AMD releases statement confirming RDNA1 and RDNA2 will continue to receive game optimizations - VideoCardz.com
Posted by KARMAAACS@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 82 comments
IANVS@reddit
Boy, has that Fine Wine^TM gone sour...
dampflokfreund@reddit
The problem with AMD is that their architectures are just the bare minimum in terms of featureset at the release date of their respective architectures
RDNA1 had no HW accelerated Raytracing, no machine learning accelerators, no DX12 Ultimate.
Turing (RTX 20 series) had these crucial features already back in 2018.
RDNA2 had HW RT and DX12U but it lacked machine learning acceleration. It's RT acceleration was far weaker than Turing.
RDNA3 improved the situation by adding ML accelerators, but they were still quite weak. Improved RT but still a bit weaker than Turing.
Only now with RDNA4 AMD is catching up. The RT acceleration is now better than Turing, although it still doesn't accelerate BVH traversal in hardware, which RDNA5 will bring to the table, catching up to Nvidia's 2018 architecture. Machine learning accelerators are now useful.
RDNA5 will be a major milestone for AMD.
kneepel@reddit
Nothing has changed, this is just a re clarification of their original statement they made for because of the backlash. RDNA1 & 2 are still now on some form of a legacy branch, and still looks like they not receive the same level of support as RDNA3 & 4 going forward.
SirActionhaHAA@reddit
Ofc they won't, it's because a redstone update is coming up for rdna3 and 4 soon and the features ain't gonna be supported by rdna1 and 2 on the hardware level. You'll see when it gets announced.
soul-regret@reddit
how is it funny when the leaked version was already proven to be working and looking just fine on old cards? what's actually funny and really pathetic is to suck corporate d1ck online
Scytian@reddit
The leaked INT8 model is not really FSR4, it's some development version, and for all we know it was abandoned sometime last year. We don't know if RDNA3/3.5 version of FSR4 will be this INT8 model or something totally different (like some lighter model running on FP16). And on top of that: No, INT8 model was not just fine on RDNA2, it's performance is terrible and it has some major graphical glitches like light accumulation in Cyberpunk.
Seanspeed@reddit
Which is fine, and normal.
ADreamOfRain@reddit
Nvidia still releases new features for their 2000 series while AMD is basically retiring 6000 series which are one gen newer.
dorting@reddit
FSR4 was literally 9000 exclusive
ADreamOfRain@reddit
When did I ever talk about FSR4?
dorting@reddit
If you were talking about new features, you were most likely talking about DLSS, right? So the AMD equivalent is FSR... except that here we run into some hardware limitations.
ADreamOfRain@reddit
The point isn't FSR vs DLSS or why FSR isn't available on 6000 and 7000 series.
The point is that after 7 years not only Nvidia is still fully supporting 2000 cards, they are even releasing new features for them.
Meanwhile AMD is considering their 4 and 5 year old cards "legacy".
dorting@reddit
But absolutely no, that has never been the case. A lot of misinformation has been created about this. And in fact, now AMD confirms that it's not like that. Furthermore, these cards are supported just as much as their Nvidia counterparts, don't believe the opposite. The cards that have reached driver maturity no longer need constant updates; shifting the focus to RDNA3 and RDNA4 does not mean abandoning the cards. Believing something like that means acting in bad faith. I also want to point out that even with Nvidia, where cards did not have sufficient hardware capabilities, their features didn't arrive. Where did frame generation for the 3000 series end up, in fact??? What's happening now is hysteria and a lot of YouTubers taking advantage of it, a sad situation. That said, there's no doubt that AMD used the wrong words initially
dorting@reddit
fsr4 was announced as part of redstone and exclusive 9000 series has always been that way.
Purple10tacle@reddit
The fact that we have a leaked version of FSR4 Redstone that's looking and running surprisingly well on RDNA2 and AMD has decided to never release it should tell you everything you need to know.
Sevastous-of-Caria@reddit
Yea not expecting this is the norm is weird for som ewho didnt get the memo. Its the equavalent of wanting framegen of rtx 40 series to gtx 10 series because its not officially EOL yet.
Acceptable_Potato949@reddit
It absolutely isn't the same.
RTX 40 series came out in 2022, the same time AMD released refreshed models with RDNA2 silicon, i.e. the RX 6X50 series.
One of those is getting first class support, while one is already considered legacy. I'll give you better: RTX 30 also is first class.
People who bought AMD products rightfully expect good driver support especially for graphics cards not even 4 years old.
Meanwhile, Nvidia is surpassing 5 years of active Game Ready Driver support for its products. Please tell me what "memo" didn't I get?
ADreamOfRain@reddit
Even much older 2000 series got the new DLSS model.
