AMD Radeon HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series Relegated to "Legacy Support"

btarunr · Nov 25, 2015

In a move that could affect scores of users of the still DirectX 11-compatible Radeon HD 6000 and HD 5000 series graphics cards; the company has reportedly decided to change their driver support model to legacy. This would entail "no additional driver releases" for these GPUs as they've "reached peak performance optimization as on November 24, 2015."

The last WHQL-signed driver that users of HD 6000 and HD 5000 series can use is Catalyst 15.7.1 WHQL; and those looking for a whiff of the new Radeon Software Crimson Edition, will be able to use a Radeon Software Crimson Edition Beta designed with legacy GPU support. The links to both drivers can be found in this page. With this AMD indicated that it will focus its driver development solely toward GPUs based on its Graphics CoreNext architecture (Radeon HD 7000 series and above).

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

NC37 · Nov 25, 2015

Better than nVidia promising support for older and never delivering.

HumanSmoke · Nov 25, 2015

Seems strangely arbitrary that the R5 230 retains support, but the identical VLIW5 Caicos HD 8450, HD 8470, HD 8490, HD 7450, HD 7470, and HD 6450 are on legacy support.

Constantine Yevseyev · Nov 25, 2015

HumanSmoke said:
Seems strangely arbitrary that the R5 230 retains support, but the identical VLIW5 Caicos

They are (obviously) talking about the "Mars"- or "Sun"-based R5 230, the one with 320 GCN 1.0-tier CUs, 64-bit memory bus and 1 GiB DDR3. God I wish that silicon was never released, I made a huge mistake buying a computer with it...

"Caicos" products are very rare anyway (HP packs them in HD 8490, and so does Lenovo, but those are all meant for low-end Intel Core i5/i7-equipped workstations). Their adaptations for security systems and other multi-monitor appliances are still going to be supported for a very long time.

Steevo · Nov 25, 2015

I just threw a R5 220 in my kids computer, mediocre at first but a huge overclock allowed for Minecraft and other games like TF2 to run smooth as silk at 1080

GhostRyder · Nov 25, 2015

NC37 said:
Better than nVidia promising support for older and never delivering.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

Well glad I got rid of my VLIW gpus awhile back as I had a feeling this would happen soon enough.

Mussels · Nov 25, 2015

At least AMD's legacy means they're getting drivers that work in windows 10, and not being abandoned completely.

HumanSmoke · Nov 25, 2015

Constantine Yevseyev said:
They are (obviously) talking about the "Mars"- or "Sun"-based R5 230, the one with 320 GCN 1.0-tier CUs, 64-bit memory bus and 1 GiB DDR3. God I wish that silicon was never released, I made a huge mistake buying a computer with it...
"Caicos" products are very rare anyway (HP packs them in HD 8490, and so does Lenovo, but those are all meant for low-end Intel Core i5/i7-equipped workstations). Their adaptations for security systems and other multi-monitor appliances are still going to be supported for a very long time.

One hurdle cleared I guess, but I wouldn't think it beyond the realms of possibility that some confusion might still occur given the proliferation of Caicos-based cards. Still, I guess it will only confuse the user if they manually search for the driver - because the card doesn't appear in the support list for the legacy driver.

RejZoR · Nov 25, 2015

AMD has the most retarded driver installer ever. It doesn't straight away say "Your GPU isn't supported" when you run the installer. No, you have to wait through the entire process of extraction, detection, selecting components and then it stops with an unexplained error. You have to then look through the install log to see what actually happened (like GPU not being supported). AMD, how more lazy can you be eh!? Jesus that's lame.

Ubersonic · Nov 25, 2015

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I was under the impression that if a card had HW support for DX11 then it had HW support for DX12 too? If so that's a rather poor showing form AMD.

Lol, maybe we will see the Omega drivers come back from the dead to add HD5000/6000 support XD

Mussels · Nov 25, 2015

Ubersonic said:
Correct me if I'm wrong here but I was under the impression that if a card had HW support for DX11 then it had HW support for DX12 too? If so that's a rather poor showing form AMD.

Lol, maybe we will see the Omega drivers come back from the dead to add HD5000/6000 support XD

not quite correct, no. and if you check into AMD's driver lineups its their GCN cards that have DX11/12, and are still supported (some low end 5K and 6K cards were rebrands, and not DX11/12)

H82LUZ73 · Nov 25, 2015

GhostRyder said:
Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

Well glad I got rid of my VLIW gpus awhile back as I had a feeling this would happen soon enough.

