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Drivers & Software

Why aren't there latest drivers for Windows 8.1?

Why is there no latest driver version for Windows 8.1, which is still relevant, unlike Windows 7, whose support has expired?

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33 Replies

hardly anyone adopted windows 8.1, i suggest upgrading to windows 10 and modernize 

windows 10 can be made to look like windows 8.1 with the full screen touch mode if desired

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The point is not in appearance, but in work. I made Windows 8.1 in the style of Windows 7. Windows 7 suits me, but FACEIT AC and maybe something else will not work on it soon.

davidbsuttoncoldfield
Journeyman III

Both Windows 8.x and 10 require the display to support a later version of Direct-X than Windows 7. I have a couple of PCs that are stuck on older versions of Windows. If they will actually run Windows 10, I can't use them in VGA or XGA modes. That is caused by the lack of drivers that are compatible with the hardware. Desktop motherboards can often have their display device replaced by a graphics card, but laptops generally cannot. It's a form of built-in obsolescence and quite frustrating.

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This is definitely not about it, the old drivers work, but one game complains that they have known problems and recommends updating them. My monitor is connected via DVI-D.

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stanislav777mv wrote:

This is definitely not about it, the old drivers work, but one game complains that they have known problems and recommends updating them. My monitor is connected via DVI-D.

Can you use HDMI or DisplayPort? Both are easier to use.

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Because my display does not support them

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stanislav777mv wrote:

Because my display does not support them

perhaps its time to find a more recent monitor, prices are lower than ever now

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I bought a new IPS FullHD monitor, my eyes have never hurt so much, even from a very old flickering CRT monitor, I returned it. Perhaps in the future, but not now for sure, I just spent money on a graphics card.

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stanislav777mv wrote:

I bought a new IPS FullHD monitor, my eyes have never hurt so much, even from a very old flickering CRT monitor, I returned it. Perhaps in the future, but not now for sure, I just spent money on a graphics card.

Flickering at 1080p suggests the refresh rate is too low. Usually that can be corrected in the graphics settings.

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The point in color reproduction is probably how much I did mess around on that monitor with color profiles, still the colors were unnatural. I have immunity to flicker, my first monitor was a CRT with a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The really flickering LCD of the old monitor is not so badly affecting my eyes. But many CRT monitors for me have better color reproduction. Yes, I increased the refresh rate to 77 Hz on my monitor and on that monitor increased to 81, but this did not give an effect on the eye pain. Maybe should try VA ...

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Using monitors with different refresh rates is not good as it messes up the vision and can be very hard to handle 

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And yes, the 5 000 rubles (about 66 dollars) I gave for the RX470 is a lot for ordinary russian, especially now. And you probably could not even imagine that there are children who are dying of hunger, I did not imagine until yesterday, I helped them, and now I have no money and I'm going to sell my old hardware.

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stanislav777mv wrote:

And yes, the 5 000 rubles (about 66 dollars) I gave for the RX470 is a lot for ordinary russian, especially now. And you probably could not even imagine that there are children who are dying of hunger, I did not imagine until yesterday, I helped them, and now I have no money and I'm going to sell my old hardware.

The RX 570 is fine for 1920x1080 gaming. The polaris cards are now more mainstream as prices have come down. Currency fluctuations make it harder for consumers in many nations.

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I have 1680x1050 and I love 16:10, but with a large diagonal and resolution, 16:9 will come down. The problem I have now is that you need to change the motherboard, the 775 socket, even with the Q9550 and 8 GB DDR3 1364 Mhz, clearly can not cope with many games.

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stanislav777mv wrote:

I have 1680x1050 and I love 16:10, but with a large diagonal and resolution, 16:9 will come down. The problem I have now is that you need to change the motherboard, the 775 socket, even with the Q9550 and 8 GB DDR3 1364 Mhz, clearly can not cope with many games.

My old Lenovo T500 has a 1680x1050 resolution display. It has a T8200 dual core CPU in it.

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Everyone forgot to mention to you that AMD doesn't support Windows 8/8.1 any more with Driver updates.

Whatever Windows 8/8.1 AMD driver or Previous AMD Driver is included for your GPU card that is it.

To get support for your GPU, which you didn't mention, you will need to upgrade to Windows 10 to get continued updated AMD Drivers.