SirActionhaHAA@reddit
5 of the last 6 gameready drivers are focused on dlss4 support. In practice most optimizations are done on a feature support basis. The only reason ampere feels like it's getting priority support is because it's more ml capable. That ain't the same for rdna1 and 2, even 3 is barely ml capable and is barely making it
Rather than blaming the driver you should be blaming the architectures for not bein more ml ready, but that's something ya already know when buying rdna older than 4.
Hayden247@reddit
You know even RX 20 series can use DLSS4 support right? This isn't the point you think you're making when a RTX 2070 can flip on DLSS4 upscaling and even ray reconstruction.
Meanwhile RDNA2 will be left without FSR4 INT8 despite the leaked one proving the architecture can do it.
Acceptable_Potato949@reddit
As someone with AMD hardware, an RX 6900 XT nonetheless, I still find it utterly idiotic that AMD branched off compute into CDNA.
The last "good" architecture from AMD was Vega. It was rushed and the 7nm VII was short-lived, but still very capable, even for ML.
No support for mesh shaders was its early downfall, but the same is true for RDNA1. AMD only picked up speed with RDNA2.
The chiplet design of RDNA3 didn't do it many favors and it's obvious that RDNA4 is just a stop gap before a return to form with "UDNA".
I chose AMD because I wanted competition. That said, it sucks sometimes. ROCm support in particular is abysmal vs. CUDA.
Now I'm in a "wait and see" phase. Not in a hurry to buy new hardware. I don't want to be a beta tester again. There is no "fine wine".
Velgus@reddit
For note, Nvidia also literally "just" dropped first-class support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta last month (the October 14 Game Ready Driver will be their last).
soul-regret@reddit
you got downvoted bc at first glance it sounds like you're justifying amd, when these nvidia cards are actually old as fuck
Velgus@reddit
How does it remotely look like that? I said (including quote) that the support was "just" dropped. It was a follow-up, adding that the support is actually even longer than implied by the previous poster, Nvidia provided Game Ready Drivers for over 11.5 years to Maxwell.
Acceptable_Potato949@reddit
I had a GTX 980 Ti around the time Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released. Fun times.
It's been... over 10 years since. Fuck.
Sevastous-of-Caria@reddit
This term is really flimsy. Some draw the line at long security and stability updates and hotfixes to breaking problems. Some dont. But I really dont bellieve both red and green team software testing and tweaking old gpus when they run fine on stable api stack. Like polaris rx580 on BF6? That dont have support for a while. But it runs normally because these companies dont actually have to?
As a rtx 30 User I can say this. Game Ready Drivers are buggy as hell and caused me several times to revert to get back lost performance downlocking my laptop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1namedi/the_new_nvidia_581xx_drivers_are_causing_massive/
Heres a thread for the curious.
bubblesort33@reddit
It was actually like 20 years ago. Back then sometimes you could not play new games on 3-4 year old GPUs, because they didn't support the features they were coming up with every generation or two. These days people have gotten used to 8 years of driver, and game support.
JJ3qnkpK@reddit
Yeah, you'd end up behind a directx version pretty quickly, and it was even worse before that.
dorting@reddit
Literally the company is exposing itself and you think the opposite, this is conspiracy theory and honestly behaviors like yours should be banned since they create false alarmism.
dorting@reddit
I'm surprised that your post was even upvoted, and who are you to say otherwise and disprove AMD, stop spreading misinformation or I have to think that this sub is rotten and someone has some interest to maintain
Bimsmass@reddit
Reading the statement, it possible they may have reversed course on this, but instead of making a strong, clear statement to counter the shitstorm, they wrap it in this wishy-washy "clarification" that easily gives the impression nothing has changed. Plus the usual corporate hogwash ("this bad thing you're upset about is actually a good thing") waters it down further.
Even if they do in fact continue the support, the reputational damage is done. All the effort and none of the reward. It's almost unbelievable how badly they've handled this, but then again it's AMD.
TailedPotemkin@reddit
My RX 6090 XT warranty expired less than a year ago. It would be very sad to see AMD abandoning its hardware so quickly.
Seanspeed@reddit
Nothing is being abandoned, jesus.
Nothing AMD are doing here is any different from Nvidia.
soul-regret@reddit
nvidia brought dlss 4 to rtx 2000 series. amd doesn't plan to support rdna2 with fsr4 even though the leaked version looks and works just fine. so yes, rdna1/2 is getting abandoned, forever
Muted-Garlic1886@reddit
RTX 30 & older got DLSS 4 lite not the full version on RTX 40 & RTX 50.
Proof-Most9321@reddit
Source: my ass
dorting@reddit
Didn't you happen to notice that the RTX 2000 series has AI cores? While RDNA1/2 doesn't? FSR4 was a 9000 series exclusive initially
Henrarzz@reddit
Didn’t you notice that there is leaked version of FSR4 that does work on RDNA2 cards Mr AMD’s Damage Control Department?
dorting@reddit
Which isn't exactly the same thing, though. That doesn't mean anything, since it uses different instructions to function. Do you know how many things are made in this field and never released because they don't meet certain standards? It seems like people just got into PCs or gaming yesterday...
