AMD moves Radeon 5000 and 6000 series to legacy status

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bman212121

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I don't see this posted here yet, but it was announced that the older HD series cards are no longer going to receive driver updates.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9815/amd-moves-pre-gcn-gpus-to-legacy

It definitely seems like a pretty quick turn over for these cards, given that a lot of games still run just fine on them. I'm thinking this would be the most similar to when Nvidia went to their unified shaders on the 8xxx series and dropped support quickly for older cards. Hopefully that means that AMD will continue to least support the 7xxx series for a long time to come.
 
5 years since they (6XXXX series) came out? Maybe they've wrangled almost everything out of them at this point. Don't know if the codebase is such that game-specific hotfixes will benefit older hardware and newer hardware alike (or at least to sufficient degree). We complain enough about newer drivers, keeping staff on the even older hardware eats into that!
 
The 5870 was released in 2009, over half a decade ago, and about half a decade for the 6970. Support has been amazing IMHO, I really can't complain.

These were fantastically engineered cards as per the amount of them still in use. I really liked my 5870 overclocked to 1ghz, amazing card. Ran about 4 years 24/7, still running in a backup Gaming rig.

Sad to see it go to legacy status, but completely understandable.
 
I think they(AMD) are correct, those are cards are barely capable for actual gaming and a waste of resources they can spend with more recent cards to improve more and more things.... I think HD7000 series will be longer supported because of GCN architecture.
 
Guess I'm lucky to have just switched away from my 6950 Crossfire X setup... I really don't think this is fair of AMD, but chances are people will be able to force updates for a while yet in the same way they add support for mobile cards back with community-written mods.

Araxie said:
I think they(AMD) are correct, those are cards are barely capable for actual gaming and a waste of resources they can spend with more recent cards to improve more and more things.... I think HD7000 series will be longer supported because of GCN architecture.
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That's complete nonsense. I was running 6950 Crossfire X (with shaders unlocked to 6970) and the only thing that pushed me to get new cards was planning to move from 1920x1200 to 4K. Most titles were still completely playable at 60+FPS and most if not all settings on high. The only major exception to that I can think of that I've tried recently would be The Witcher 3 -- had to turn that down to medium, but it still looked fine.
 
silent-circuit said:
I really don't think this is fair of AMD, but chances are people will be able to force updates for a while yet in the same way they add support for mobile cards back with community-written mods.
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why?. why keep wasting resources in 5+ old cards?. what's the point to keep a Xfire 6950 setup existing a lot of cards that offer way more performance in single card. so is completely unnecessary.
 
The issue is not age as much as it is architecture. These were their last cards before they moved to GCN. These older cards still used VLIW, just like the older Radeon 2000-4000 series cards, even though these were DX11. The Radeon 2000-4000 series cards were dumped to legacy a while back, and never even got official AMD Win10 drivers (Microsoft does include a basic driver that works though, but no control panel, etc). Owners of 5000 and 6000 series cards should be lucky that they even have an actual Win10 driver to work with :rolleyes:

I can sort of understand why AMD did this, given the old architecture. This should allow them to focus their limited resources exclusively on GCN now. At the same time, these cards really are NOT that old in the grand scheme of things. Nvidia still supports cards going back to the 400 series (Fermi) with current drivers. The 400 series competed with the 5000 series from AMD. Older nvidia cards, even going back to ancient cards like the 8800GT, are on an older driver but still get driver updates from nvidia on a regular basis. It's a lot harder to support AMD when you know that you cards will end up in the trash can due to lack of driver support long before they actually become too slow for games. I'm feeling this now with the 2x 4870x2 in my second computer. Despite the age of the cards, it still provides plenty of GPU power even for newer games like GTAV, but getting them to work in Windows 10, especially in crossfire, without official AMD drivers, was a fucking nightmare.
 
silent-circuit said:
That's complete nonsense. I was running 6950 Crossfire X (with shaders unlocked to 6970) and the only thing that pushed me to get new cards was planning to move from 1920x1200 to 4K. Most titles were still completely playable at 60+FPS and most if not all settings on high. The only major exception to that I can think of that I've tried recently would be The Witcher 3 -- had to turn that down to medium, but it still looked fine.
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and as happened with the witcher 3 would also happened with any other modern AAA tittle as those are as heavy as The witcher 3... I hardly thing even with AMD optimized games as DAI would be any different..
 