EDIT: Some Users have mentioned to use Windows 7 AMD Drivers to work in Windows 8/8.1 OS.

Yes, the drivers most likely for Windows 7 were installed using DriverPack Solution, but Radeon Settings did not update and did not work correctly with them.

P.S. And I would like to know why AMD do not support relevant Windows 8.1, but support Windows 7. After all, I'm not the only one who does not accept Windows 10 and recently switched to Windows 8.1.

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AMD stopped support in 2017.

From 3DGURU (2017 article): AMD Halts Support for Windows 8.1 with Consumer Radeon drivers 

AMD Halts Support for Windows 8.1 with Consumer Radeon drivers

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 07/27/2017 12:51 PM | source: https://www.guru3d.com/ | 135 comment(s)

Yesterday AMD released their Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition Driver v17.7.2 (download), and some of you have asked me if I know where the Windows 8.1 drivers are. That indeed is a fair question, as they are missing. 

Earlier on Windows 8.1 32-bit support was already halted, and we as well noticed that there has not been a 8.1 64-bit driver available ever since yesterday either. I just asked AMD to see what is going on there, and it is confirmed that there will no longer be any new Windows 8.1 drivers for Radeon graphics cards. The install base is just too small, and yes you should be moving onwards to Windows 10. Obviously previous driver releases are still available (we have them mirrored here). Here is what we got back from AMD: 

"We no longer support Windows 8.1 officially with consumer postings. If users want to use the Windows 7 driver on Windows 8.1 then that is their choice."

So there you have it. It is time to upgrade to Windows 10 folks.

stanislav777mv , I realize you are upset that AMD stopped supporting Windows 8.1 but don't shoot the messenger .

You asked why AMD stopped supporting Windows 8/8.1 and I gave you the reason why thru the article from 3DGURU.

You can still upgrade for free to Windows 10 from a ZDNET article I posted here I AMD Forum: https://community.amd.com/thread/251783 

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I just recently switched from 7 to 8.1, and Windows 10 is unacceptable for me, there you need to make 100500 hacks so that it works more or less, as I need, not Microsoft.

Because Windows 7 has 21.21% (or 30.38%) of the Windows market share, while Windows 8.1 has 4.63% (or 3.84%) depending on which source you use. While this translates into perhaps tens of thousands of devices globally, the number of those devices which are gaming computers to such an extent as to require new drivers to support new games is only a fraction of that. Couple that with the facts that AMD's user share is incredibly low, and the number of games requiring Windows 10 as an OS are increasing, and you can see AMD's reasoning behind terminating Windows 8.1 support years ago.

You also have to realize that AMD's overall user share is incredibly low, lower than I've seen it since the dark ages of the X1000-HD 3000 series years, 13.38% according to Steam. Also according to Steam, which is a decent cross section of the gaming class, only 2.15% of those users use Windows 8.1. It also must be said that Radeon Technologies Group is in dire need of a complete reorganization. It's been in chaos for years, reflected in the lack of attention they give to anything but the most current generation of cards, customer feedback and suggestions, and the quality of driver updates which were released, namely the still-not-completely-eliminated Navi black screen issue. They're in such a disarray that the head of Radeon Software Development admitted that he didn't even knows about major issues customers were reporting on every forum and social media outlet there was.

Now, you may say "Well nVidia is still supporting Windows 8.1!", which is true, but nVidia has the extra resources to spend tweaking their Windows 7 drivers for Windows 8.1, and starting with the RTX 2000/GTX 1600 series, only Windows 7 and 10 are supported. nVidia is worth quite a bit more than AMD and they're focused on graphics, whereas AMD is roaring back from flirting with bankruptcy and Raja's Folly (a.k.a. Vega), and is focused on CPUs and semi-custom designs.

It must be noted that even in May 2016, according to NetMarketShare, a year before AMD terminated support for Windows 8.1, its usage share was already nearly half of Windows 10s and still lagged behind Windows XP AND YET AMD terminated Windows XP support prior to this.

To conclude, even though Windows 7 is receiving new drivers even though support has ended while Windows 8.1 will be supported for 3 more years, its the user share, especially in China, where user share is so large that Microsoft even made a subset of DirectX 12 available on Windows 7 for World of Warcraft. You need to upgrade to Windows 10 now while its still free. It doesn't matter if you do it now or January 10, 2023, you're going to have to do it eventually.

