AMD Puts Radeon Vega and Polaris GPUs on a Slower Driver Update Track

[Fouquin]

imagine going back to 2010 and expecting that a GPU released in 2003 should receive driver updates, sounds laughable doesn't it ?

Ooooh yeah... Bad example. AMD released Catalyst 10.2 Legacy for Windows XP/Vista in 2010 for cards dating back to R300 from 2002...

 

[Evildead666]

Oh yeah sure then thats why It runs the same on Linux without issue right?

Try again please.


Sure, when they go to r/amd and r/amdhelp they get shut down and downvoted to oblivion, you know that gpus can do more than just run skyrim right?

Linux isn't Windows, that's a different kettle of fish.
Your card will not work exactly the same on Linux as on Windows, but that doesn't make the problem the drivers.

If it was the drivers, a lot of Vega users would have had problems.
(I'm running Win10, you may be running Win11, so there's that...)

edit: This statement below is bollocks on second thoughts. Apologies for making it.

If it was the drivers fault, explain why I haven't had issues ?
Do you think my driver files are different from yours ?

 

[kane nas]

Nvidia is still providing updated drivers to maxwell. From 2014. Kepler still gets security updates.

Meanwhile, AMD is putting vega, including APUs STILL being sold, on a "slower GPU update track" and GPUs as new as 2016 have been dropped entirely.

Remember this, the next time someone tries to tell you that those decrying AMD's worse drivers are just "trolls".

There is no reason to upgrade the driver since there are no more performance margins for this architecture, I suggest you see a comparison of 2023 between 580 and 1060, also AMD clearly said that it will upgrade the drivers if a serious bug appears that will create malfunctions as it has done in the past with older architectures, as for if the AMD drivers are "bad quality" from personal experience and having 5 pc at home with gtx1080,rtx2070,6800,6900xt,7800xt and a working rx580 in case of need I have not encountered any problem that was not solved with drivers from both companies.

 

[AusWolf]

I'm glad I moved to novideo in January.. I couldn't continue with the driver usues, bsods and all the other problems with my Vega 64. Almost impossible to play, VR, run even just basic encoding like OBS in any capacity and so much more.

Please everyone refrain from saying that there was "something wrong" with my build like everyone told me in r/AMD.

I can't recommend their gpus until they mature more driver wiese or unless people is on a budget, aside from that if you're running linux you're god with an AMD gpu.

They have matured. Your Vega 64 is old.

APUs aren't really made for cutting edge gaming, so I don't think they would lose much by missing on immediate patches to newly released CoD MW859's frame pacing.
Only really thing they need to is fixes for bugs that affect the day-to-day operations, which I believe is safe to say are rare enough at this point that they'd get away with infrequent updates; and security issues, which isn't unusual for them to be addressed outside normal patching cycles.

At first, I was worried by the news, but that's actually a good point.

 

[Guwapo77]

Well I won't have to worry about this for much longer. I am finally going back to Nvidia after 21 years as I can no longer deal with this roller coaster of emotions. AMD's drivers are good and I can't complain too much. My old Fury Xs got their last update in June '22, I know they been around since June '15, I think it could have used a few more updates since it still does 1080p nicely. Its time my money went to the best product available for performance, features, company support, and stability*. I say stability* because I know Nvidia has their issues like everyone else.

 

[RayneYoruka]

Linux isn't Windows, that's a different kettle of fish.
Your card will not work exactly the same on Linux as on Windows, but that doesn't make the problem the drivers.

Oh yeah, the linux drivers are much more matured and had no issues doing the same tasks, yet try again telling me that something is wrong in my system, I was using the same install as I had mid 2021 with my vega and its been fine with Nvidia, see that what you're saying makes no sense..?

If it was the drivers, a lot of Vega users would have had problems.

95% do, they go reddit and their posts end up being deleted because people giving them awful treattment, disregarding their issues and putting the blame in to something else or themselves even.., the same way you're doing right now.. see? Hence why I said in my original coment to NOT go for it.. ah yes.. maybe you're just like those reddit users trying to disregard my issues as "false" and non existant.

