PC Drivers & Software

[End_of_life_user]

Simple question.

How can AMD justify killing support for a laptop device that's less than 3 years old?

I have a Lenovo 330, A9 chipset machine, and with the release of the new Radeon software 21.6.1, effectively, my machine is unsupported, so if Microsoft updates Win 10, and breaks something, I've nowhere to go, and that means replacing a machine that does what I need, in a reasonable time frame, and it still has plenty of storage etc. It wasn't an end of life machine purchased from a back street clearance house, the retailer was still selling a similar model to mine 12 months ago, it had the same CPU/GPU content, just a different drive and memory.

Looks to me like AMD has just well and truly lost any loyalty I might have had to them, and I am going to be very reluctant to buy anything with an AMD sticker on it going foward.

Am I the only person who thinks that AMD is no longer a good place to be looking when considering hardware in future?

[SRSpoony]

totally agree with you,

just to play BF2042 i now have to buy a new GPU IF i can find 1 that is from anybody, and the cost of them are insane due to scalpers and shortages.

my R9 295X2 card plays ALL games on medium t o him on 3 x 24 1920x1200 screens with zero issues and 1 screen on ultra yet drivers are ended for my GPU even though its good enough.

i was a fan of AMD but now nope i was going to upgrade to Ryzen but not after this. its disgusting if i wish to play 1 game i must spend 1000 euro for a GPU plus the money for the game.

at a time when people have lost jobs or job hours cut due to the covid disgrace show and prices are through the roof most people cant afford an upgrade and they shaft peo[ple with perfectly good tech.

so much for going green and eco eh AMD to help the planet but forcing peple to upgrade from good items that will be binned all for you to make that extra dollar. Just another big tech Hypocrit

[hitbm47]

Hi @SRSpoony @Soldier_of_Dawn , so neither of you can even open Battlefield 2042?

[SRSpoony]

nope cant play it or do anything.

my Next upgrades will not be AMD and i just sold my 3600 Ryzen and went back to my 3930K Intel set up.

AMD can kiss my A from now on. im done.

i just got my back taxes back which was enough for 2 PC's to be built and was going Ryzen AMD GPU for my wife and my son and spare cash for mine but not im going intel Nvidia so thats £5k AMD aint gonna get out of me now.

oh and on a side note EA can suck it for me buying there game as well.

[hitbm47]

@SRSpoonyI cannot believe your R9 295X2 will not even open the game since it has 8GB of VRAM; and a lot of people that rooted for this decision of AMD was telling everyone that one would still be able to open games if the hardware technically supported it.

This is just gutting to be honest, that is a 11.5TFLOPS GPU.

Some people seem to got it running, but I am not sure if this will cause stability issues:

https://youtu.be/RTQvRYRuWOQ (this is a guide)

https://youtu.be/3l2f7_1E2f0 (here the author also commented in the comment section on how to temporarily fix).

[SRSpoony]

so the issue is this mate.

ive tried the fixes but they wont work on the Dual GPU, it keeps asking to update my drivers for the game to even think about working and when it stopped asking for that with the fix its fails for a black screen saying GPU not recognised.

my GPU maybe and older card but there isnt a game out there except this that it cant play or handle with 1 screen in Ultra and atleast 50fps stable or medium setting snd in Eyefinity 3600x1920 and stable.

the rest of my new and old rig is more than capable hell even my old 3930K easy runs games with 32gb of 2133 ram and on a bench mark it aint that far behind the new Ryzen 3600 and 16gb 3200 i have. i only upgraded so my 7 year old could play online games on PC with me.

AMD have screwed long term supporters, the 3930K i only got as i was asked to do reviews for a Swiss company and i got it cheap at 40% off all parts, i still had my 1090T on another PC i was using. hell in my garage i found 3 weeks ago my K7 Athlon thunderbird CPU thats how far back ive been buying there stuff.

a few things to note why i think AMD is a disgrace, you look at there climate agenda and green statements and it clearly says they want to help not produce as many wasted parts and be more cost efficients to the consumer. BUT we have to replace perfectly good working items to feed there pockets and do what with out old stuff ? cant trade them in agaisnt new items so yeah epic fail on being more greenand throwing stuff away and all while people lost jobs have less money due to the covid S**TSHOW they want us to spedn £1000 on just a new GPU, nah man that take the micky out of ALL gamers not just those on low incomes,

what ever happened tot he Budget system that folk can buy and STILL play games online with your mates ?

