AMD's Radeon driver moves Windows 7 to legacy support

[HEXUS]

And the latest 21.6.1 driver no longer supports pre-Polaris graphics cards / APUs.

Read more.

[Tabbykatze]

Wow, that is a huge amount to be on the chopping board.

So Nvidia is dropping support for anything older than their 2014 Maxwell series and AMD is dropping support for anything older than their 2016 RX 400 series in their current upcoming drivers. I suppose on the AMD side, if they "support" any model between the 7900 and Rx 300 series, it's all one big block as they were all variations and improvements on GCN.

[DanceswithUnix]

The RX480 is five years old in a few days time, so that seems reasonable driver support that it is still going.

Though here in Linux land I'm on open source driver for my R9 285 so no change for me.

[cheesemp]

To be fair to AMD they've been dropping new features onto these old cards for quite a while (advantage of GCN long life span). I've not seen Nvidia do anything for a card feature wise once they are 2 generations old (other than security patches). With my rx480 I'm still getting big changes such as FSR - Is an equivalent 1060 got anything for awhile?

[Tabbykatze]

To be fair to AMD they've been dropping new features onto these old cards for quite a while (advantage of GCN long life span). I've not seen Nvidia do anything for a card feature wise once they are 2 generations old (other than security patches). With my rx480 I'm still getting big changes such as FSR - Is an equivalent 1060 got anything for awhile?

I think the only thing I'm aware of was the Nvidia Voice and Camera Background removal iirc?

[3dcandy]

Perfectly adequate driver support. 5 years in graphics cards is acceptable I think.
Does mean that the current cards I have need changing though and that will cost as the price is so high, though they *do* appear to be easing a tad

[LSG501]

Don't see an issue personally...

Windows 7 isn't supported anymore by MS and the drivers last drivers will still be available, they'll just not be updated anymore.

If you're still running windows 7 now you kind have to expect lack of support.

[DanceswithUnix]

Don't see an issue personally...

Well the cards will still be usable, I only see one potential niggle really.

My daughter is on an R9 380, if she simply updates her drivers then the card will stop working. So I guess when this ticks over I should put my family IT support hat on and go update her to the latest legacy driver. Perhaps Windows Update will do that for me. OTOH she is unlikely to do a driver update herself, so I could just leave it.

So yeah, no biggie, but I can see this turning into another little job for me to line up.

[kalniel]

I've not seen Nvidia do anything for a card feature wise once they are 2 generations old (other than security patches). With my rx480 I'm still getting big changes such as FSR - Is an equivalent 1060 got anything for awhile?

The 1060's had all the same new stuff that newer cards have, unless it requires RTX hardware. So things like freesync-based gsync, low latency mode (rebranding of pre-render frames?), DSR improvements, image sharpening, background framerate limiting, colour accuracy mode.. and that's just the stuff I've noticed.

[excalibur1814]

I remember a whole heap of people hating Windows 10 because... not really sure now. Where have they gone? Finally, it's your time to upgrade. "Waahhh I'll go to Ubuntu/Linux!"
"Bye bye for now."

Will the same people complain about Windows 11? Probably.

[Tabbykatze]

I remember a whole heap of people hating Windows 10 because... not really sure now. Where have they gone? Finally, it's your time to upgrade. "Waahhh I'll go to Ubuntu/Linux!"
"Bye bye for now."

Will the same people complain about Windows 11? Probably.

Not really fair, there are some quite legitimate reasons that Win 11 might raise the heckles of some of the more security or personal data privacy focused people.

*can hear Saracen crashing through walls on his way to this thread right now *

[3dcandy]

Not really fair, there are some quite legitimate reasons that Win 11 might raise the heckles of some of the more security or personal data privacy focused people.

*can hear Saracen crashing through walls on his way to this thread right now *

He crashed past me a few minutes ago muttering about privacy

[Tabbykatze]

He crashed past me a few minutes ago muttering about privacy

I joke but he does have good points, even though i don't share his perspective (I think that's the best way I can put it) on personal privacy and acceptable amounts of telemetry etc.

[3dcandy]

I joke but he does have good points, even though i don't share his perspective (I think that's the best way I can put it) on personal privacy and acceptable amounts of telemetry etc.

We joke but he does have points...
A debate is always good - as long as it doesn't get personal and away from the actual point. So Saracen, you missing out buddy!