Yes I understand about the low percentage. 
Still bad though.

It is possible that many who were forced to "upgrade to Windows 10" by sneaky GWX tactics from Windows 8.1 might still be using 8.1. 
They likely get counted by Microsoft as having upgraded to Windows 10 anyhow because the upgarde key is attached to their PC hardware in Microsoft license database.

I *think* I remember steam showing AMD market share down at ~ 8.6% before previous Mining craze when sales of RX480/580 shot up but that might be wrong.

RE: starting with the RTX 2000/GTX 1600 series, only Windows 7 and 10 are supported.
Yes I spoke with Nvidia Support about that forRTX2080 cards.
Thay claimed you can install their drivers on Windows 8.1 64bit but I have not tried it yet. They told me any Turing Raytracing related features like RTX or DLSS would not work. That makers sense.

Sure low install base. I know that this driver was released yesterday. Even so... Fewer than 5 users for Adrenalin 2020 20.4.2 driver.

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Maybe that also reflects a low Norton install base as well.

RE: They're in such a disarray that the head of Radeon Software Development admitted that he didn't even knows about major issues customers were reporting on every forum and social media outlet there was.

I guess there are many forums out there.

Maybe they should direct people to this one.

Been on AMD Reddit Support Forum and ... it is useless so far.

RE: It doesn't matter if you do it now or January 10, 2023, you're going to have to do it eventually.
I am still trying to resist by using Ubuntu or other Linux as much as I can.

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It's scary how Reddit and Twitter are becoming the "official" support outlets for AMD...At one time this forum even had reps from the AIBs, now not even AMD officials come here.

As for Linux, it's getting better all the time for the non-geek user, especially Ubuntu, with their version of the app store and executable container file format doing wonders for ease of use. It still has a ways to go since the terminal is still required for a few things, and their version of UAC is as bad as an overprotective helicopter parent, but really it's at the Windows 9x stage of evolution.

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Yes. Reddit and Twitter. More like Marketing and Sales tools than support.
Many ready to claim "I have not had any issues at all with my "<insert AMD  product and/or driver version here>"

Lots of people I know who are "non-geek" have migrated to Ubuntu from Windows 7 and 8.1.

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Windows 10 is migrating the OS to Windows as a service, NB the windows store app and xbox app.

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A spying service for the herd.

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Yes, I have been using Linux since the distant 2008, but alas, not all the games that I play are under Linux and even those that exist sometimes work much worse than on Windows.

Have you been trying out Steam Play for Linux on Ubuntu?

I tested it ages ago with help from very friendly Level1Techs folk (https://forum.level1techs.com/ ).

I posted videos of test rtesults here:
Steam for Linux : Introducing a new version of Steam Play. If you run Linux, can you please test i... 

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Yes, I tried, my results are depressing. Especially with 750ti, I have not tried it with RX470 yet. I use Kubuntu, I hate GNOME3.

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Nvidia still provide Windows 8.1 Drivers for customers who purchased their GPU which supported Windows 8.1 OS in GPU Specification and on the GPU box. 

It was not OK to just drop Windows 8.1 64bit  support like that. It is really bad practice. It was done on the quiet.
There was a big 17.7.2 pre-Vega launch Driver announcement which included tech press reviews and videos about that driver.
Dropping Windows 8.1 support was conveniently neglected.

Last supported Windows 8.1 64bit driver was 17.4.4. WHQL or 17.7.1.

Last Windows 7 Driver that "works" in Windows 8.1 64 bit is Adrenalin 1029 19.12.1. Just download it and run the installer and it should install o.k.

New Adrenalin 2020 Driver can be made to install on Windows 8.1 64 bit but honestly I do not think it worth it getting that GUI to run on Windows 10.

One thing I have not tried on Windows 8.1 64 bit is installing Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1 Windows 7 driver on Windows 8.1 64bit, then using Device Manager to just update the Adrenalin 2020 20.4.1. driver. That might work. 

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 Microsoft dropped mainstream support as well for  8.1 on January 9, 2018

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet 

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Correction ... "Adrenalin 2019 19.12.1."

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