AMD/ATI Drops Windows XP Support

Billly Gates writes "The latest beta drivers for the Catalyst drivers control suite only list Vista as the lowest version they will support. We still have almost a year before Windows XP support finally ends. Will NVidia follow? So if you own a AMD system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version. Looks like another death knell for this very long lasting platform."

Comments

Meh.

[pushing-robot]

If you're buying the latest and greatest gaming cards, you're probably going to want DirectX 10 or 11, good multicore support, and an OS that can handle more than 3-ish GB of RAM.

Re:Meh.

[Billly Gates]

If you're buying the latest and greatest gaming cards, you're probably going to want DirectX 10 or 11, good multicore support, and an OS that can handle more than 3-ish GB of RAM.

XP supports older games like unreal tournament 1. Even now new games still have some XP support because gamers still use it for compatibility reasons or they hate change and assume XP is supperior to longhorn.

After slashdoters wrote posts like WIndows 7 == Vista SP 2 they had an effect. Many assume WIndows 7 must suck too because that lie was repeated so many times everywhere by XP loyalists. Many are hesitant to change thinking it is just as slow and bloated and that somehow XP will run faster 100% of the time (not understanding algorithm changes and extra optimizations from the compiler added to the kernel for newer cpus).

But this is bad as AMD based boards come with ethernet, wifi, and other devices that wont work with XP at all.

Re:Meh.

[Ardyvee]

That is mostly a non-issue nowadays if you consider Virtual Machines are a thing (and as far as I know you don't install AMD/NVidia drivers on the VM), and that gog.com is a thing. I do get your point, though.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

After slashdoters wrote posts like WIndows 7 == Vista SP 2 they had an effect. Many assume WIndows 7 must suck too because that lie was repeated so many times everywhere by XP loyalists. Many are hesitant to change thinking it is just as slow and bloated and that somehow XP will run faster 100% of the time (not understanding algorithm changes and extra optimizations from the compiler added to the kernel for newer cpus).

I think you're living in an alternate reality. Most people find Windows 7 to be an extremely good version of Windows and it was highly praised at launch. The majority of consumers have moved to 7 and the stragglers at this point are mostly corporate customers who have apps that require XP. Windows 8 and 8.1 haven't had much traction though.

That said, Windows XP is 5 versions and 12 years old. I really liked using XP, but nothing lasts forever.

Re:Meh.

[causality]

If you're buying the latest and greatest gaming cards, you're probably going to want DirectX 10 or 11, good multicore support, and an OS that can handle more than 3-ish GB of RAM.

This is a complete slow-news-day non-story. It's just a more specific way of saying "nothing lasts forever".

The headline should have been "Nothing Lasts Forever and XP Won't Be the First Exception" or maybe "For-Profit Corporation Doesn't Want to Support Dying Platform". Not exactly surprising, informative, or newsworthy.

Re:Meh.

[causality]

After slashdoters wrote posts like WIndows 7 == Vista SP 2 they had an effect. Many assume WIndows 7 must suck too because that lie was repeated so many times everywhere by XP loyalists. Many are hesitant to change thinking it is just as slow and bloated and that somehow XP will run faster 100% of the time (not understanding algorithm changes and extra optimizations from the compiler added to the kernel for newer cpus).

I seriously doubt that Joe Sixpack goes running to Slashdot for advice on which OS to purchase. Joe Sixpack just uses whatever comes with his new computer. If the latest shiniest Windows sales are down it's because desktop computer sales in general are down. Making Windows go faster is no longer the prime reason to buy a new machine like it was when we referred to it as Wintel.

I did briefly try Win 7 because it came with a then-new laptop I purchased. I was impressed, actually. For Windows, it was great. For Windows, anyway. Sadly, copyright issues alone would prevent MS from ever offering a comprehensive centralized package manager comparable to what Linux distros offer. Having to track down hardware drivers (at all, ever) is a nuisance. Being treated like a dumb user at every turn is definitely a nuisance. The fact that good relatively common-sense security practices are not enough to prevent malware is a showstopper for me. Not being able to poke around under the hood and configure damned near everything, well that sucks. So little choice in desktop environments sucks too. Needing additional software to do what are nowadays basic things (like GOOD remote access, a compiler, etc) that are standard features on *nix is a nuisance. PowerShell is too little, too late compared to what Bash and its predecessors have done for decades (!) now. A binary registry is simply a bad design decision. And while you may find some sense of community among other Windows users, you will not share that with the people who actually put it together.

