Saturday, April 21st 2012
![ATI Catalyst](https://tpucdn.com/images/news/catalyst-v1723816949774.png)
AMD to Drop Support for Pre-HD 5000 GPUs with Catalyst 12.7
AMD will conclude driver updates for pre-Evergreen, or pre-Radeon HD 5000 (that's HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000) series GPUs, starting this summer. The change could take effect with Catalyst 12.7 (around July). Users of these older GPUs can use the (then) latest driver (Catalyst 12.6) to run their older DirectX 10/10.1 graphics cards. The elimination of pre-Evergreen GPUs could also slim down the driver package a bit, in terms of file-size.
Source:
Phoronix
130 Comments on AMD to Drop Support for Pre-HD 5000 GPUs with Catalyst 12.7
If you are going to phase out support at least do it grandually, phase out one generation at a time as you introduce a new generation. Don't just axe 3 generations of cards in one swipe, especially not when they were selling as flagship cards just 2.5 years ago. That is just way too short of a life span, I would expect at least 3 year of support with new drivers out of a card. At least long enough to get through the (common) warranty period...
I totally hate it when company drops driver support just before the release of new OS.
On one hand that saves them the work but on the other hand it screws users big time as well.
With 1 proper driver, they at least get proper support, even if it's a bit buggy here and there. It's usually better than no support at all.
I had a Powercolor 4850 with a cooler so silent I had to look to see if my hard drive activity light blinked to check if my computer was on when I came into my room so I knew that all I had to do was turn my monitor on. lol
This is UNDER LOAD!
The visual artifacts when running with AA or/and AF in some games (BF2, BFBC2) such as flickering textures, missing water, non working Vsync etc,etc means i dont bother updating anymore anyway.