TurtlePaul@reddit
No. The latest Nvidia Game Ready Driver is optimized back to Maxwell (GTX 980, etc). RDNA 2 is now on a similar branch to Nvidia Kepler (GTX 680, GTX 780) but those cards released 12 to 13 years ago, not one to five years ago like RDNA 2.
TailedPotemkin@reddit
I misspoke. I understand it's not going to happen. I'd be surprised if it did.
advester@reddit
So many techtubers who should know better have been saying exactly what he said. All of them are primed to farm outrage for clicks.
dorting@reddit
Nothing is being abandoned, do you believe random guys in a sub where you root for a brand or do you believe the company itself? Many people here seem to forget that fsr4 is always exclusive to the 9000 series... if it arrives on the older ones it has always been something extra and unexpected
Earthborn92@reddit
This has everything to do with Redstone.
I think this might actually be confirmation that RDNA3 will be getting some version of Redstone but RDNA2 won’t.
Muted-Garlic1886@reddit
Because RDNA 3 has AI & actual RT cores which the ones crying & Downvoting everywhere are ignoring. PS5 pro will get FSR4 Redstone as well since It using a custom RX 7700xt with RDNA 2 for back compat mode.
dorting@reddit
it always has been but evidently people talk at random
https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/technologies/fidelityfx/super-resolution.html
Available exclusively on the AMD Radeon™ RX 9000 series graphics cards, AMD FSR 4 uses an AI-accelerated upscaling algorithm to deliver image quality improvements over AMD FSR 3.1.
GenZia@reddit
remember when AMD washed their hands of the original TeraScale. And, to be fair, it made a certain kind of sense since TeraScale was an ATI creation and not a particularly good one (compared to Nvidia’s Tesla).
Even TeraScale 2 didn’t last long; it was quickly abandoned around 2014 in favor of GCN, with the latest drivers still in beta.
Now it seems like they’re doing the same with the early iterations of RDNA, and again, it makes sense since RDNA1 in particular was rough around the edges and is practically obsolete when it comes to UE5 titles.
DaMan619@reddit
The 360 shook Nvidia to the point that they spent the following year gaslighting us into thinking unified shaders were overrated so you have to give Terrascale more credit.
Literally MFW when the 8800GTX released 😳
bubblesort33@reddit
How do you even know this to be true? How can anyone even validate this? AMD could release drivers where they just make sure the game doesn't crash, and that's that. If it' runs better on an RX 7600 than an RX 6650xt (which are usually close) anyone can just point to the different architectures and say "That's why RDNA3 is better!".
Like the RX 7600 is already for the last 2 years significantly better than the RX 6650xt in a maybe 2%-5% of games. One of them, a Call of Duty game, had RDNA3 absolutely destroy Nvidia in that one title, and had large gains over RDNA2, even if on average there was almost no difference if you looked at like a100 titles.
I feel like AMD can really just go ahead with the plan they had like a month ago, and most people won't now, because the difference that game optimizations make is maybe only a couple % some of the time.
dorting@reddit
Literally the company is exposing itself and you think the opposite, this is conspiracy theory and honestly behaviors like yours should be banned since they create false alarmism.
jigsaw1024@reddit
AMD is still releasing products brand new with RDNA2. They just dropped some mobile chips in the last month, and the iGPU is RDNA2 based.
Putting those products into maintenance or legacy branch for their drivers is horrible.
Sure, AMD says those products will receive game updates, but what will that support really look like, if those products are in the legacy branch?
And whatever they decide to do in the future will now be done quietly and announcements won't need to be made, as those products are now in the legacy branches.
Purple10tacle@reddit
We have products in the maintenance branch right now, we know exactly how AMDs "support" for them looks like. It's certainly a lot closer to the original statement than the new, PR-weasel word, "market needs" statement. Maintenance mode means:
Zero new features, zero attempts to fix long standing bugs, and "game optimization" means: we might fix the odd, game breaking, crash bug, if the game is really, really popular (think Minecraft or Call of Duty levels, nothing below). That's what "market needs" means.
dabocx@reddit
It means you aren’t going to get FSR4 and other new features from restore most likely. Which at this point no one should have really expected
rilgebat@reddit
The real read here is AMD are essentially winding down their efforts in graphics, in favour of chasing AI compute. Drop the investment into drivers and drop the dedicated graphics uArch for once again repackaging ~~GCN~~CDNA with a name change.
Kepler_L2@reddit
They're literally moving MI-series to an iterative fork of RDNA
abdullah_haveit@reddit
At this point, I don't care about what they say. Let's just see what they do.
