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

[btarunr]

AMD is weaning the market off its older gaming graphics card series that predate the Radeon RX 5000 series. The company is reportedly putting older GPUs based on the "Vega" and "Polaris" graphics architectures on a slower driver update track, which means driver updates to these GPUs will be less frequent. The company's RX 5000, RX 6000, and RX 7000 series, on the other hand, will continue on with the current driver update track that includes one or more driver releases each month, including releases to fix glaring game bugs, or day-zero performance updates.

AMD over the past couple of months began segregating RDNA (RX 5000 series and later) and pre-RDNA (older than RX 5000 series) GPUs through their driver releases. The latest drivers come in an RDNA-only package (denoted by "rdna" in the installer's file name), which is around 600 MB in size; and a larger 1.1 GB package that supports both RDNA and pre-RDNA GPUs. The company now announced that the pre-RDNA GPUs will switch to a slower driver update track as is characteristic with older-generation GPUs that AMD wants to discontinue support for.



In a statement to AnandTech, AMD says:

The AMD Polaris and Vega graphics architectures are mature, stable and performant and don't benefit as much from regular software tuning. Going forward, AMD is providing critical updates for Polaris- and Vega-based products via a separate driver package, including important security and functionality updates as available. The committed support is greater than for products AMD categorizes as legacy, and gamers can still enjoy their favorite games on Polaris and Vega-based products.

So what are these pre-RDNA GPUs? These would span the Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 series "Polaris," the RX Vega series, and the Radeon VII. The Radeon RX 5000 series is now over 4 years old in the market, which makes the RX Vega series 6 years into the market, the RX 500 series 7 years, and the RX 400 series 8 years old.

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[Dragokar]

Not unexpected for me.

 

[persondb]

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

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

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".

 

[RayneYoruka]

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.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

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

AMD tried to force OEMs to update those drivers at one point, only to get BTFOd and forced into doing it themselves.

I want to support AMD, but man do they make that difficult.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

Good ol' Abandon My Drivers

If AMD ever wants to be more than 'Almost as good for a little less money', they're going to need to figure out that driver and software support is one of the more important things they need to keep people buying their product. Of all the places to cut, this ain't it.

Maybe spend more time on refining your drivers/software suite rather than adding 'features' that get people banned from games/platforms?

 

[Vayra86]

Poor Vega

Good ol' Abandon My Drivers

If AMD ever wants to be more than 'Almost as good for a little less money', they're going to need to figure out that driver and software support is one of the more important things they need to keep people buying their product. Of all the places to cut, this ain't it.

Maybe spend more time on refining your drivers/software suite rather than adding 'features' that get people banned from games/platforms?

To be fair, the cards are 7 years old. Maybe 6. Perf is at gtx 1080 level. Featureset is pre dx12 ultimate... I mean, whats the point? Dx11 will run on it fine, for Dx12 ultimate shits unplayable anyway and whatever is in between will run on vulkan or dx12_1.

Rather, just put some more effort in getting FSR to a higher level...

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

Ouch. Yeah that is messy AF

 

[RayneYoruka]

Abandon My Drivers

AMD omg, it took me a literal second to notice.


Yeah lol, they need to figure out the drivers or people... well, will put their money elsewhere

 

[Evildead666]

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.

That might be because you have a problem with your build.
My Vega has been doing fine for years on the AMD drivers.

Don't blame the drivers unless you are 100% sure it is them.
It is rarely the drivers fault.

edit : I've worked in tech support for over 20 years.
deduction is your best tool.
Pull all the drives and extra cards, anything that is not needed to run a game.
Put the Bios back to defaults, and leave the memory at default speeds, even if that is sh!t slow.
Leave only 2 stick of ram max, one if you are still getting problems.
Install a fresh windows on a spare Sata drive, fully update it.
WHen thats done, install the drivers, and then your game.
Try it out. If you still get BSODs and error messages, look them up in google, you probably aren't the first to have the problem.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

Poor Vega


To be fair, the cards are 7 years old. Maybe 6. Perf is at gtx 1080 level. Featureset is pre dx12 ultimate... I mean, whats the point? Dx11 will run on it fine, for Dx12 ultimate shits unplayable anyway and whatever is in between will run on vulkan or dx12_1.

Rather, just put some more effort in getting FSR to a higher level...


Ouch. Yeah that is messy AF

Oh, I totally understand that. The issue I have is that the cards are still available to buy new today. The AMD card with most users in the Steam hardware survey (yeah, I know), is the RX 580.

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Buy ASRock Phantom Gaming D Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Video Card RX580 8G OC with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

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AMD does this over and over. The most recent example was just about a year ago when they stopped all driver updates except for RDNA3 for almost three months. Did the world end? No, but it was enough for me to say no more AMD on Windows until they prove they're committed and staffed appropriately to support the products they sell. I guess they still won because I ended up with an RDNA3 card anyway. Just not for Windows.