It seems that everytime try to discuss something anywhere in the internet the same happens over and over.

(I'm running Win10, you may be running Win11, so there's that...)

Ah yes.. why would I run windows 11 having Linux? What a waste.

They have matured. Your Vega 64 is old.

Same issues since 2019, the card had the least lifetime use compared to any other gpu I've owned, it was barely 2 years old when I got it. By that time Radeon VII was the best AMD had to offer, not even 5000 series were released, would you consider that.. old?

 

[cmguigamf]

I am never buying any other video cards other than Vega ones because of AMD Fluid motion being removed in the newer AMD cards. AMD Fluid motion Is like slice bread, its amazing. Its impossible for me to watch TV Shows, Movies (Blu-ray/4K/Motion2/True Theater) videos in general without having AMD Fluid motion enable.

With all due respect... ew? Why do that to yourself? Videos, especially TV and movies, look way worse with interpolation.

 

[ymdhis]

I've had something like eight Radeon cards dating back to the 9550 and had maybe one driver problem in total (a game crash, which was immediately fixed by updating to the then-current version of Catalyst). And one game I considered buying apparently did not work with Vega discrete cards.

The issue is with the Vega APUs. Cezanne released in 2021 and Barcelo in 2022.
It's too soon to make their support go into EoL

I've a feeling that AMD does not consider APU drivers important at all. The Cezanne drivers are missing some features that my Polaris and Vega dedicated cards had.

They also handle multi monitors differently; on Polaris/Vega if I turned off my HDMI connected amp, they stayed "active" as output devices while with Cezanne they completely disappear. This means that when I turn my HDMI amp with Cezanne, Windows then has no audio outputs, or if I have my amp on and turn off my primary monitor, the audio skips for 2-3 seconds as the output devices resync. Neither happened with dedicated cards. Granted this is more like an audio device issue, not a videocard one.

Nvidia is still providing updated drivers to maxwell. From 2014. Kepler still gets security updates.

Meanwhile, AMD is putting vega, including APUs STILL being sold, on a "slower GPU update track" and GPUs as new as 2016 have been dropped entirely.

Remember this, the next time someone tries to tell you that those decrying AMD's worse drivers are just "trolls".

Did anyone actually check if those old cards actually show different performances with the updates that roll out in current year? Or are those updates contain just a new version number and being made with a newer compiler?

 

[Craptacular]

Nvidia is still providing updated drivers to maxwell. From 2014. Kepler still gets security updates.

Meanwhile, AMD is putting vega, including APUs STILL being sold, on a "slower GPU update track" and GPUs as new as 2016 have been dropped entirely.

Remember this, the next time someone tries to tell you that those decrying AMD's worse drivers are just "trolls".

You are conflating the length of driver support with quality of drivers; those are not the same thing. You can have driver support for 10+ years and still have it be an unstable driver that causes BSOD frequently.

Vega APUs drivers are based off of the drivers of the discrete Vega GPUs, basically the Vega APUs have 6-7 years of mature driver support at this time even if they did just come out last year. If this was a brand-new architecture and they were dropping it 1 year later that makes sense but if you are just releasing a refreshed architecture 6-7 years later you can't really say you haven't already benefited from the previous 6-7 years of driver maturity of that architecture.

 

[WhitetailAni]

Give me a break, Polaris is 7 years old and Vega 6, imagine going back to 2010 and expecting that a GPU released in 2003 should receive driver updates, sounds laughable doesn't it ? Some of you have lost the scale of time passing by, these products have outlived their useful lifespan.

The growth rate of hardware has slowed. In 2010, an FX 5700 would not be able to do anything a GTX 460 could. The FX 5700 features: AGP, DX9.0a, and a whole 128MB of VRAM. You can't even download drivers from NVidia for it.
Meanwhile, the GTX 460 features PCIe 2.0, DX12 11_0, 1GB of VRAM, and an available driver that supports up to Windows 8.1. 7 year gap and light-years apart.