[hitbm47]

@SRSpoonyI agree with you, because the systems that cannot be sold will be thrown away and result in e-waste, therefore polluting the environment.

This is a really bad showing from them, I mean that R9 295x2 is supposed to be like a hall of fame for them. I am curious, were you at least still able to use crossfire on the GPU for most AAA games? That graphics card is still supposed to be a beast and at least get 60FPS High-Ultra with 1080p settings if it was supported properly.

Kind regards

[SRSpoony]

i have 2 of them so quadfirered harbinger cross desk@hitbm47 Lets just say 1 card is a beast but 2 yep 2 i have is insane so telling my i cant run BF2042 or any other game is an utter insult to both themselves and also me. hell 1 GPU plays games in Medium setings no problem on my 55" 4k TV and i still get 70ish FPS.

so i want AMD to tell me how and why my GPU for a start is included in there dead list for not being good enough for support for driver or games. come on AMD where you at ?

[hitbm47]

@SRSpoony 

WOW!! That is amazing!

I agree, AMD should really be ashamed at this, since it is unacceptable. Clearly they have barely any loyalty to customers that have been more than loyal to them.

Really hope you can continue gaming on this system. Technically, if these GPUs can be utilized properly, you would still have amazing performance on modern games without ray-tracing.

[goodplay]

Get over it, for hardware/software Tech. to move forward older hardware (and its limitations) sooner or later has to be excluded/ignored.

Windows 11 is now a good example of what is expected/required, have a read of several hundred pages of MS Docs. that specify  hardware/software minimal requirements for full features/functions moving forward.

[LivingTheDream]

Please. Windows 10 loss of support is 3.5 years away and Nvidia has no problems supporting Maxwell going forwards, which is a fair bit older than my fully DX12 Feature level 12.0 compliant 2015 R9 Fury Nitro purchased new in box in 2016.
All hardware eventually becomes obsolete, but it is simply too early for this hardware, ESPECIALLY now when it's so difficult to purchase new hardware, and to make matters worse?
NimeZ's drivers are BASED on updates pushed by AMD through windows update for GCN 1-3, which means SOMEONE at AMD is still writing compatible code for GCN (not much of a surprise considering GCN 4 is still supported).
The loss of support is completely arbitrary.

[Skrybe]

@LivingTheDream 

I don't think the loss of support is entirely arbitrary. Looking at the September Steam hardware info over 83% of video cards in use on Steam are still supported. Bear in mind that there is also about 9.6% of cards just named as generic AMD Radeon Graphics which may or may not be supported since we can't say for sure what they actually are. So at most 17% of cards on Steam aren't supported. At least it could be as low as 6.56%. Back in June it was 12.33% definitely unsupported with about 4.3% unknown.

So the amount of people using unsupported cards are dropping. Now to be fair, that may be because people are being forced to buy new cards, but it's also because people want to buy new cards. Unfortunately the percentages there are an unknown. But realistically that's why AMD are dropping support. There are less and less people using the unsupported cards every month so there is less incentive for them to keep supporting them. No matter how vocal the few people still using them are.

Here is just the AMD data from Steam.

	Sep	Proportion
AMD Radeon Graphics	1.01%	9.60%
AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series	0.15%	1.43%
AMD Radeon R5 Graphics	0.26%	2.47%
AMD Radeon R7 Graphics	0.28%	2.66%
AMD Radeon RX 460	0.20%	1.90%
AMD Radeon RX 470	0.23%	2.19%
AMD Radeon RX 480	0.29%	2.76%
AMD Radeon RX 550	0.48%	4.56%
AMD Radeon RX 560	0.33%	3.14%
AMD Radeon RX 570	1.27%	12.07%
AMD Radeon RX 580	1.65%	15.68%
AMD Radeon RX 580 2048SP	0.20%	1.90%
AMD Radeon RX 590 Series	0.27%	2.57%
AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT	0.30%	2.85%
AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT	0.28%	2.66%
AMD Radeon RX 5700	0.17%	1.62%
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT	0.77%	7.32%
AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT	0.16%	1.52%
AMD Radeon RX Vega	0.17%	1.62%
AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 Graphics	0.45%	4.28%
AMD Radeon Vega 3 Graphics	0.46%	4.37%
AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics	1.14%	10.84%

