AMD has confirmed that new drivers for RX 6000-series and older graphics playing cards are on the way in which inside the subsequent two weeks. It is a unusual state of affairs, in that I would not normally be reporting on an upcoming and unspectacular driver package deal, however a scarcity 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 collection 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 to your persistenceFebruary 3, 2023
That is vital, as AMD hasn’t launched a brand new driver package deal 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 couple of driver packages for the RX 7900-series this yr. 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 package deal, which affords enhancements for Forspoken and Vulkan, comes and goes from AMD’s driver downloads web page. I am not in a position to see it right this moment, for instance, but it surely was launched.
This two-pronged driver method has been the case ever for the reason that launch of AMD’s RX 7900-series. Earlier than that, AMD had only one driver package deal for just about the whole lot, bar the odd APU again within the day. Nevertheless, AMD despatched me a brand new driver package deal for the RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab) and RX 7900 XT evaluate (opens in new tab) models that was solely separate from the RX 6000-series package deal, with express notes that these solely labored with the more moderen RDNA 3 playing cards. These new drivers have a special model of the AMD emblem for the package deal icon and the whole lot.
I had thought on the time that this might be a pre-release evaluate 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 at the present time.
“We stay dedicated to our unified driver technique and dealing to get there once more ASAP,” Azor says.
So, in time, we must always see a daily 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 in a position to proceed with these releases over the previous few months. Little doubt 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 up to the mark with the identical code. Or perhaps with out ballooning the GPU driver set up measurement to cater to each a lot of playing cards.