Compare that to today. 2016 featured Pascal. The 1060 6GB is a common favorite, how does it stack up to a 4060?
1060 6GB offers PCIe 3.0, DX12 12_1, 6GB of VRAM, and still has driver support.
4060 offers PCIe 4.0 (but only x8!), DX12 12_2, 8GB of VRAM, and also still has driver support.
Are they close in terms of performance? No. But the 1060 can run nearly the same games a 4060 can, while an FX 5700 can't do anything close.

Annoyed that I've only looked at NVidia cards? Have I the solution for you.
Radeon 9200. 2003. AGP, DX8.1, 128MB VRAM, but... look! You can get drivers for it.
Radeon HD 6850. 2010. PCIe 2.0, DX11.2, 1GB of VRAM, still has available drivers. For Windows 10! They aren't updated anymore, but they exist.

RX 480. 2016. Coincidentally it's the subject of the article, how nice! It features PCIe 3.0 x16, DX12 12_0, 8GB of VRAM, and also still gets driver updates
RX 7700. Released this year! Features PCIe 4.0 (at a full 16x), DX12 12_2, 12GB of VRAM, and still gets driver updates.

Guess what! The RX 480 is a perfectly capable gaming GPU if you don't want to play games from 2023. Which most don't, considering they're not very optimized right now. It still does just fine for slightly older titles.
In 2010, could the Radeon 9200 do that? No. Could the FX 5700 do that? No.
In 2023, can the 1060 6GB and the RX 480 do that? Yes! My GTX 690 from 2013 can run most games perfectly fine, as long as it's DX12 11_0 feature level isn't an issue!

EDIT:
I should note that the 11_0 feature support level is becoming more of an issue as more games use DX12 Ultimate - I upgraded to a 3060 partially because of this and partially because I got one for very cheap. However as long as you aren't playing bleeding edge stuff on a 10 year old GPU it's just fine - it handles Portal 2 at 1080p165 like a champ (albeit with some volume as it has only a single fan).

 

[Vya Domus]

The growth rate of hardware has slowed.

You have it backwards, this is an argument for less need of driver updates not more because things don't change that often and when they do it's usually nothing major that completely breaks compatibility. The point is people didn't expect such lengthy driver support back then when it did make a difference, why are they doing it now ?

Is there any game that you know of which doesn't run on a Polaris or Vega GPU and would be in need of a driver update ?

AMD released Catalyst 10.2 Legacy for Windows XP/Vista in 2010 for cards dating back to R300 from 2002...

Does that update actually contain any changes or is it just repackaged to work on those newer OSes ?

 

[remekra]

They should just include them in the newest drivers for RDNA but don't make any changes so that people would not get mad about GPUs that are 7 years old will no longer get a new driver every month. Basically a placebo.
I don't understand the outcry, you don't need a new driver every month for an old GPU. You won't get magical performance gains from newest games. I don't cry that my Mediatek wifi card does not get a new driver as my wifi speeds will not increase anyway.
Putting driver for old GPUs on a back burner and focusing on newer cards simply makes sense.

 

[AusWolf]

Same issues since 2019, the card had the least lifetime use compared to any other gpu I've owned, it was barely 2 years old when I got it. By that time Radeon VII was the best AMD had to offer, not even 5000 series were released, would you consider that.. old?

Not old in the strict sense, but old in a sense that drivers weren't that good back then. Heck, my 5700 XT had lots of driver issues (among others). The RX 6000 series, though, is rock solid.

Did anyone actually check if those old cards actually show different performances with the updates that roll out in current year? Or are those updates contain just a new version number and being made with a newer compiler?

In general, I see little point to update drivers as long as the one you have installed works. "Game ready" drivers didn't exist when I started building PCs (they came on a CD, and that's it), I don't know why they're needed now.

 

[Evildead666]

1. Oh yeah, the linux drivers are much more matured and had no issues doing the same tasks, yet try again telling me that something is wrong in my system, I was using the same install as I had mid 2021 with my vega and its been fine with Nvidia, see that what you're saying makes no sense..?