[hitbm47]

@Skrybe 

All this table proves is that very few people on Steam uses any sort of Radeon. Furthermore, this is only from Steam which cannot be a representation/reflection on the whole personal computer industry.

It is simply put unethical the state AMD has left pre- Radeon RX 400 users in, since everyone on a pre- RX400 system with at least a 1st gen Ryzen Processor/Motherboard are plagued by the driver timeout issue which has only been FIXED now in 21.10.2 for RX 400 / RX 500 GPUs.

Thanks to AMDs abrupt drop of support, Radeon R9 290-, etc., users get constant driver timeouts and cannot revert to earlier drivers than 21.5.1/21.5.2, since Windows will at most wait 30days before forcing the Radeon updates.

No excuses, AMD needs to urgently attend this issue for their Windows 10 drivers.

[Skrybe]

Steam is still the biggest platform for games and it's very much indicative of wider trends when it comes to the Windows gaming ecosystem. Sure it's not the entire gaming world but it's a damned good set of data to draw conclusions from.

I'm sorry but it's not unethical. Nvidia have literally just done the same thing, they've dropped support for anything older than a 900 series. It's standard industry practice. At some point they HAVE to drop support because it's not cost effective and it's actually detrimental to their wider customer base.

Not trying to be rude but how long do you seriously think they should support cards for? Until literally no one uses them? 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? I still have a working 486  in a cupboard with an old S3 video card in it - should that still be supported?

Frankly, I think their best solution would be to open source drivers for cards once they are no longer supported. This would be particularly useful when it came to situations like UT3 where a driver revision made it perform worse. You could compare the two versions and potentially resolve the problem. Obviously not a casual user, but a coder anyway.

[hitbm47]

@Skrybe 

Although I agree with your Open Source suggestion; which I have suggested months ago (and people had my head for it, I think especially Leyven); you are indeed missing the point. AMD left all GCN cards on Ryzen 1st series systems with the driver timeout plague (which I am suddenly experiencing now again as I type this on my RX 480). It is definitely unethical, because they literary left older, capable GCN cards in a broken state on Windows 10, which has supposedly only been fixed now in 21.10.2 for RX 400/RX500 cards, but I still experience it very seldom on my Ryzen system (go read through the forums; numerous people are having these driver crashes with GCN cards and Ryzen 1st gen systems).

Again, like mentioned in older comments, they do not have to continue supporting them, but @amd without a doubt has to release a fix to make them stable again and then they can leave it. But, as it stands the pre- RX400/RX500 cards has been borderline BRICKED by AMD themselves the moment they abruptly dropped support.

As for your argument of saying it is not unethical due to comparing them with Nvidia's drop earlier than 900 series cards is not valid, since the 900 series cards are older than the R9 300 series AMD dropped support for; so how you made that comparison is pretty illogical.

As you can see here the GTX 960 launched January 2015: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=gtx+960

As you can see here the R9 380 launched four months later in June 2015: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=r9+380

It has nothing to do with continued support, it has to do with leaving the driver in a stable state before discontinuing the product.

[End_of_life_user]

Windows 10 loss of support is 3.5 years away?

If it was, I would be happy, but, and this was my original post a good way back, AMD have already killed support for some devices on Windows 10, so effectively, in the event of any issues with this machine, I can't go back to AMD and get an update. Given this machine is less than 3 years old, and the chip set was only announced just over 3 years ago, so they've been less than friendly to the users of this particular combination. They have definitely killed it, if I try to update to a later driver than 21.5.2, the updater tells me that it's now on legacy support, and (to clarify something from weeks ago) that's on the X64 version, not the 32 bit option, they've killed ALL future support for this chipset. I just hope that Microsoft don't break some other area, as it's not just the graphics sections that are gone, it's the whole system, given that this is a laptop machine.

