There are many articles on various tech websites claming that amd will discontinue rx 6600 and rx 6600 xt. So i wanted to ask. What does discontinuation means that we will not get news official amd driver for these card in future. And amd will turn off all driver support for these cards.
Can some one explain ?
I think it just means that they will cease production of these video cards, but I would expect the driver software will continue to work with future updates. They probably won't optimize the software for these cards is my guess, but future Adrenalin software releases should continue to support them for the near future.
If we look at the RX 500 series, they still put out driver updates, so my guess is that drivers will still be put out, just to a lesser extent compared to the current gen offerings, RX 7600 and RX 7600 XT.
Yes it does seem like AMD is going to discontinue the RX 6600 series GPU Cards according to this reliable Tech site: https://wccftech.com/amd-discontinues-radeon-rx-6600-gpus-rx-6600-6600-xt-6650-xt-eol/
AMD's Radeon RX 6600 "RDNA 2" series seems to have reached the EOL stage as several GPUs such as the RX 6600, RX 6600 XT, & RX 6650 XT have been reportedly discontinued.
One of the most affordable graphics cards in the budget segment is reportedly coming to an end. According to Board Channels the AMD Radeon RX 6600 series may soon be discontinued. The RX 6600 series will slowly be replaced by the RX 6750 GRE series with the 10 GB model serving as the new mainstream king while the RX 7600 series will take up the rest of the spots
As for the RX 6600 series, AMD isn't planning to extend its lifespan, at least in China. Since the entire Radeon RX 6600 series is being mentioned here, we can expect AMD to end production & supply of all three chips within the family which include the Radeon RX 6600, Radeon RX 6600 XT & the Radeon RX 6650 XT. All of these cards are based on the Navi 23 GPU silicon but come with different configurations.
RX 6750GRE series: The 10G version will become the mainstream model, the model with the largest shipment volume among all brands, and the channel model with the largest sales volume.
RX 6600 series: AMD has discontinued the production of this model, and all brands are sold out while stocks last. Currently, most brands are out of stock, and some brands only have a small amount of leftover stock.
RX 6500XT series: One of AMD's lowest-end models, it will become the main sales model of each brand and can be sold at least until the end of the year.
Machine Translated (via Board Channels)
On the other hand, AMD is also doubling down on the RX 6750 GRE(Golden Rabbit Edition) for the Chinese market. The GRE editions typically launch exclusively to the Chinese GPU market but some of them do become available worldwide, just like one of the best graphics cards, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. The RX 6750 GRE should be somewhat slower than the RX 6750 XT since it will feature 10 GB VRAM instead of 12 GB. It's said that the RX 6750 GRE shall become the mainstream model and will have the largest volume in the market among the RX 6000 GPUs.
On the lower-end side, AMD will continue production of its RX 6500 XT GPU at least until the end of 2024. It's unclear whether the RX 6500 XT will continue selling next year or not but according to one of the recent leaks, if AMD plans to release the RX 7400 and 7300, the 6500 XT is most likely going to disappear from the market. The RX 6600 series is still abundant in the GPU market, enjoying its position among the best-selling GPUs but if the RX 6600 series discontinues, users will have to either go for the RX 7600 or the RX 6700 series GPUs.
The AMD Radeon RX 6600 "RDNA 2" GPUs feature specifications similar to those of the RX 7600 "RDNA 3" GPUs, boasting 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM on a 128-bit bus. However, the stream processors are noticeably lower and it doesn't support AV1 encoding like the RX 7600. Compared to its launch price of $329, the RX 6600 can be found for as low as $179.99 on Newegg and $199.99 on Amazon. The RX 6600 XT and 6650 XT are slightly pricier but are still under $250 most of the time.
Generally speaking if a company EOL (End of Line) is tagged to hardware it means it will stop supporting that hardware with driver updates.
But most likely the RX 6600 series will have "Limited" AMD Support in the future since those GPU card drivers will most likely be compatible with Supported RX GPU cards like the RX 7000 series GPU cards but may not support all the features in those newer drivers.
Anyway you can find out if AMD continue to support those RX 6600 GPU cards by going to AMD Download page and see if there are newer drivers or not.
As of now the RX 6600 Series GPU cards still seems to be supported since it has the latest AMD Driver version to download 24.7.1.
You can also ask AMD SUPPORT if the GPU cards will be supported since it will be EOL from here: https://www.amd.com/en/forms/contact-us/support.html