- AMD no longer supports RX 6000 or earlier GPUs in their drivers
- Those graphics cards are now in ‘maintenance mode’ so they won’t get any new features or gaming optimizations.
- They will continue to receive security patches, but the fact that these GPUs are no longer supported so soon has not been well received by gamers who have them.
AMD is stopping work on optimizing its Radeon graphics drivers for some older GPUs, and that includes models that are still relatively new, namely the RX 6000 series.
The first hint of this was provided in the release notes for the new Adrenalin v25.10.2 driver, in which AMD states that: “Support for new games and expanded support for Vulkan extensions are available for Radeon RX 7000 and 9000 series graphics products.”
In other words, no new gaming optimizations are provided for RX 6000 or older GPUs.
Tom’s Hardware then received confirmation from AMD on what exactly this means, namely that: “To focus on optimizing and delivering new and improved technologies for the latest GPUs, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 places the Radeon RX 5000 series and RX 6000 series (RDNA 1 and RDNA 2) graphics cards into maintenance mode.”
What this means, then, is that new features and game optimizations (bug fixes and performance tweaks for the latest games, like Battlefield 6 with driver v25.10.2 – Only implemented for AMD RX 7000 or newer graphics cards. Therefore, the RX 6000 (and RX 5000) models are no longer covered in this regard.
Which RX 6000 GPU willpower I continue to receive security fixes for vulnerabilities, but unfortunately nothing more.
Analysis: good regrets, frankly justified
There has been a lot of bad feeling about this decision, as it is too early for AMD to stop supporting RX 6000 graphics cards. Remember, these RDNA 2 GPUs only came out five years ago, and in fact, models were released in 2023 (the RX 6750 GRE, and the RX 6750 XT itself, and other XT variants, will hit shelves in 2022).
As a result, many gamers still use RX 6000 GPUs; in fact, I have one on my backup Windows 11 desktop PC, an RX 6650 XT, so it’s apparently no longer supported. This is a computer I bought just a couple of years ago. In fact, just a year ago I was still recommending the RX 6600 as a good budget GPU option.
Aside from the RX 6000 GPUs being too recent for AMD to throw in the towel on the support front, this is also a very bad look considering AMD has been trying to persuade gamers about the quality of its drivers as of late.
Historically, many people have preferred Nvidia GPUs due to perceptions of driver quality and overall reliability, but AMD has improved its position here more recently. (Nvidia’s Blackwell generation and all its mistakes didn’t help Team Green’s cause here.)
And yet we now have AMD dropping a range of graphics cards that only came out five years ago (or less in some cases), undoing some of this good work when looking at Nvidia’s comparative stance on support.
Team Green still supports RTX 2000 GPUs with gaming optimizations, products that came out seven years ago. In fact, the two generations before the RTX 2000 (Pascal and Maxwell) have just stopped receiving support, having been serviced by Team Green for nine and 11 years respectively. In the latter case, that’s more than twice as long as AMD has kept up the game optimization work for the RX 6000 GPUs. Like I said, it doesn’t look good at all.
Some may, and do, argue that game optimizations in controllers are not that important and that this work is overrated. While in some cases that may be true to some extent, and the adjustments may not be particularly vital, or even noticeable, just wait until you have some GPU driver defect that corrupts the textures of that shiny new game you just bought, and there won’t be any fix for your RX 6000 graphics card. It’s not a pleasant idea, especially if you bought that RDNA 2 GPU last year.
You can see why AMD is taking a lot of heat for this now, and perhaps there’s a chance we’ll still see a change of heart from the Red Team given the avalanche of criticism that’s been witnessed on many online forums.
To address another concern raised in some quarters, if you’re concerned about the Steam Deck or other handhelds that use AMD APUs with integrated RDNA 2 graphics, remember that this is the Windows driver AMD is talking about. In the Linux world, where SteamOS lives, the Radeon driver is different, and Phoronix.com makes a compelling case for why AMD’s decision here shouldn’t affect support on this side of the fence. At least that’s a small consolation.
As a final note, there is another controversy surrounding the latest version of AMD’s Radeon driver, with some believing that support for Windows 10 has also been dropped, but fortunately, that is not the case.
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