Slashdot users are more likely to care about some, or all of these things, or something along the lines, than the mass market that drives Windows sales. Here, you may have a point. But every last Slashdotter could boycott Windows forever and it would be a rounding error in terms of MS sales figures. That doesn't explain why Win 7 hasn't skyrocketed the way XP did. It's either ignorant or dishonest for you to pretend that it does.

Re:Meh.

[Martin Blank]

Microsoft does a fairly good job at maintaining a generally usable driver set available through Windows Update. It's usually not the latest version (and often is a generic driver from a few years ago), but it works. They have an additional problem if it comes from their servers, they get blamed if something goes wrong. Hence the testing and stability requirements before it goes into the repository, because if they break a million systems with a bad driver update, it hits the news even if it is a comparatively rare impact.

I tend to agree with your other points, though if Linux actually reached a critical level of use, its security practices would start getting tested, too. Attackers love to see Linux systems because they're trusted to be secure, a trust which is often violated. You seem to know what you're doing, but the corporate Linux uses that I've seen have relied on poor understanding of how they should be maintained, often based on arrogant declarations from the sysadmins who do things like boast of not having rebooted the web server in two years.

Re:Meh.

[king neckbeard]

Windows 7 was more or less Vista SP2. However, by the time 7 had come out, many of the criticisms of Vista no longer applied.

Re:Meh.

[gl4ss]

but you can run ut1 just fine on win7/win8.
a bunch of win98 stuff runs better on win7/win8 than on xp ever.

not that you really need the latest cards/drivers for old stuff anyways.

Re:Meh.

[ildon]

Maybe 3 years ago this was true, but at this point I literally know zero gamers that still run Windows XP. And I know a lot of WoW players who haven't upgraded their PCs in years. Just look at the Steam hardware survey. Windows XP is sitting at ~8% when you combine 32 and 64 bit versions.

Re:Meh.

[pellik]

If you have a second video card and a processor which supports VT-d, you can get solid performance on games in a VM by installing AMD/NVidia drivers. Losing XP support really impacts this (admittedly tiny) segment of the market.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That said, Windows XP is 5 versions and 12 years old. I really liked using XP, but nothing lasts forever."

Why the hell not?

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's living in a dreamworld now?

7 has a crippled UI, it takes a dropdown and multiple clicks just to toggle the right pane in windows explorer. Vista onward are apple mimicry depricated OSes that deliver reduced value. I've been using windows as long as windows has been on the desktop. I will never buy another M$ OS. XP was the end of the line in actual end user experience improvement.

Re:Meh.

[epyT-R]

1. Any real architectural improvements done to vista were obscured by the clusterfuck that is the new GUI/explorer. ..and what justifies the huge memory footprint increase over xp? Not a damn thing, even accounting for superfetch. Turn it off and it's still a crazy large footprint. So no, it is not a stretch to see that windows 7 really is vista sp2 with a few mild aesthetic changes.

2. 2k/XP's configurability was never something to write home about, but it's sure as hell a lot easier than vista/7..and 8 is even worse than they are. Seems like with every new release, microsoft wants it to take longer to get the system from stock to usable state. They hide critical functionality behind a ton of useless wizards/windows, or 'charms', with generic sounding text instead of having it all in one central location, clearly labeled and defined.

3. optimizations at this point have to do with specific use-case instruction sets. compilers for x86/64 are about as optimized as they're going to get and have been for a decade now.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in the world of technology, things advance whether you like it or not.

I see this bullshit all the time, and it sickens (and saddens) me. You have completely and entirely have forgotten the purpose of computers (re: technology): to solve problems or accomplish purposes that would otherwise be extremely time consuming or too difficult to do otherwise. If what you have works, there is no reason to change it. Most software today changes solely for the sake of change.