2. 95% do, they go reddit and their posts end up being deleted because people giving them awful treattment, disregarding their issues and putting the blame in to something else or themselves even.., the same way you're doing right now.. see? Hence why I said in my original coment to NOT go for it.. ah yes.. maybe you're just like those reddit users trying to disregard my issues as "false" and non existant.

3. It seems that everytime try to discuss something anywhere in the internet the same happens over and over.



4. Ah yes.. why would I run windows 11 having Linux? What a waste.



Same issues since 2019, the card had the least lifetime use compared to any other gpu I've owned, it was barely 2 years old when I got it. By that time Radeon VII was the best AMD had to offer, not even 5000 series were released, would you consider that.. old?

1. linux isn't Windows. Just because Nvidia card works, doesn't make it an AMD driver problem.

2. 95% ? Wow, so I'm in the 5% that had no problems ?
You're just making stuff up, which doesn't help anything.
You brought up that AMD drivers were the source of all of your AMD Vega problems.

3. Its not a discussion when you say categorically the drivers are the problem. That's a statement.

4. You stated you reinstalled Windows 4 times...

 

[Jism]

Drivers where not even needed if game devs would talk straight to the hardware rather through drivers. But that's a different discussion.

Ofcourse you set the priority of driver development to the latest cards. What works on RDNA might not work on GCN and such. It would be complicated to test all these different combinations and time consuming.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

Give me a break, Polaris is 7 years old and Vega 6, imagine going back to 2010 and expecting that a GPU released in 2003 should receive driver updates, sounds laughable doesn't it ?

Again, the release date has little or nothing to do with it. Products with both Polaris and Vega are still being sold today. AMD released mobile APUs this year with Vega.

Does getting full support and driver updates for products that you can buy new sound laughable?

Some of you have lost the scale of time passing by, these products have outlived their useful lifespan.

I guess somebody should tell AMD.

 

[AusWolf]

3. Its not a discussion when you say categorically the drivers are the problem. That's a statement.

Also, without stating what the nature of the problem was. It's like saying that an extra £1,000 a month would solve all my problems. While the extra cash would certainly help, that statement is incomplete without looking into my finances first. You can't say "driver problem" without looking into what the problem actually is.

Does getting full support and driver updates for products that you can buy new sound laughable?

That's a valid question. Another valid question from the other side is, whether full support with monthly driver updates are actually necessary. Many times, they're not. I don't even update drivers monthly on my 7800 XT, just when it's needed, or when a new major version comes out.

 

[DanglingPointer]

Meh...
Switch to linux and run latest stable Mesa driver and you're fine! Mesa is built by everyone including AMD of course but not exclusively. In fact much of the code is updated by Valve and other people and orgs with a stake to having a working driver!

It isn't just AMD, same thing with Intel graphics drivers! They're supported in Mesa for many older gen iGPUs that can't even run Dolphin Wii emulator on Windows with Vulkan, but works flawlessly on Linux with Vulkan trashing Windows in FPS performance! Even old ivybridge iGPUs that are piss-weak can run Dolphin Emulator for 99% of Wii games with Vulkan! No chance with Windows and official drivers!

 

[BetrayerX]

 

[Random_User]

People say the cards are old. But they still are capable of many workloads. from HTPC, to gaming. And many people bought them not because of wanting to buy old cards. But because not everyone is an elitist, capable of buying the overpriced 7900XT or 3080 for a grand or more with another grand for overpriced LC. Thus every buyer deserves equally good treatment.
I'm not mention the vega APU support.... These cards sell to this day. Heck, I am sure the amount of working RX 580 is miles bigger, than all Navi1,2,3 sold combined.
By this logic, RDNA1 would be cut soon as well, and RDNA3 desktop APUs gonna get the same treatment soon after arrival. But old cards still have unsolved bugs. And RDNA ones will have bugs when reaching EoL either.

This is akin to the game industry and software, when closing master servers, just because they do not bring only profits and margins.