I was under the mistaken impression that at the moment, with the present issues, the idea was to be green, and reuse, etc. Seems that Microsoft and AMD are being less than helpful in that respect, and the massive number of systems that can't run Win11 only serves to confirm that anyone that expected a smooth transition going forward was sadly mistaken. I am also aware of an Intel I5 system that was installed new less than 15 months ago that also can't upgrade to Win11, so it's not just AMD that are being less than helpful.

[Skrybe]

@End_of_life_userI'd hazard a guess that i5 system is not compatible because of the motherboard rather than the CPU. Since one of the key criteria is TPM there's a good chance that it's on a "cheaper" mobo without TPM. That said, it may still be possible to install windows 11 anyway. You can install it on (some) supposedly non compatible hardware, you just get a warning and a disclaimer about potential security risks and possible compatibility issues.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/installing-windows-11-on-devices-that-don-t-meet-minimum...

There are plenty of reports from people who've installed it and are running it successfully on non-compatible hardware.

[hitbm47]

@goodplay, really silly and trivial response.

In @SRSpoony case, he should still be able to play modern games, since his hardware is still capable of handling non-raytraced computing with ease, and he is very likely one of AMD's top non-business funders.

At this point no one cares for Windows 11 since it is an absolute disaster for AMD CPUs, by losing up to 20% performance due to only optimizing for Intel's newest line-up.

Think a bit from a loyal customer's stand-point, before making selfish comments.

[Skrybe]

The problem with the r9 295 might not be "power" as much as feature set. It's an older card by a few years so it's possible the fault lies with the BF2042 devs rather than AMD. I'd be posting on the BF2042 forums and asking questions there. If there are features the older card literally doesn't have the hardware to support then it's the Dev's fault not AMD's.

As for the comment about Win11 and AMD CPUs being gimped. That's already been patched, about three days ago now. Frankly I wouldn't touch Windows 11 for about 3 - 6 months just to give it time for the bugs to be worked out. Both from Microsoft's end and from the driver side.

[Soldier_of_Dawn]

No, because legacy hardware can't use the latest driver Battlefield needs to run.  We get an error message saying we need driver 'xx.xx.xx' to run the game then the application closes, so we missed out on the open beta.  With Halo Infinite you can play the game but it's permanently unoptimised(15-30FPS) regardless of the settings.

[Soldier_of_Dawn]

Hi there.

I'm an 'R9 390 8GB' user who can also share in the frustration.  My more than capable hardware cannot play either Battlefield 2042 at all or Halo Infinite at a decent framerate due to lack of driver support.  The least they can do is offer drivers for the major titles or periodically produce a new driver for capable 'legacy' hardware.  I shouldn't be forced to spend £1000 on a new GPU or settle for a £400 side-grade.  This is a good way to kill customer loyalty.

[LivingTheDream]

Bro, check out the Nimez Radeon drivers in my post, he has included the optimizations for Halo Infinite and BF 2042, it freaking works!

https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/driver-mod-nimez-radeon-software-21-10-1-whql-gcn-legacy-pack-rele... 

Evidence below

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/29568daf8cd14083bd1b70a810bf3581/topics/psa-for-amd-hd-797...

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/29568daf8cd14083bd1b70a810bf3581/topics/amd-graphics-card-...

Might as well add that I discovered a workaround/fix for the 90hz Windows Mixed Reality bug, I don't even want to comment on how simple the fix is, it's absurd
Took me 6 hours to find it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2580612787

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2580612787/b3344ea4-d7a0-473d-be55-d84dc0bb949e/posts

[amdis]

I'm deeply dissatisfied. A friend gave me their laptop because it had a driver issue and I figured I'd be able to work around it or fix it and then a month later it got moved into legacy status and support won't help me. What blows my mind is that it got pushed into legacy status with, from what I see on google searches and this forum, a fairly common outstanding issue still unresolved (mouse and screen lock every 7 seconds, solvable on desktops with workaround by disabling HDCP but no such option available for most laptops.) It's my first experience with AMD products (I've always went with NVIDIA) and probably my last.