Still gaming on AMD’s old Polaris and Vega (GCN) GPUs?
Very good, but an upgrade may finally be in order, as AMD has revealed that these products will no longer be getting the same level of care that its more recent RDNA offerings have been getting.
According to a statement that AnandTech received from the Ryzen and Radeon maker, AMD plans to only provide “critical” updates for Polaris and Vegas from this point forward, including what has been described as “important” security and functionality updates:
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.
That said, AMD has clarified that while it’s moving Polaris and Vega closer to the back of the shed, these products aren’t actually considered EOL yet:
…AMD is actively asserting that this is not “legacy” status for Vega and Polaris, which is an important distinction because of what “legacy” means within AMD’s ecosystem. For AMD, legacy products are effectively considered end-of-life, and ongoing driver support is retired. Which in the case of previous generation GPU architectures going legacy, AMD did not have any further driver releases of any kind planned – though in practice did AMD release a couple of drivers to fix critical security issues.
AMD split its driver releases for RDNA and GCN only a few months ago, starting in September, but there’s already been some discrepancies, including what appears to be the lack of a driver release for the GCN branch in October.
AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 23.11.1 looks to be the latest Polaris/Vega driver, released this month to address a Counter-Strike 2 issue.
Polaris products include the Radeon 400 Series, which debuted in 2016, while Vega products include the Radeon 500 Series, which debuted in 2017.