GotNoRice said:
I can sort of understand why AMD did this, given the old architecture. This should allow them to focus their limited resources exclusively on GCN now. .
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exactly I would prefer to AMD spend all of the available resources with more recent cards and offer more competitive features and performance, they need to attract more people to join red team and to achieve that they have to be competitive and not just focus in old cards. Crimson drivers are a good step in my opinion as they need to clean their "shit drivers" image that everyone have and that require money involved..
 
Araxie said:
and as happened with the witcher 3 would also happened with any other modern AAA tittle as those are as heavy as The witcher 3... I hardly thing even with AMD optimized games as DAI would be any different..
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Played through Dragon Age Inquisition with zero issues, highest settings, 1920x1200 on that setup. Is it smoother with the 980Tis? Of course. The 6000 series, particularly in Crossfire, are still perfectly capable though. CD Projekt Red does many things well, but optimization has never been one of them.

EDIT: Actually started playing DAI again today, so thanks in a way for reminding me of it... The 980Ti SLI setup stutters in cutscenes much like the 6950 Crossfire setup did. Likely this has more to do with Bioware using a badly coded frame limiting system for in-engine cutscenes than it does the 6950s (or god forbid, the 980Tis) not having enough power. Mind you this is still at 1920x1200 since I've gone back to my old monitor, unhappy with any of the ones I've tried so far (5 at this point, fingers crossed number 6 is the charm) -- call me picky. Hopefully once I decide which 34" 21:9 display I'm going with I'll be able to offer a better idea of 980Ti SLI performance at higher resolution.

Araxie said:
why?. why keep wasting resources in 5+ old cards?. what's the point to keep a Xfire 6950 setup existing a lot of cards that offer way more performance in single card. so is completely unnecessary.
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I don't doubt there are plenty of single cards that offer better performance, but unlike me, not everyone has the money to drop on new cards.
 
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I think you guys may have missed this, but AMD doesn't actually not support legacy cards, they just don't get the same frequency of updates. Big issues are dealt with, if they come up.
 
AMD website says HD 7700+ supported. Were there any cards in the HD 7xxx series < the 7750?
 
Quix said:
I think you guys may have missed this, but AMD doesn't actually not support legacy cards, they just don't get the same frequency of updates. Big issues are dealt with, if they come up.
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Yup, AMD supports their legacy cards.

Technically for marketing's sake they could just keep the old code in the drivers, it just wouldn't update as often, but they could claim they are still actively supported. Which would still be true.

I appreciate their being upfront about it though.
 
While it's official now, in many ways it feels like they already dumped the 5000 and 6000 series a while back. While they do have Windows 10 drivers, they are among the few DX11 cards that cannot play DX12 games using Feature level 11_0. They would have been stuck playing DX12 games using an older DX11 code path while everyone else with DX11 cards (including Nvidia 400 series cards that are just as old) would be able to play in DX12 using feature level 11_0.

The lifetime expectancy of computer hardware is going up, not down. While there may have been a time when a piece of computer hardware that was only a few years old was already obsolete, we're now at a point where ~10 years is a more reasonable expectation. Compounding that, you used to be able to spend $300 and get something like a 9700 Pro AGP which was pretty much the best GPU out at the time. Now if you want the best you're looking at spending several thousand dollars. For that amount of cash, those cards sure as shit better last for a long time. Knowing that AMD will abandon them after only a few years does not make AMD look very appealing. Maybe if you toss your computer in the garbage every 18 months and start fresh that isn't a big deal.
 
Quix said:
I think you guys may have missed this, but AMD doesn't actually not support legacy cards, they just don't get the same frequency of updates. Big issues are dealt with, if they come up.
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Yakk said:
Yup, AMD supports their legacy cards.
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Wrong.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy3&os=Windows 10 - 64

AMD said:
These products have been moved to a legacy support model and no additional driver releases are planned.
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AMD said:
As a courtesy to our valued supporters we are providing a final &#8220;As Is&#8221; Beta driver
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A final beta driver, how fucking generous of them. :rolleyes:

The 4000 series was moved to Legacy, and never even got a Windows 10 driver. Does the release of a new Major OS version count as "Big issues are dealt with, if they come up."? Guess not. :rolleyes:
 
you dont have an amd card, why do you even give a damn?

if you look back at the sigs, people with amd cards have no issue with this.

im starting to smell something...
 
