AMD continues support for older Radeon GPUs with driver updates | usagoldmines.com

After days of confusing gamers over the future of its Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 GPUs, AMD changed its story yet again Sunday night, now claiming that its older generation of GPUs will live on their own “optimized” driver path.

“This is not the end of support for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2,” AMD said in a blog post, referring to the GPU architecture of the RX 5000 and RX 6000 cards.

Instead, those earlier Radeon cards will remain on a single “optimized driver path,” while the newer RX 7000 and RX 9000 will follow a second, optimized release, according to the company.

AMD said the older models will continue to receive “game support for new releases: stability and game optimizations; [and] security and bug fixes.”

“Our goal is simple: to give every Radeon gamer the best experience possible,” AMD said. “By separating the code paths, our engineers can move faster with new features for RDNA 3 and RDNA 4, while keeping RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 stable and optimized for current and future games.”

Last week, AMD’s Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 update notes made no mention of the RX 6000 and RX 5000 cards, leading gamers to wonder whether AMD would continue supporting the older cards. After journalists began making inquiries, AMD began using the term “maintenance mode” to describe what was happening to the older RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 cards — then later backed off those terms.

By Friday, the term “maintenance mode” appeared to have been entirely removed from the release notes, and the company had begun telling sites like Tom’s Hardware that new features and bug fixes would be provided to the older cards. (AMD did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.)

Last week, AMD also reported that it would not remove USB Type-C functionality on its RX 7900 cards, as the company’s notes had earlier indicated. It also clarified that it would continue providing driver updates for Windows 10, a conclusion some drew after AMD left out Windows 10 support in the notes attached to the 25.10.2 release.

“It appears there has been some confusion regarding the driver we posted on Thursday,” AMD said in a note to reporters on Sunday. The blog post was added to “clear up any misunderstandings,” the company said.

“We’ve supported Radeon gamers for generations and that commitment isn’t changing,” AMD said. “Whether you’re gaming on an RX 5000, RX 6000, or the latest RX 9000, you’ll continue to get the reliability, performance, and care you expect from AMD. Because we’re all part of the same gaming community and every Radeon gamer matters.”

Let’s hope that AMD has taken that lesson to heart.