Yeah me too ,Glad my old ASUS motherboard blew up when it did,Allowed me to upgrade my system for these newer drivers

DidoD · Nov 25, 2015

Ubersonic said:
Correct me if I'm wrong here but I was under the impression that if a card had HW support for DX11 then it had HW support for DX12 too? If so that's a rather poor showing form AMD.

Lol, maybe we will see the Omega drivers come back from the dead to add HD5000/6000 support XD

You are wrong, AMD never said that 5000 and 6000 will support DX12, ONLY GPU`s with GCN architecture will support DX12 they said. NVidia said everything from 400 to our date will support it.
Link Link

john_ · Nov 25, 2015

Constantine Yevseyev said:
They are (obviously) talking about the "Mars"- or "Sun"-based R5 230, the one with 320 GCN 1.0-tier CUs, 64-bit memory bus and 1 GiB DDR3.

OEM? Because I think all R5 230 in the market are all HD 6450 rebrands. Even at AMD's own page for the R5 series you can find the specs only for that model, but on the other hand, AMD's page is in a worst mess than their reputation with wrong specs and models missing.

ZoneDymo · Nov 25, 2015

My poor ye olde HD6950 cries :'(

Ferrum Master · Nov 25, 2015

Well it has to be like that. RIP ATI VLIW.

Mussels · Nov 25, 2015

.

Constantine Yevseyev said:
That's how we end up with abominations such as R9 255 OEM, LOL. Like, how the hell is this considered "R9"? A rebranded HD 7750, with barely 1/5 of the compute power offered by the cheapest original R9 (R9 290 that is). Screw that! Stick that crap in my computer and I'm calling police, god damn it.

I uhh... have a 7750 4GB sitting around here as a spare part.

Aquinus · Nov 26, 2015

Clearly I picked a good time to upgrade from the 6870s to the 390. Now if only AMD could fix the stupid super cruise bug in Elite: Dangerous with the 390(x), I could actually be satisfied.

Honestly, I'm surprised that AMD supported VLIW5 and 4 as long as they did. I got a lot of use out of my 6870s.

medi01 · Nov 26, 2015

RejZoR said:
AMD has the most retarded driver installer ever. It doesn't straight away say "Your GPU isn't supported" when you run the installer. No, you have to wait through the entire process of extraction, detection, selecting components and then it stops with an unexplained error. You have to then look through the install log to see what actually happened (like GPU not being supported). AMD, how more lazy can you be eh!? Jesus that's lame.

Hmm, are you sure about that?
About a week ago I was trying to install Win10 driver on 4550 ATI Mobile Radeon.
Installer complained about "can't find any supported card" immediately.

Mussels · Nov 26, 2015

medi01 said:
Hmm, are you sure about that?
About a week ago I was trying to install Win10 driver on 4550 ATI Mobile Radeon.
Installer complained about "can't find any supported card" immediately.

i just tried these drivers on my laptop and it showed that nothing could be installed.

Constantine Yevseyev · Nov 26, 2015

medi01 said:
Installer complained about "can't find any supported card" immediately.

This happens when no supported devices have been found after the initial lookup, performed against your PCI-E bus and with a dictionary composed of all the PCI\VEN strings found in the *.INF files (shipped with the Catalyst package you've downloaded).

The other case is when system already has a known GPU, but some kind of promise is not met (like when a mismatching SUBSYS is encountered, or - rarely - revision). Then you'll simply be offered an update for your CCC, Install Manager, etc.

Just an observation.

StefanM · Nov 26, 2015

I noticed this driver nukes GPU accelerated OpenCL on my legacy Zacate APU.
Anyone else or am i the only one screwed?

Prima.Vera · Nov 29, 2015

nVidia has the 7xx series already to legacy, even if the drivers not shown this officially. Does anyone knows what were the best drivers for a 780 Ti, BEFORE nVidia start to downgrade their performance?? Thanks.

RejZoR · Nov 29, 2015

Bullshit. The E-450 (with HD6000 series GPU) was just dropped entirely. Not normal and not legacy drivers support it anymore. FU AMD.

Mussels · Nov 29, 2015

the E-series being dropped is unique and not related to the other problems. It seems like quite the oddity.

have you tried modded drivers to see if they resolve it?

these guys have modded drivers designed for the intel+AMD setups, but i'm sure you can just install the AMD side of things and see if it helps.

http://leshcatlabs.net/2015/11/07/leshcats-catalyst-15-11-beta-unifl/

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AMD Radeon HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series Relegated to "Legacy Support"

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

NC37

HumanSmoke

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