DisjointedHuntsville@reddit
This is scary for AMD. The engineering culture there seems to favor apathetic long term support.
They walked it back this time because of the backlash, but clearly, the original plan was to cut and run. They've got to change this if they're looking to stay in the half trillion club.
Seanspeed@reddit
Nothing was walked back. They just underestimated how ignorant and reactionary PC gamers are.
All they ever said was about Day 1 game-specific optimizations. That's it. It was never a big deal, and not any different to how Nvidia do things.
Gambler_720@reddit
Lumping RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 together is AMDs biggest mistake. RDNA 2 was a huge leap in terms of features and is absolutely a solid architecture to last the remaining console generation.
The support cycle shouldn't simply be based on the number of years. Axing RDNA 1 is fine even though Turing is still supported because it's fallen really behind in features. That can happen when your architecture wasn't as future proof as the competitor.
But RDNA 2 suffers no such thing and there shouldn't be any talk of it getting left behind.
Moscato359@reddit
They lumped them based off fp8 support
Hayden247@reddit
Which is bullshit, FP8 is all that matters, seriously? Not the fact that RDNA2 added DX12 Ultimate, or INT8 support which means RDNA2 can run the FSR4 INT8 verison and does so viably enough? Nvidia is still supporting GTX 16 series as of now and those don't have tensor cores!
Moscato359@reddit
fsr4 int8 has worse performance than fsr3.1
as for
"Nvidia is still supporting GTX 16 series as of now and those don't have tensor cores!"
What support have they provided that wasn't something that 2000 series also had?
Moscato359@reddit
You say this but amd is also known for fine wine development
HotRoderX@reddit
its most likely what they still plan... its just easier to release a statement tell people what they want to here then stop doing it anyway. Which if I remember correctly in there last few release notes there already doing.
They already stopped offering optimization for day 1 games for RDNA1 & 2 just when they said that out loud everyone freaked. They will just go back to quietly putting it in the release notes.
LuluButterFive@reddit
Now this is what I call moving the goal post
Kezika@reddit
https://giphy.com/gifs/3eZnDdEUsTh8B85DUj
ExcelsiorWG@reddit
I mean - this is a more concrete statement walking back the dumpster fire of their initial press release. Glad that RDNA1/2 are still going to get the expected level of support. Whether or not it was a walk back or a miscommunication, it’s just another example of AMD completely screwing up when it comes to marketing.
ClerkProfessional803@reddit
Yes, we know. And maintenance mode isn't going suddenly become a good thing because people need to believe in AMD again. RDNA2 is simply no old enough to be relegated to a security branch driver.
KARMAAACS@reddit (OP)
Seems like they walked it back after all the backlash. What do you guys think, was it this way from the beginning?
imaginary_num6er@reddit
It’s not walking back, but rephrasing. They do not mention Day 1 support or whether projects Redstone will ever be ported to RDNA2
Seanspeed@reddit
They've already said that feature support is not ruled out for older GPU's.
The ONLY thing they've talked about stopping is game-specific DAY 1 optimizations. That's it.
People freaked out over basically nothing.
TurtlePaul@reddit
People aren’t complaining over nothing. Gamers want the day 1 patch for the biggest game to improve performance for their GPU. AMD is saying they will make security fixes, but when they do day 1 patches for the next DooM, Battlefield, CoD or FromSoft game, it will be for only RDNA 3 & 4 GPUs. As the owner of a 6800 XT, I am fine with the support my card got but would always appreciate more. But on the mobile side there are RDNA 2 GPUs still being sold new today, and that is disappointing.
vandreulv@reddit
Nothing changed. Y'all just illiterate, reactionary fuckheads.
Moscato359@reddit
I don't think anything changed.
They just communicated things really badly before.
pewciders0r@reddit
this was their direct response to inquiry from a media outlet. don't think incompetence or miscommunication can explain a total 180 like this.
Dark_ShadowMD@reddit
Basically, the same stuff then, just "properly" worded this time? Feels to me tey aren't stepping back, just gaslighting people then...
HorrorBuff2769@reddit
They tend to do that a lot, unfortunately.
advester@reddit
You can never prove AMD didn't give you a game optimization they could have if they cared more.
Elysium_nz@reddit
No surprise there, only people who believed the original stories were the rage baiters.
SeraphicalChaos@reddit
The drama came from of AMD's poor communication on what putting them into a separate sub-branch actually meant. This is on them as much as anyone else. A company this large has huge marketing/PR teams whose entire purpose is clear communication with the public.
Elysium_nz@reddit
Oh please, how hard is it to simple just wait and clarify this information first, especially when these ‘rumours’ centred on hardware this is still current, before people started making their rage bait videos and posts? 🙄
I looked at the information and could clearly see this had to be a mistake.
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