Mark Walton
Reputable graphics card shortage periods were experienced during the cryptocurrency boom and the pandemic challenges in the past couple of years. However, 2023 has turned out to be a surprisingly practical time to invest in a new graphics card. The latest midrange GPUs, like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD’s Radeon RX 7600, may not offer significant upgrades over their predecessors, but they deliver consistent performance and are regularly available at or below their launch prices.
For users of older AMD Radeon GPUs, an unsettling development has emerged. According to AnandTech, AMD is gradually reducing driver support for its GPUs from the late 2010s, particularly those built on its Polaris and Vega architectures. The support for these GPUs has already been removed from the company’s Linux drivers, and future Windows driver updates will mainly cover “critical developments.”
AMD’s official statement indicates, “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.”
The Polaris architecture powered some of AMD’s most acclaimed graphics cards over the past decade, such as the RX 480 and RX 580, which were well-received due to their affordability and improved performance over previous-generation GPUs. The RX 580, introduced in 2017, continues to be the most prevalent dedicated AMD graphics card in the Steam Hardware Survey as of 2023.
The Vega architecture was also utilized in dedicated GPUs, but it became more prominent as the GPU architecture for AMD’s Ryzen lineup’s integrated GPUs, starting with the Ryzen 2000G series in 2018. Although newer Ryzen processors incorporate GPUs based on the still-supported RDNA 2 or RDNA 3 architectures, many continue to use Vega, including the most recent desktop APUs (the Ryzen 5000G series) and some current-generation Ryzen 7000 laptop processors.
This situation places AMD in a challenging position, as they now offer limited ongoing driver support for some products that are still available for purchase.
While it is true that older GPUs generally would not benefit as much from new drivers, as most improvements have already been made and the hardware may not support new features like FSR 3, owners of older cards (and many modern integrated GPUs) risk missing out on some of these fixes if AMD continues to provide updates and optimizations for new games with new drivers.