AMD/ATi drivers teams always felt like they were on life support, this move is just like shitting them off from it. AMD cutting corners in wrong place. But this is a hint to an obvious end of consumer market form corps like AMD and nVidia. It's all about enterprise.

Well, yeah, except that nvidia not only still supports the 1080, but also the entire 900 series. And the 580, one of these cards, is the highest represented card AMD has right now. And they are still for sale. And the vega arch is still being sold in ryzen 7000 APUs.

This is a company that wants to be a "premium" brand but doesnt want to provide "premium" support.

Indeed. Shareholders/investors trim too much fat, to the point of hurting the companies own good. The software and drivers divisions of AMD are the one that needs the investments and growth the most, like yesterday. However and instead of revitalization, AMD puts them under the knife for some %$ for shareholders benefit.

 

[remekra]

People say the cards are old. But they still are capable of many workloads. from HTPC, to gaming. And many people bought them not because of wanting to buy old cards,. But because not everyone is an elitist, capable of buying the overpriced 7900XT or 3080 for a grand or more. Thus every buyer deserves equally good treatment. I'm not mention the vega APU support.... These cards sell to this day. Heck, I am sure the amount of working RX 580 is miles bigger, than all Navi1,2,3 sold combined.
By this logic, RDNA1 would be cut soon as well, and RDNA3 desktop APUs gonna get the same treatment soon after arrival.

This is akin to closing the game industry and software, when master servers, just because they do not bring only profits and margins.

AMD/ATi drivers teams always felt like they were on life support, this move is just like cutting them from it. AMD cutting corners in wrong place. But this is a hint to an obvious end of consumer market form corps like AMD and nVidia. It's all about enterpise.


Indeed. Shareholders/investors trim too much fat, to the point of hurting the companies own good. The software and drivers divisions of AMD are the most urgently need of investments, and instead of revitalization, AMD puts them under the knife, for some %$ for shareholders benefit.

Investments should support the companies growth and development. Otherwise this is extortions and terror.

Yes and they will still be capable of many workloads, they will just not get a new driver every month.
This is cutting corners in the right place, development teams can focus on more important things than getting a driver ready for older GPUs. They are not ending support just putting them on slower track.
Anyone who has worked in development or operations and knows how sprints, QC, etc work know that this is a step in the right direction. Especially if you have a lot smaller dev team than your main competitor.

 

[LabRat 891]

Glad to see my Beloved isn't EoL, yet.

Still, RdN.ID drivers have been lightyears better for these 'legacy' cards (and no VAC bans ).
More-recent 'official' support gives more for the RdN.ID team to work with, too

I'm glad I moved to novideo in January.. I couldn't continue with the driver usues, bsods and all the other problems with my Vega 64. Almost impossible to play, VR, run even just basic encoding like OBS in any capacity and so much more.

Please everyone refrain from saying that there was "something wrong" with my build like everyone told me in r/AMD.

I can't recommend their gpus until they mature more driver wiese or unless people is on a budget, aside from that if you're running linux you're god with an AMD gpu.

Speaking from personal experience: Old Vega 64s don't seem to have 'aged well' in a hardware-sense.
Judging from old ActualHardcoreOverclocking vids*, I'd guess it's thermal/current damage over time, and/or TIM 'failure'. (I've seen both TIM 'pump-out' and 'cooking' occur on Vega 10 cards.)
*even a seemingly well-(air)-cooled Vega 64 will be (nearly)constantly 'throttling' to stay stable and thermally safe.

My (WC'd by prev. owner) V64 is a Ball of Yarn of 'issues'. It's temperamental, to say the least; isn't even remotely stable w/o being on the 'high power' vBIOS, and does not 'clock' itself correctly. It often BSODs, crashes, etc. Downclocking it 'helped' but I got fed up with it.
Note: My R9 290 cooked its RAM, my 290X was on/off 'blackscreening' and my RX 580 prev. my Vega 64 and MI25s, was also having sleep and blackscreening issues. Sans the cooked 290, AMD has had 'issues' w/ drivers; however, it's clearly not a software-side-only problem.