The Mac said:
you dont have an amd card, why do you even give a damn?
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While it makes sense in your case, for some of us, the extent of the computer hardware that we have experience with isn't summarized by a single line of text in a signature. Some of us even work with and build computers as part of our job :eek: :rolleyes:
 
GotNoRice said:
Knowing that AMD will abandon them after only a few years does not make AMD look very appealing. Maybe if you toss your computer in the garbage every 18 months and start fresh that isn't a big deal.
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Except it isn't 18 months. it's 5 or 6 years depending no if you have a 5000 or 6000 series card. And it's also is worth noting Nvidia did the same thing with cards from the same generation (200/300) last year. They also plan to cease all support period for those cards April 1 next year.

I have a 5770 and I feel I more than got my moneys worth.
 
GotNoRice said:
While it makes sense in your case, for some of us, the extent of the computer hardware that we have experience with isn't summarized by a single line of text in a signature. Some of us even work with and build computers as part of our job :eek: :rolleyes:
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LoL, I would need an entire thread with dedicated post to signature all of my 12 machines at the home bunker. xD.
 
My primary card is a 5850 and I'm fine with this

6 years is a long time to support a card

Its not like they have been doing performance optimization on the HD series cards lately so whats the point?
 
GotNoRice said:
Wrong.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy3&os=Windows 10 - 64





A final beta driver, how fucking generous of them. :rolleyes:

The 4000 series was moved to Legacy, and never even got a Windows 10 driver. Does the release of a new Major OS version count as "Big issues are dealt with, if they come up."? Guess not. :rolleyes:
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Who the hell asked you to keep 4 cards from 2008? Expecting drivers that are catered to those cards in 2015-16 is delusional. I have a 4870 and that rig works with windows 10 so besides crossfire I am not sure what you are bitching about. To sum it up. Boo fucking hoo
 
GotNoRice said:
The 4000 series was moved to Legacy, and never even got a Windows 10 driver. Does the release of a new Major OS version count as "Big issues are dealt with, if they come up."? Guess not. :rolleyes:
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4000 series didn't have 8 support, so no one expected 10 support. If you going to be angry with someone over drivers choose Intel which isn't supporting Sandy Bridge and back in 10, except for the existing 7 drivers.
 
Araxie said:
LoL, I would need an entire thread with dedicated post to signature all of my 12 machines at the home bunker. xD.
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or my 4 at home, and over a dozen at work on my 2008r2 exchange server domain i built and service (cheap ass boss wont pay to have me MS certified, so i have to figure it all out myself).

lol
 
Ryokurin said:
Nvidia did the same thing with cards from the same generation (200/300) last year.
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The Radeon 5000 series competed with the Geforce 400 series. They were the first DX11 cards from each company and were released only a few months apart. The Geforce 400 series shows no signs of being moved to a legacy driver any time soon, and in fact, you can even use them to play DX12 games in Feature level 11_0.

Even if support for the Geforce 200 series ends next year, comparable AMD cards (Radeon 4000 series, etc) already got dumped into legacy, and got their final driver, way back in 2013...

Ryokurin said:
4000 series didn't have 8 support, so no one expected 10 support.
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Not sure where you got that info. 4000 series did support 8, here is a link:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy2&os=Windows 8 - 64
 
razor1 said:
Man what are you building skynet lol?
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i'm trying badly.. hahaha.

not well.. 6 company servers, 2 Separated VM for Server Databases + backup, 1 home/Family server, my actual personal machine which are the signature now which are going to be passed to my brother, my new machine which are skylake based still not in use because it will be under a custom loop that im still building, 1 Folding machine and my brother machine.. xD lol yes a lot of machine we had to do a lot of work here with wiring THHN #12 and dual 30AMP breaker most of the machines are 24/7.
 
GotNoRice said:
The Radeon 5000 series competed with the Geforce 400 series. They were the first DX11 cards from each company and were released only a few months apart. The Geforce 400 series shows no signs of being moved to a legacy driver any time soon, and in fact, you can even use them to play DX12 games in Feature level 11_0.

Even if support for the Geforce 200 series ends next year, comparable AMD cards (Radeon 4000 series, etc) already got dumped into legacy, and got their final driver, way back in 2013...



Not sure where you got that info. 4000 series did support 8, here is a link:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy2&os=Windows 8 - 64
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Fermi and back is legacy, that includes the 405, so roughly everything 2009 and back. Nvidia supports legacy cards the same way AMD does, bug fixes only, no optimization.
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answ...ol-windows-driver-support-for-legacy-products

And by support I'm talking about native drivers. Windows 10 will work all the way down to the WDDM 1.0 driver level, so if you absolutely had to you could get by with a Vista graphics driver. The 4000 series only got WDDM 1.1 drivers, or Windows 7 level. the 5000 series got to WDDM 1.2 or Windows 8 level.