 

[ilyon]

Sad.
So these GPUs will never support DLSS™ or RTX™...

 

[rv8000]

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

Slower driver updates and EOL are two very different things.

 

[Readlight]

Good for TV, Linux, no 3D games.

 

[RayneYoruka]

That might be because you have a problem with your build.
My Vega has been doing fine for years on the AMD drivers.

Don't blame the drivers unless you are 100% sure it is them.
It is rarely the drivers fault.

edit : I've worked in tech support for over 20 years.
deduction is your best tool.
Pull all the drives and extra cards, anything that is not needed to run a game.
Put the Bios back to defaults, and leave the memory at default speeds, even if that is sh!t slow.
Leave only 2 stick of ram max, one if you are still getting problems.
Install a fresh windows on a spare Sata drive, fully update it.
WHen thats done, install the drivers, and then your game.
Try it out. If you still get BSODs and error messages, look them up in google, you probably aren't the first to have the problem.

Ah yes, 4 windows installs, 2 different cpus, 2 different psus, 2 ramkits, no psu wires daisy chained, every driver install was with DDU, 2 different system ssd's..

Same build has been running with a 3080 without issue, try again please.

If you put on your pc and don't do anything with it will run without issues, the problem resides in "trying to do something" with it.

Good for TV, Linux, no 3D games.

Yeah this is the type of use that would be perfect for, the windows drivers are just a mess.

AMD does this over and over. The most recent example was just about a year ago when they stopped all driver updates except for RDNA3 for almost three months. Did the world end? No, but it was enough for me to say no more AMD on Windows until they prove they're committed and staffed appropriately to support the products they sell. I guess they still won because I ended up with an RDNA3 card anyway. Just not for Windows.

Yeah but you know, people like to disregard what others say and just tell you that "you're biased" just because you have an opinion / constructive criticism that doens't follow theirs.

This was among my biggest reasons aside from the driver issues why I reached a boiling point and ditched all AMD gpus in windows.

 

[Evildead666]

Ah yes, 4 windows installs, 2 different cpus, 2 different psus, 2 ramkits, no psu wires daisy chained, every driver install was with DDU, 2 different system ssd's..

Same build has been running with a 3080 without issue, try again please.

If you put on your pc and don't do anything with it will run without issues, the problem resides in "trying to do something" with it.


Yeah this is the type of use that would be perfect for, the windows drivers are just a mess.


Yeah but you know, people like to disregard what others say and just tell you that "you're biased" just because you have an opinion / constructive criticism that doens't follow theirs.

This was among my biggest reasons aside from the driver issues why I reached a boiling point and ditched all AMD gpus in windows.

Then you've probably deduced that you have a problem with your card.

If it was the drivers, a lot more Vega people would be having problems.
You don't need DDU if you are doing a fresh Windows Install.

On Topic : I doubt the Video drivers will be stopped for the APU's, unless they specifically said that they were, and not just discrete GPUs.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Poor Vega


To be fair, the cards are 7 years old. Maybe 6. Perf is at gtx 1080 level. Featureset is pre dx12 ultimate... I mean, whats the point? Dx11 will run on it fine, for Dx12 ultimate shits unplayable anyway and whatever is in between will run on vulkan or dx12_1.

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.

 

[AsRock]

Slower driver updates and EOL are two very different things.

Yes it's probably once a year like the others.

 

[RayneYoruka]

Then you've probably deduced that you have a problem with your card.

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

Try again please.

If it was the drivers, a lot more Vega people would be having problems.

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?

 

[persondb]

Slower driver updates and EOL are two very different things.

Sure, but how long is those slower drivers going for? A year? They are preparing to abandon those GPUs, which in my view is fine for the discrete ones as those are really old.
But not for the APUs which are pretty new, some newer than RDNA2 too.
If you brought a desktop APU or a laptop with one that's really not the news you want to hear.

 

[kapone32]

Sure, but how long is those slower drivers going for? A year? They are preparing to abandon those GPUs, which in my view is fine for the discrete ones as those are really old.
But not for the APUs which are pretty new, some newer than RDNA2 too.
If you brought a desktop APU or a laptop with one that's really not the news you want to hear.

Unfortunately the APUs are based on Polaris and Vega that you can actually buy right now so it makes sense.

 

[Vya Domus]

If AMD ever wants to be more than 'Almost as good for a little less money', they're going to need to figure out that driver and software support is one of the more important things they need to keep people buying their product. Of all the places to cut, this ain't it.

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".

 

[Shihab]

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.

 

[Denver]

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

Mobile APUs are always recommended to use the OEM driver which never receives updates.

 

[RadeonProVega]

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. I have a 5000/6000 card, but i probably get rid of them somehow eventually.

I bought a Vega 56 early this year and my next card I am buying soon as an upgrade is a Radeon Pro VII. As for Drivers, I'm using May 2022 preview since i bought the Vega 56 early this year and i have no problems with any games or anything.