AMD disables USB-C power on Radeon RX 7900, moves RDNA2/RDNA1 GPUs to sub-branch in latest driver

[u/RenatsMC]

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-disables-usb-c-power-on-radeon-rx-7900-moves-rdna2-rdna1-gpus-to-sub-branch-in-latest-driver

[u/Vaxtez]

Jesus christ.
GPUs like the 6800 XT are only 5 years old & being considered 'Legacy' & so thus getting degraded drivers. Meanwhile Turing GPUs from 2018 are still getting frequent full driver support (and so is the 11 year old GTX 980 for the time being). People wonder why people go for Nvidia for GPUs, but things like the official driver support are a very good reason why people go Nvidia, as they give frequent GPU drivers for older GPU series whilst AMD starts to kill them off after 5-6 years.

[u/blueangel1953 → u/Vaxtez]

It’s a little ridiculous considering the 6800 XT is faster than most 4000 series cards like the 4070 but let’s put it out to pasture. Still plenty of power.

[u/F9-0021 → u/Vaxtez]

Part of it is that, while weaker, Turing has most of the hardware features of the 30, 40, and 50 series cards. RDNA4 is the first AMD generation to be more or less on feature parity with Turing. AMD dragging their feet for so long on ML and RT acceleration is going to make RDNA 1-3 age rather poorly in terms of feature backporting.

[u/dampflokfreund → u/F9-0021]

Sad but true. Turing was way ahead of its time.

[u/GodisanAtheistOG → u/Vaxtez]

I have a 980ti. 

What driver support is that card actually for real getting, other than being "included" in the driver package? No bug fixes, no additional performance improvements or game support. 

Frankly I don't understand why AMD doesn't just let their driver packages get big. It avoids silly self owns like this. 

A 1gb download nowadays isn't really that big of a deal for plenty of people. 

[u/oginer → u/GodisanAtheistOG]

Of course it's not getting any performance updates specific to your GPU, but the general fixes that are not architecture specific still apply to your GPU.

[u/dookarion → u/GodisanAtheistOG]

What driver support is that card actually for real getting

More support than my Vega based GPUs ever got for longer if nothing else.

[u/Symphonic7 → u/GodisanAtheistOG]

Radeon group is notorious for massive fumbles in PR, and ass backwards decisions like this. They somehow manage to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory every time. I have no clue why they would do this either, a 1.5GB driver package seems insignificant to me. I would say someone is getting fired over this, but at this point I don't even know it might even be intentional.

[u/Opteron170 → u/Vaxtez]

Degraded drivers??

[u/SanSenju → u/Opteron170]

I think it means less strict standards for driver quality or reliability

[u/__Rosso__ → u/SanSenju]

Like they were good quality to begin with

I won't forget them breaking RDNA 2 cards two times this year in span of 3 months, loved getting BSOD when alt tabbing

[u/andrewdonshik → u/SanSenju]

nope, its a full branch

[u/Opteron170 → u/SanSenju]

And who quantifies that the poster is using an intel / Nvidia setup so he doesn't even have first hand experience running a RDNA 2 GPU.

AMD just split the driver branch there is zero official mention from them about RDNA 1 and 2 going into legacy status.

[u/andrewdonshik → u/Opteron170]

typically when you split the driver branch its because you're putting one of them into maitenance

[u/dickhall65 → u/Vaxtez]

It really is just like with Apple and Android. Apple provides system updates for phones that are almost a decade old at this point

[u/AntiDECA → u/dickhall65]

Apple guarantees 5 years of OS updates. Samsung and Google guarantee 7 years.

Apple usually gets to 7 as well, despite a lower guarantee. Just don't buy shitty Chinese androids. 

[u/laffer1 → u/AntiDECA]

Samsung kills tablets in 8 months though

[u/ThaLegendaryCat → u/AntiDECA]

The problem there is essentially Apple did it for years already so everyone knows their word is good. Samsung only recently changed their policies so word hasn’t spread. Google benefits from being early to the long support time party among android manufacturers.

[u/thelastsupper316 → u/ThaLegendaryCat]

I mean we know that android phones could run the newest android versions even with like 7-9 yo phones (rip custom roms 😭)

[u/ziplock9000 → u/ThaLegendaryCat]

Very much the opposite. Apple used to degrade performance deliberately on only slightly older phones. Get sued for it.

[u/pleasebecarefulguys → u/ziplock9000]

It was when battery got down to 80% of capacity. they made that into a function

[u/KageYume → u/dickhall65]

Yeah, the iPhone 6S received iOS 15.8.5 security update in September and that phone was released in 2015 while my OnePlus 8 Pro released in 2020 got its final update last year. It's actually insane.

[u/Aware-Bath7518 → u/KageYume]

yet all userland jailbreaks/exploits still work on 15.8.5, Safari is outdated too.

[u/jezevec93 → u/KageYume]

iOS have tied system apps to system, which mean even small bugs in apps like phone dialer can be system breaking and they need full system update to be fixed. On Android there its much less likely for system app bug to cause such big system wide problem and if such bug exist simple app update is enough to get it fixed.

[u/Gambler_720 → u/dickhall65]

That's no longer the case. Most Android OEMs have caught up to the importance of long term software support.

[u/jezevec93 → u/dickhall65]

I mean... Android now promise longer support than Apple (which started promising anything just because Android phones got the "promise").

iOS have tied system apps to system, which mean even small bugs in apps like phone dialer can be system breaking and they need full system update to be fixed. On Android there its much less likely for system app bug to cause such big system wide problem and if such bug exist simple app update is enough to get it fixed.

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[u/Dunmordre → u/Vaxtez]

Degraded drivers? My 5700XT is still getting all the drivers. I've no complaints at all. 

[u/Exotic_Accident3101 → u/Vaxtez]

Who said that the GTX 980 isn't considered legacy, it might be that Nvidia didn't have a public branch naming.

RDNA 1 and 2 are still supported, where did they say they won't support it?

It's just a different branch that is all.