My MI25s have had no problems like that (that I haven't directly caused).

Not gonna say there's something 'wrong' with your build, but I can say I've had some 'mirror-like' experiences with Vega 64, that I have not had with other Vega 10-equipped cards.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Did anyone actually check if those old cards actually show different performances with the updates that roll out in current year? Or are those updates contain just a new version number and being made with a newer compiler?

Nobody is expecting performance improvements on half decade old cards. Now, compatibility and bug fixes? THOSE should still be done.

You are conflating the length of driver support with quality of drivers; those are not the same thing. You can have driver support for 10+ years and still have it be an unstable driver that causes BSOD frequently.

That's a REALLY bad argument to use for AMD. Historically, they have been the worst offender of leaving hardware with buggy old drivers.

Vega APUs drivers are based off of the drivers of the discrete Vega GPUs, basically the Vega APUs have 6-7 years of mature driver support at this time even if they did just come out last year. If this was a brand-new architecture and they were dropping it 1 year later that makes sense but if you are just releasing a refreshed architecture 6-7 years later you can't really say you haven't already benefited from the previous 6-7 years of driver maturity of that architecture.

That doesnt mean that bugs in new software are going to be any slower then they were 6-7 years ago, but it DOES mean that your brand new ryzen 7000 that is actually a rebranded 5000 is going to potentially wait months if not years to get bugfixes that other 7000 series users will get fixed in weeks or days. This, of course, will feed into the story that AMD has terrible drivers because AMD is producing a class system in their userbase.

There is no reason to upgrade the driver since there are no more performance margins for this architecture, I suggest you see a comparison of 2023 between 580 and 1060, also AMD clearly said that it will upgrade the drivers if a serious bug appears that will create malfunctions as it has done in the past with older architectures, as for if the AMD drivers are "bad quality" from personal experience and having 5 pc at home with gtx1080,rtx2070,6800,6900xt,7800xt and a working rx580 in case of need I have not encountered any problem that was not solved with drivers from both companies.

So bugfixes and compatibility patches just....are not a thing you use then? I suggest you look into the geforce 900 series most recent driver VS a rx 390x and ask who has better support.

Give me a break, Polaris is 7 years old and Vega 6, imagine going back to 2010 and expecting that a GPU released in 2003 should receive driver updates, sounds laughable doesn't it ? Some of you have lost the scale of time passing by, these products have outlived their useful lifespan.

People praise Nvidia that they offer longer driver support except what's that actually worth ? Those GPUs are dog slow now, who cares, what difference does it make that they're "up to date".

Nvidia does it. Not so laughable, eh?

 

[Random_User]

Yes and they will still be capable of many workloads, they will just not get a new driver every month.
This is cutting corners in the right place, development teams can focus on more important things than getting a driver ready for older GPUs. They are not ending support just putting them on slower track.
Anyone who has worked in development or operations and knows how sprints, QC, etc work know that this is a step in the right direction. Especially if you have a lot smaller dev team than your main competitor.

It's obvious, the cards are old, and might be not able to run the latest games. But limiting support, is just another implication of abandoning them. As these never had enough support in the first place.

AMD is not the underdog with 3.5B anymore. You should wake up. AMD is $21.876B in YoY revenue(June 2023), $67.967B in total assets, and"As of November 2023 AMD has a market cap of $183.50 Billion."(Intel is $159.87 B).
They are premium brand. They should not slow down stagnating divisions. They should support each sold product, if it's still sells.
Just look how they invented the "wheel" of the model naming, just to sell the old Vega APU under new disguise with fancy high numbers.

Edit: corrections.

 

[Vya Domus]

Does getting full support and driver updates for products that you can buy new sound laughable

Yes, it's about the architecture not the release date of the product or if it's still being sold.

You can find cards that are "new" that are even older than 7 years from unsold stock, should someone expect driver support if they buy a GT210 or something ? Come on dude.