Some things don't "advance" because they just work.

I would love to see you argue your point with the individuals/companies mentioned in said article. I can assure you completely they would say the same thing I have.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Planned obsolescence" is the phrase you're looking for.

Re:Meh.

[symbolset]

Because Microsoft needs you to pay for it again. Keeping Bing going isn't cheap.

Re:Meh.

[Zontar The Mindless]

XP was the end of the line in actual end user experience improvement.

Funny, I felt that way about Win2K.

But WinXP does hold a special place in my heart... Seeing that Fisher-Price UI on other people's machines helped goose me into switching to Linux full-time.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

After slashdoters wrote posts like WIndows 7 == Vista SP 2 they had an effect. Many assume WIndows 7 must suck too because that lie was repeated so many times

Except saying that is just saying Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. It's saying Windows 7 is good and Vista is bad. It's also playing on the old joke that MS operating systems aren't any good until they get a service pack. This 'lie' actually told people that it was the fixed version of Vista, not that it was bad like Vista.

Re:Meh.

[Luckyo]

But you won't be able to install a newer card, because it won't have driver support. Current drivers do not have support for yet unreleased cards, which appears to be a big part of grandparent's decision.

Re:Meh.

[ildon]

No, I don't know you. Also, welcome to the (presumed) 8%.

Re:Meh.

[causality]

I tend to agree with your other points, though if Linux actually reached a critical level of use, its security practices would start getting tested, too. Attackers love to see Linux systems because they're trusted to be secure, a trust which is often violated. You seem to know what you're doing, but the corporate Linux uses that I've seen have relied on poor understanding of how they should be maintained, often based on arrogant declarations from the sysadmins who do things like boast of not having rebooted the web server in two years.

Security is like a game of chess between two or more people. It's not a game of a person against a machine.

The nice thing about Linux is that any sane configuration means you aren't going to worry about a Web site doing a drive-by installation of malware. That does not mean a skilled and determined attacker couldn't penetrate it.

Corporate users of anything should be letting IT deal with security (and follow IT's policies) and focus on doing their jobs. Also, the kexec syscall means it really is possible to avoid rebooting a server for two years while continuing to keep the kernel and userland software up-to-date, not to mention that large organizations tend to have multiple redundant servers so that a few can be rebooted at a time while maintaining availability. If you're talking about a single physical machine running a two-year-old kernel, and connected to the Internet, then yes that's just asking for trouble. Linux sadly isn't the first magical idiot-poof system. It just doesn't try to be which is more than I can say for Windows.

Re:Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see you argue your point with the individuals/companies mentioned in said article. I can assure you completely they would say the same thing I have.

Not that I disagree with your position. What you have done here is simply provided a list of people that agree with you in order to prove your point. Then followed it up with a "I don't have time to make my point, so please engage others from said list" as supporting evidence. I guess that is the standard for insightful here on /.

Re:Meh.

[Luckyo]

With awesome performance that it brings.

You're new to the whole gaming thing, aren't you?

not entirely..

[gl4ss]

..just because the system is an amd system doesn't get any new/bugfixed drivers, the summary makes it sound like you can't get new network controller drivers for your intel nic if you are running it an amd system..("or any other drivers").

I'm more surprised that they were still producing new drivers for xp, actually, than them dropping the support. it's not like they, or nvidia, are known to bringing on package mentioned features to older cards by driver updates even.

as always, you're only certain to get what you get when you buy the thing.. trusting them to bring newer features to older cards newer worked out.

Re:not entirely..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, my old laptop will no longer be able to play the latest games! Oh wait, it never could handle anything past Sim City 3000 anyway...

Non-story

[Phroggy]

So if you own a AMD system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version.

Ummm, yeah. Microsoft is going to stop releasing security patches for the OS. If you're still running XP, using older video drivers should be the least of your concerns.