Nvidia has promised WDDM 2.0 drivers for the 400 series, but they aren't available, and no one knows to the level of support those cards can handle. So at least for the time being the 400 series only supports Windows 8.1 level features. and really WDDM 2.0 support isn't really going to help games out that much, even with feature 11 support. Those cards are pretty weak nowadays.

If you are thinking that the move of the 5000/6000 series to legacy means that they cards will no longer work that isn't true. The cards will work, it will just not be able to use some of the added resource management or scheduling that later cards will support. It's nothing new and it's not going to really hurt anyone's windows experience.
 
Araxie said:
i'm trying badly.. hahaha.

not well.. 6 company servers, 2 Separated VM for Server Databases + backup, 1 home/Family server, my actual personal machine which are the signature now which are going to be passed to my brother, my new machine which are skylake based still not in use because it will be under a custom loop that im still building, 1 Folding machine and my brother machine.. xD lol yes a lot of machine we had to do a lot of work here with wiring THHN #12 and dual 30AMP breaker most of the machines are 24/7.
Click to expand...


damn I'm sure your bunker is nice and toasty :D!
 
Ryokurin said:
Fermi and back is legacy, that includes the 405, so roughly everything 2009 and back. Nvidia supports legacy cards the same way AMD does, bug fixes only, no optimization.
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answ...ol-windows-driver-support-for-legacy-products
Click to expand...

Fermi is NOT legacy. The only card in the "400 series" that is Legacy is the 405, which is not a Fermi card. The 405 uses the GT218 core which is from the 200 series. Nvidia has a history of re-branding a few ultra-low-end cards in this manner.

And even for the cards that are Legacy, Nvidia actually updates the legacy driver; AMD does not. Once again, the cards that Nvidia is talking about ending support for next April are comparable to cards that AMD already dropped support for over two years ago (4000 series and earlier, last legacy driver is from 2013).

In AMD lingo, "Legacy" is slang for abandoned cards. Yes, thankfully, since Windows 10 is new and they have Windows 10 drivers, they will continue to "work" for a long time even with their abandoned driver.
 
From the Nvidia link, Legacy drivers get bug fixes as as it mentions it won't happen past April.

Do you have proof that AMD needed to release a newer driver to fix a bug? if not the fact that it hasn't been updated since 2013 is relative.
 
Maybe you should consider updating video cards more than once per 5 years if this impacts you. Geez.
 
For those that really want to keep their older cards going you should take a look at linux. The open source drivers have communities around them that keep developing them and you'll likely get updates for another 5+ years. You can also make your own updates or take part in submitting bugs should you feel like being constructive.
 
Darakian said:
For those that really want to keep their older cards going you should take a look at linux. The open source drivers have communities around them that keep developing them and you'll likely get updates for another 5+ years. You can also make your own updates or take part in submitting bugs should you feel like being constructive.
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Sadly, when getting newer drivers means you lose the ability to do 90% of what you wanted to do with the card in the first place, it's not much of a consolation prize. Especially considering the newer drivers aren't actually better, often providing far worse performance in Linux than the old ones did in Windows doing the exact same thing in the 10% of scenarios where that's even possible.
 
silent-circuit said:
Sadly, when getting newer drivers means you lose the ability to do 90% of what you wanted to do with the card in the first place, it's not much of a consolation prize. Especially considering the newer drivers aren't actually better, often providing far worse performance in Linux than the old ones did in Windows doing the exact same thing in the 10% of scenarios where that's even possible.
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They're closer to 60-70%, but a fair point. Still, all things die in time and using older equipment in a linux system is a decent end of life scenario for most equipment.
 
silent-circuit said:
Sadly, when getting newer drivers means you lose the ability to do 90% of what you wanted to do with the card in the first place, it's not much of a consolation prize.
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So what exactly are you wanting to do with a 6+ year old GPU from 2008 or 2009?
There isn't much a GTX285 or HR4870 can do in this era, other than consume far more power than the meager performance can muster.

Especially considering the newer drivers aren't actually better, often providing far worse performance in Linux than the old ones did in Windows doing the exact same thing in the 10% of scenarios where that's even possible.
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The new drivers aren't better for the older GPUs because, as it has been said, they are only receiving bug fixes and no further optimizations.
With GNU/Linux, newer drivers are absolutely necessary in order to keep up with the latest kernels and graphics libraries, which if they don't, will break functionality completely; been there, done this, many times myself.
 
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