AMD Releases Adrenalin 22.6.1 Legacy Software for Older GPUs

[btarunr]

AMD today released AMD Software Adrenalin 22.6.1 Legacy. This is a special branch of AMD software designed for older GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture—Fury series, 300 series, 200 series, and HD 7000/8000 series. The driver only supports Windows 10 64-bit, there's no official support for Windows 11. Legacy branch drivers correct outstanding bugs, security vulnerabilities, and some other software-level updates, but the company doesn't advertise any new game-specific optimizations. This is probably because these GPU generations fall outside the minimum system requirements of the latest games. Still, if you'd like to reminisce with an older GPU you have lying around, or want to build a period-specific project (2010 to 2015); here's your chance. If however, you're looking for the regular Adrenalin 22.6.1 WHQL drivers for the latest GPUs, check out this page.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 22.6.1 Legacy



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[ZoneDymo]

cool stuff

 

[Steevo]

Still my main rig with a 7970, I will try them on Sniper Elite 4 or TW3 and see what they do.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Another reprieve for my nigh-useless Radeon 8570/R5 240? OK then, it'll play Tomb Raider (2013) at 720p Lo+Shadows&AA @50FPS with a hefty overclock, so that's technically gaming, right?

 

[ir_cow]

Go AMD! From a company standpoint it's a complete waste of money to pay a team to make drivers for older graphic cards. But to win over customers, they must go above and beyond. If I was a 290X owner, I would certainly buy another AMD card because the company shows they care about loyal customers.

 

[QuietBob]

These drivers are available for 64-bit Win7 too. They actually released them on June 21:

 

[droopyRO]

That is nice of AMD. I have a HD6950 1GB for a (semi)retro system. But it falls out of this update.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Go AMD! From a company standpoint it's a complete waste of money to pay a team to make drivers for older graphic cards. But to win over customers, they must go above and beyond. If I was a 290X owner, I would certainly buy another AMD card because the company shows they care about loyal customers.

I feel like this is a bit much credit to give AMD for this bone being thrown. Kepler received out-of-band updates as well, and Maxwell, which is contemporary to the R9 300/Fury series, is still supported in the mainline driver.

 

[beedoo]

I feel like this is a bit much credit to give AMD for this bone being thrown. Kepler received out-of-band updates as well, and Maxwell, which is contemporary to the R9 300/Fury series, is still supported in the mainline driver.

By this logic, AMD is damned if they do and damned if they don't...

 

[eidairaman1]

Go AMD! From a company standpoint it's a complete waste of money to pay a team to make drivers for older graphic cards. But to win over customers, they must go above and beyond. If I was a 290X owner, I would certainly buy another AMD card because the company shows they care about loyal customers.

I have a 290 VaporX (Sapphire)

I feel like this is a bit much credit to give AMD for this bone being thrown. Kepler received out-of-band updates as well, and Maxwell, which is contemporary to the R9 300/Fury series, is still supported in the mainline driver.

Instead of condemning them why not be glad they did for users of older gpus? The current market is still crap.

Remember latest will be prioritized over older. So this is a specific driver set which reduces the package size, this is for GCN and older parts, not RDNA+.

By this logic, AMD is damned if they do and damned if they don't...

Not true, they aint damned. They had time to dev another driver. They probably realized useage Statistics are still high for GCN based parts whether Vega/Polaris/Fury/Islands.

 

[applejuice]

"Still, if you'd like to reminisce with an older GPU you have lying around, or want to build a period-specific project (2010 to 2015); here's your chance."

Or, you know, just install a new driver for the video card you're using, since a whole lot of people are still using cards that fall in this range.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Instead of condemning them why not be glad they did for users of older gpus? The current market is still crap.

Remember latest will be prioritized over older. So this is a specific driver set which reduces the package size, this is for GCN and older parts, not RDNA+.

I'm not condemning, I'm just saying this is no reason to hail them, either. I strongly feel like GCN 3's support was prematurely switched off, even if the original and 2nd generation GCN cards did live a full life. That is considering that GCN 3 and 4 share an ISA to the letter, as well.

Besides, like I said earlier: NVIDIA still offers full support on the mainline driver for these graphics cards' contemporaries with regular updates, having quite recently released new features that work on GTX 900 series GPUs. They even provide support for Maxwell 1-based 700 series cards. On the other hand, the R9 Fury was killed off on its 5th birthday, so there's food for thought.

By this logic, AMD is damned if they do and damned if they don't...

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's bad that they've done this. It's that they shouldn't have ever stopped (when it comes to Tonga and Fiji hardware, at least), particularly knowing the market conditions in which they chose to abandon the older models circa May 2021.

 

[AusWolf]

This might give the used GPU market a slight boost. Good stuff!

 

[mechtech]

That is nice of AMD. I have a HD6950 1GB for a (semi)retro system. But it falls out of this update.

Indeed

I have a few 6850s on the shelf. Think I have an R5 260 in a system somewhere though.

 

[eidairaman1]

Indeed

I have a few 6850s on the shelf. Think I have an R5 260 in a system somewhere though.

Just use the last known working driver, I did in January for a R7 250X on W11. No issues

 

[Aretak]

On the other hand, the R9 Fury was killed off on its 5th birthday, so there's food for thought.

Sixth birthday. The Fury range came out in June 2015 and mainline driver support ended in June last year. Well, ended for Windows users anyway.

 

[RedBear]

By this logic, AMD is damned if they do and damned if they don't...

Not really, AMD damned itself when they killed the Fury series while Nvidia still supports in mainline drivers the Maxwell series, anything else is just their own damn decision. To be honest, if we want to talk about driver supports, I think they'd better release those improved OpenGL drivers that will make life easier to any Minecraft player, before we even begin talking about AMD dropping users of old GPUs in the cold.

 

[bobbybluz]

I did updates tonight on my 3 Win 10 rigs with Fury X's in them. No issues.

 

[AlwaysHope]

Still have 4 GCN architecture cards in perfect working order. This is pleasant news!

 

[Al Chafai]

the big question is, does this driver support Vulkan 1.3?
for the old AMD card owners out there, are you getting any performance improvements with this driver? i have no GCN based card so there is no way to test this.

 

[suraswami]

"....Legacy branch drivers correct outstanding bugs, security vulnerabilities, and some other software-level updates...." It took so many months/years for the developers to understand what the heck they are coding for

 

[speeddemon]

This is excellent! I still rock an R9 380X in a Windows 10 system I use for playing old games on a CRT. The R9 380X was the last AMD GPU with DVI-I analog out so it can plug directly into an analog VGA monitor.

 

[Athlonite]

• Lower than expected Folding@home compute performance with OpenCL API on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon RX 6800.

Hmm that's a wee bit worrying I hope this isn't going to be an ongoing problem

 

[MachineLearning]

• Lower than expected Folding@home compute performance with OpenCL API on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon RX 6800.

Hmm that's a wee bit worrying I hope this isn't going to be an ongoing problem

I've not noticed any difference with my 6600XT in PPD, but will keep an eye on it.

 

[Guwapo77]

I did updates tonight on my 3 Win 10 rigs with Fury X's in them. No issues.

Nice! I will go update the misses and my son's rigs. They both got my old Fury X's I had in X-fire setup.