It’s been rumored for some time, but GCN GPU-based graphics cards will benefit from limited driver support from now on. In fact, AMD has announced that it has placed its Polaris and Vega cards on “legacy” status, so to speak.
GCN: end of driver support!
Overall, the news concerns graphics cards featuring a GCN architecture GPU. RX 400, RX 500, Vega 56/64/Pro Duo, RADEON VII and others will no longer benefit from new drivers… At least not at the same rate as the RX 5000/6000/7000. AMD considers that these cards are now mature, stable and have reached their performance limit. Via Anandtech, we can find the following announcement:
” 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. “
Basically, for these cards, AMD will only offer separate drivers incorporating security and functionality updates where available. As for support for new games, as you can imagine, this will be limited.
In short, this is something we’ve been talking about, since for some time now, cards have had drivers, but launched separately. In fact, before the 23.11.1 update, these cards hadn’t received an update in 2 months, the last one dating back to September with 23.9.2.
As a reminder, GCN architecture boards are no longer new. The RX 400 is now 7 years old, compared with 6 years for the RX 500. The Vega 64 was launched in 2017, while the RADEON Pro Duo was also launched in 2016, and the RADEON VII in 2020. With the exception of the RADEON VII, these cards are seriously starting to show their age.
