It’s been rumored for some time, but AMD is abandoning its RX 500 and RX Vega… At least, on the Linux side of the force. The company has officially announced the end of driver support for Polaris boards.
RX 500 & Vega: end of Linux driver support!
In practical terms, AMD is simply abandoning drivers for its “old” graphics cards. In other words, cards based on GFX8 (Polaris) and GFX9 (Vega) architecture are no longer supported by Linux. This has been announced by the AMD GPU Open team. The last driver compatible with these cards will therefore be AMDVLK 2023.Q4.1.
On the whole, it’s worth noting that there will be no further updates for these models. Functionality additions and support for new games will therefore come to an end. On the other hand, Polaris has come a long way since 2016, notably with the launch of the RX 480. However, it’s a shame for the most recent cards, such as the RADEON VII launched in 2019.
On the Windows side, nothing is less certain, although it also smells of a fir tree. Already, these architectures don’t benefit from support with each new release. Worse still, these models have separate drivers from the more recent RDNA cards.
In short, if no announcements have been made on the Windows side, it’s a safe bet that they won’t be for much longer. This is a shame, since the RX 580 is the most widely used AMD GPU on Steam (0.95%).
