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

[remekra]

If you were a 980 or 1080 owner who didnt understand the game specific fixes included in game ready drivers, I'd say you probably deserve to have an AMD card with only 5 years of support. The artificial segmentation of DLSS is a separate issue.

New driver shave new fixes for new software. Hell, we saw this LAST YEAR. Remember rDNA3? Remember how AMD put rDNA2 on the backburner for 3 months? In those three months, rDNA2 users like myself did not receive new drivers, and within that time the 6900xt went from trading blows with a 3090 to trading blows with a 3080. The forums here were absolutely LIVID that AMD would do this.

I was a 970 owner, then 1080, then 3080 and now 7900XTX. Still I have not seen those mentioned game specific fixes that nvidia includes for Pascal or even better Maxwell in their newest "Game ready" drivers, but feel free to provide them, no worries.

Also interesting about that 6900XT losing perfomance because it did not had a new driver for 3 months. You have any benchmarks comparing those? Would love to see them.

 

[Dr. Dro]

We're not comparing hardware here though, are we? Out topic is softawre.

As far as hardware is concerned, GCN1, 2, and 3 did receive some d3d feature-enabling patch-love (for whatever that was worth). No different than Maxwell.

There is no hardware without software, just like there is very little software without the hardware to back it up. The relationship between a graphics driver and the hardware is symbiotic, if either fails, the experience will suffer for it.

If you were a 980 or 1080 owner who didnt understand the game specific fixes included in game ready drivers, I'd say you probably deserve to have an AMD card with only 5 years of support. The artificial segmentation of DLSS is a separate issue.

New driver shave new fixes for new software. Hell, we saw this LAST YEAR. Remember rDNA3? Remember how AMD put rDNA2 on the backburner for 3 months? In those three months, rDNA2 users like myself did not receive new drivers, and within that time the 6900xt went from trading blows with a 3090 to trading blows with a 3080. The forums here were absolutely LIVID that AMD would do this.

Bingo.

 

[Shihab]

There is no hardware without software, just like there is very little software without the hardware to back it up. The relationship between a graphics driver and the hardware is symbiotic, if either fails, the experience will suffer for it.

And like every analysis of everything in life, it is possible -and often required- to look at issues while holding everything else constant.

The thread is about software development cadence. Hardware only enters to the equation as a constraint, as it has been demonstrated. If we were talking about AMD's customer satisfaction or if this was another episode of the old Nvidia v. AMD flamewars, then sure, everyone grab a club and start swinging. But it isn't. The merits of one vendor supporting x feature while the other going for y half a decade ago has little effect here.