AMD end of life for many processors and graphic chips

Irish Steve

With the release of a new version of Radeon software, AMD have end of lifed a significant number of CPU's and GPU's, saying that they are going to concentrate their efforts on high end processors and devices.

To see the massive list of devices that are affected, there is a link to the statement from AMD

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-630

https://community.amd.com/t5/blogs/product-and-os-support-update-for-radeon-software-adrenalin-21-6/ba-p/477423/jump-to/first-unread-message

For me, that's the end of my use of AMD devices, a company that chops support for a device that's not yet 3 years old does not deserve any loyalty or future support from me, and hopefully, a lot more people will take a similar attitude, and hurt AMD's bottom line big time.

I am very much less than impressed that they believe that they can just abandon relatively new hardware in this way, given how often Microsoft update Win 10, and break things for many users, I'm going to have to consider the best way forward, and I am seriously thinking that with the other changes that are being flagged by Microsoft, which implies that their next operating system will be charged on a monthly basis, it would seem to me that the way forward will be to look very seriously at a future strategy that eliminates both Microsoft and AMD from my future plans.

I've said for a while that I need to look seriously at an alternative like a Linux strategy, and I don't think there are any packages that I'm using these days that are only usable on Windows, the thought of actually paying Microsoft every month for them to then break the machine with flawed updates is really not appealing one little tiny bit to me, and if AMD are not going to support their chips any more, then that makes remaining on Windows a very dangerous strategy, and I'm not about to go out and buy yet another laptop, there's nothing wrong with the one I am using, as long as no one external breaks it, which is a very real ongoing worry with the way that Microsoft are operating.

It seems that AMD are concentrating on high end servers and very expensive gaming platforms, and have decided that their traditional market is no longer deserving of support.

I hope this crass decision comes back to royally bite them very hard in the arse.

Aodhan5000

I really think you're taking this a bit seriously. The driver updates they push nowadays, don't really affect you anyway. It's usually for more current gen GPUs and APUs. They most definitely have not "abandoned their traditional market", yes, they are ending driver support on some older devices but that's because there are so few users of those devices that it makes more sense to focus on the newer stuff which is more popular. It's a numbers game. Traditional and old are not necessarily the same. However please post what chip you have and we will be able to point out that it is probably no less than 5 years old. Just because you bought the device 3 years ago, doesn't mean the chip was launched 3 years ago.

And just if you're wondering, the main reason they have ended support for so many gens if GPUs in one fell sweep is because they are based on similar architectures (GCN) with many of them being refreshes of each other.

The main conclusion is that it's highly unlikely this will have any effect at all on your experience with your laptop. Yes Microsoft might push a bad update introducing stability on your system, but who's fault is that? More than likely Microsoft's. Ring up Bill Gates not Lisa Su.

Disclaimer: I'm not an AMD fanboy, I dislike every major chip maker right now for various different reasons

MidlanderMan

As far as I can tell everything that has stopped getting updates is more than 3 years, and a few generations old at this stage. There's at least 4 generations of AMD GPU's since the listed ones (5if you count Radeon Vii as a generational change) and there's what, 4-5 generations of Athlon and now Ryzen CPU's since those APUs were released?




The parts don't just stop working, they just won't get updates, but at this stage it's not like any driver updates will improve performance anyway, some of them don't even support DX12...

MidlanderMan

Irish Steve wrote: »

It seems that AMD are concentrating on high end servers and very expensive gaming platforms, and have decided that their traditional market is no longer deserving of support.

This is disengenuos at best.

The Athlon 3000GE series, and the Ryzen 2000/3000/4000/5000 G series, are exremely affordable APUs for laptops and desktops and provide infinitely better performance over older bulldozer era dross chips the company used to make that literally nobody bought. The company is right to leave it's mistakes behind them.

wotzgoingon

I looked through the link before I read the posters above comments and first thing that came to my head is which of these is 3 years old. I couldn't find any.

a bit....

Irish Steve

Just done some more digging on the chip set in this machine, which was supplied new and started warranty in October 2018, so it wasn't old stock as such given the chip set release date.

The AMD A9-9425 is an entry-level chip from the Stoney-Ridge APU series for notebooks (7th APU generation), which was announced mid 2018.

That's not an old chip, the basic range was announced in 2016, so still not exactly ancient, and the difference between desktop and laptop systems is that on a laptop, there are zero upgrade paths, so if support is no longer provided, that's the end of life for the device in the event that a Microsoft update doesn't work, and running Win 10 that's not being updated is a security risk, even more so if financial applications are being run on the machine.

NVIDIA are still supporting 10 year old devices, so AMD killing off devices that are barely out of warranty is a serious issue, and one that I won't forgive any time soon, laptops are not cheap, and even more so right now given the massive shortage of chips that's causing problems for many manufacturers.

I had no plans to upgrade this laptop any time soon, but that may now have to change.

tbh that cpu was the very last of the always really terribly bad and low-end A series CPUs

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A9-9425&id=3278

Ryzen mobile CPUs had already been out since 2017

AMD had no decent mobile CPU's before Ryzen

shouldn't have bought one of those in the first place if you did really.

they will still work fine just no driver updates

And it's only GPU's that typically get driver updates after a year or two in any case, not CPU's really.

AMD just brought out its equivalent of Nvidia's DLSS and they are supporting low-end GPU cards going back 5 years with it! :eek:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/22/22545441/amd-dlss-fidelityfx-super-resolution-fsr-supersampling-tests-benchmarks

Whereas with Nvidia you have to have an RTX card

Irish Steve

Yes, the A series was low end in comparison to some other chip sets, but the decision was based on expected usage, and for my normal day to day work, it is fine, even more so with an upgrade to a 1TB SSD that went in after the warranty expired.

My concern is that it's the entire chip set that's been ditched from support, not just the GPU, and yes, I am well aware that it's not a gaming or similar device, but at the time, it was a reasonable spec machine, aggressively priced, one of the few with SSD and a standard disc OOB, so it ticked a lot of boxes as a desktop replacement for general usage.

USB and other connection devices are also AMD, and if Microsoft screw things up, which they've done several times recently, there's no telling what won't work, or will be degraded, and if AMD are not updating to resolve compatibility issue, that's a big deal.

Aodhan5000

Pretty sure that Apu was a refresh, that's why they dropped it. Buy smart as well. And if Microsoft screw something up, why is that on AMD