AMD has confirmed that new drivers for RX 6000-series and older graphics playing cards are on the best way inside the subsequent two weeks. It is a unusual state of affairs, in that I would not often be reporting on an upcoming and unspectacular driver bundle, however an absence of drivers for AMD’s older GPUs as of late has made this surprisingly noteworthy.
A tweet by AMD’s Frank Azor confirms that new drivers for earlier era and older graphics playing cards are coming very quickly.
We’re engaged on new @amdradeon drivers for 6000 sequence and prior gen playing cards. Aiming to launch them inside the subsequent 2 weeks. Will present one other replace if we run into any delays and as we get nearer to posting them. Thanks in your persistenceFebruary 3, 2023
That is vital, as AMD hasn’t launched a brand new driver bundle for its RX 6000-series and older GPUs since December 8, 2022. That is fairly a very long time for a number one graphics card firm to go with out new drivers for a heap of its merchandise, however the delay is made all that extra obvious by new driver releases for AMD’s RX 7900-series since that point.
AMD has launched a number of driver packages for the RX 7900-series this 12 months. There was one again on January 11, 2023 (opens in new tab), and one other on January 25 (opens in new tab). Weirdly the newest bundle, which gives enhancements for Forspoken and Vulkan, comes and goes from AMD’s driver downloads web page. I am not capable of see it at this time, for instance, nevertheless it was launched.
This two-pronged driver method has been the case ever because the launch of AMD’s RX 7900-series. Earlier than that, AMD had only one driver bundle for just about all the things, bar the odd APU again within the day. Nonetheless, AMD despatched me a brand new driver bundle for the RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab) and RX 7900 XT review (opens in new tab) items that was fully separate from the RX 6000-series bundle, with specific notes that these solely labored with the more moderen RDNA 3 playing cards. These new drivers have a unique model of the AMD emblem for the bundle icon and all the things.
I had thought on the time that this might be a pre-release overview driver anomaly and never one thing that may proceed for any size of time. Alas, I used to be mistaken and we’re nonetheless awaiting new drivers for AMD’s older playing cards to this present day.
“We stay dedicated to our unified driver technique and dealing to get there once more ASAP,” Azor says.
So, in time, we should always see an everyday cadence of drivers that play properly with all of AMD’s graphics playing cards. Although it does beg the query as to why AMD’s not been capable of proceed with these releases over the previous few months. Little question the brand new chiplet RDNA 3 structure has one thing to do with it, which can imply AMD has some work to do to get each its non-chiplet and chiplet GPUs in control with the identical code. Or possibly with out ballooning the GPU driver set up dimension to cater to each numerous playing cards.
