Tuesday, January 2nd 2018
AMD Will Fix Adrenalin Driver Game Incompatibility Issues After All
Right in the last corner of 2017, as our collective minds were getting ready to move onto a new year at full warp speed, we covered this bit of news regarding AMD's Adrenalin Driver incompatibility with some older game titles under DX9 ("C&C3 Tiberium Wars," "C&C3 Kane's Wrath," "C&C Red Alert 3," "C&C Red Alert 3 Uprising," "C&C4 Tiberian Twilight," "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition.") At the time, AMD stated that they were "unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue." User backlash ensued, and with the new year comes a new AMD: one that has found the valuable engineering resources needed towards working on a fix for said issues.
Apparently, the problem stemmed from a driver-level incompatibility with SAGE engine games, and AMD's Terry Makedon took to Twitter to make things better for fans of those games, saying that "We will for sure fix this bug with SAGE engine games in an upcoming hotfix." All in all, a good guy move by AMD. For sure, the initial statement might not echo the full sentiment of the entire company on the issue, though it's a fact that it was an AMD employee that started the whole debate. That said, the user backlash certainly goes to show that PC gamers want their systems to always have backwards compatibility with older games - one of the more important differentiating factors between PCs and games consoles.
Sources:
Terry Makedon's Twitter, via Overclock 3D
Apparently, the problem stemmed from a driver-level incompatibility with SAGE engine games, and AMD's Terry Makedon took to Twitter to make things better for fans of those games, saying that "We will for sure fix this bug with SAGE engine games in an upcoming hotfix." All in all, a good guy move by AMD. For sure, the initial statement might not echo the full sentiment of the entire company on the issue, though it's a fact that it was an AMD employee that started the whole debate. That said, the user backlash certainly goes to show that PC gamers want their systems to always have backwards compatibility with older games - one of the more important differentiating factors between PCs and games consoles.
71 Comments on AMD Will Fix Adrenalin Driver Game Incompatibility Issues After All
And no, there is no such thing as overreacting. Companies need the pressure from tech media to keep up good work. For example without TPU that Intel ME situation may be long lost in time.
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I so much want a Vega refresh card with one of those massive custom coolers. I wish those miners would let gamers order even some cards, but the real answer would be an higher production of chips. It is possible that there will be double release from AMD, since both updated Ryzen and refreshed Vega will be manufactured with 12 nm process and they have to expect a huge demand for both categories. It seems current Vega is slowly out of stores, so I'm pretty sure they just moved straight on to release the new models. Nvidia is also ready with Volta to release their cards at the same time or slightly before.
Think for a second. Without tech site reporting, that AMD support thread was end of the line. That “ray_m” guy from AMD locked the thread from any further discussion. Would they fix then? Probably not.
AMD need the whip on the ass to keep good driver support. Relying on “Good Will” to fix stuff is just naive.
Also AMD answer was too fast to be taken seriously. Also Lisa Su is still transitioning after Raja left.
Overwatch players complain and are forced to sit on old drivers for a year. Waiting with each release...AMD sits on it.
DX9 players bitch for a day and AMD engineers make a stupid comment...AMD suddenly goes to work.
Yeah this really may be the last time I use AMD GPUs. nVidia does stupid stuff on hardware and drivers too but AMD's support of their Radeon line has been worse than I've ever seen it lately.
community.amd.com/people/ray_m
Its ones like that I ignore completely.
About the only issue I've ever ran into with Overwatch since release was when they introduced Doomfist but blizzard put out several patches after that and by the 3rd one everything was back to norm and still is.