's last word is that Fermi's DX12 driver will come in time for the first DX12 games
#5195569
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What I find ironic is that if NVIDIA were the one cutting support for every pre-Kepler graphics card, a lot of the people who are happy about this would be trashing NVIDIA and praising AMD.
#5195580
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Nvidia's last word is that Fermi's DX12 driver will come in time for the first DX12 games
And you believe that? How much life you think its left in Fermi cards? Even Kepler seems underpowered right now.
#5195584
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like fermi non existent dx 12 support?
Are you joking? Nvidia said Fermi is supported for DX12. Fermi is 2010-, and is supported, while the last non-GCN cards, the 6000 series are 2011 and earlier and are not supported. That's a full two years in difference of support. Granted, the TeraScale --> GCN transition was much more extreme than Fermi --> Kepler (derivative of Fermi if anything), but don't go making up false information.
#5195599
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And you believe that? How much life you think its left in Fermi cards? Even Kepler seems underpowered right now.
Yes I do believe that. Nvidia knew fully well what they were doing when they promised DX12 support for Fermi. It's a big promise and it'd be a severe blow to Nvidia's image if they were to go back on their words.
#5195716
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GCN 1.0 will likely be supported for a while yet, maybe even as long as GCN 1.2. GCN 1.1 and 1.2 are really just GCN 1.0 with additional features, the legacy cards being dropped are a completely different architecture. Nvidia can support older video cards simply because they are a similar architecture I believe, at least going back a few cards. Their older cards would be like GCN 1.0 is to 1.2? The other thing with Nvidia is that they may support older cards, but the code for those cards may remain unchanged. The non-architecture specific stuff is still updated though. If you owned one of these cards it would be still attractive to upgrade, but the benefits are likely to be small. It's the same with AMD cards, somebody will probably put out an updated legacy driver with the architecture specific driver files from the Crimson Legacy driver, with the rest of the components upgraded. Like I was saying though, GCN 1.0 is too similar to GCN 1.2, it wouldn't make sense for them to drop support for it as support is very much considerably easier than supporting VLIW4.
The HD 2000-4000 series and 5000-6000 series also had a similiar architecture though. Many were surprised about the DX10 VLIW cards being dropped since they were so similar to the DX11 VLIW cards. I get what you're saying, but AMD's history gives reason for doubt.
#5195729
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A company announces that no more WHQL drivers will arrive for a ~5+ year old product, therefore, "AMD is out of control"? ROFL and that's coming from a guy desperately clinging to 2006 hardware.. Perspective. It's pretty important. [spoiler] Go Google memes on your own time 😉 [/spoiler]
#5195735
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Moderator
Let's keep it nice folks.

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