Ugh. Another Timothy Lord post

[RR]

Total non-issue. If you're still using Windows XP, then you're also stuck on DirectX 9 and all the other outdated technologies. New code means new risks, which you're avoiding by sticking to Windows XP, anyway. Also, the submission is wrong; this affects only the Catalyst drivers, which handle video and HDMI audio.

Then I noticed that this is a timothy story. Sometimes I think he posts the most inane story submissions just to get the Slashdot readers all riled up and posting comments, thus generating hits and ad revenues.

Re:Ugh. Another Timothy Lord post

[Billly Gates]

Catalyst includes AMD chipset drivers as well. I use it on my AMD based system.

Re:Ugh. Another Timothy Lord post

[sharkey]

Still better than JonKatz. At least there are SOME facts here (the beta driver doesn't list XP as supported), instead of an axe-grinding opinion piece about how some sicko's psychopathic acts are understandable because he is really a victim of the bugbear du jour.

Buying AMD

[tuppe666]

Is getting more attractive by the day...

Ironically I am thinking about buying an ATI card for Linux due to its more open nature(Not intel open), so long term support is built into it. Perhaps AMD is only partly responsible.

Re:Buying AMD

[Charliemopps]

I've been an AMD/ATI guy for a very long time... but AMD/ATI has really gotten bad over the past few years. Driver support in Linux is terrible, but I don't really do gaming in Linux anyway... but worse, their support for Hardware Accelerated video decoding is a nightmare. I finally gave up on it with my Media PC and bought my first Nvidia card in 10 years a few months ago. I plugged it in and Hardware Acceleration just worked. I didn't have to do a damned thing. Then there's their Multi-monitor support which sucks, feels tacked on, and again when you go try the same thing with Nvidia, it just works right out of the box. So now I'm done with ATI. I wish they hadn't failed, but they did.

Re:Buying AMD

[hairyfeet]

You wanna blame somebody don't blame AMD, blame Intel. Intel owns the patents on HDCP and because AMD doesn't have access to the fabs that Intel does they can't afford to put HDCP support on a separate part of the chip so its baked into the heart of the GPU.

And for those complaining about the Windows drivers? i honestly don't know what you are complaining about as i have used probably over a hundred at the shop and since AMD bought the company the drivers have been nothing but solid. Now are the cards buggy when you buy the bleeding edge? yep but that is true of nvidia as well, there is a REASON why they call it the bleeding edge after all and i have found BOTH companies take about 6 months from the time of a new chip rev before they are good and stable. Good rule of thumb? stay at least one version behind, that way the drivers have all the beta bugs out and are ready for prime time.

But AMD has handed all the specs they can without tapdancing into a patent minefield, so if all you care about is Linux and video decoding? You should probably buy Nvidia although if recent headlines are too be believed we may see Nvidia go the way of 3DFX, man I always said they should have bought Via when they had the chance.

And finally as for XP? Good Lord guys, just let the damned thing DIE already, okay? Running as admin is stupid, trying to get XP to behave without always admin is a PITA and a lot of programs just won't run,its patches have patches, it suffers winrot, it just wasn't that damned great guys, it really wasn't. Now XP X64? THAT was a great OS, as was 2K in its day but we have Windows 7 now which is the new XP, so let us just let XP quietly die. Hell I have Win 7 running on Pentium D systems and lets face it anything older than that is gonna be more trouble than its worth, just let it go.

Re:Buying AMD

[Gadget_Guy]

Your XP installation is overcomplicated. You only need Service Pack 3, because on XP they were cumulative. Your steps for downloading another browser is the same for any Windows version. As for drivers, you need to research your hardware purchasesefore you buy to ensure driver support (just like Linux).

The reason AMD would drop support for XP is not because it is hard for the user to install, but because they changed the driver model with Vista. If they don't need to support two driver models then it would greatly simplify the development process. They probably have an idea on how many XP users actually update their drivers. Sure the OS still has a large percentage of users, but how many of those feel the need to constantly update their graphics drivers. With more and more games coming out with system requirements that exclude XP, the need to keep such an old system up-to-date is reduced.

Re:Buying AMD

[0111 1110]

I am going to be buying a new high end video card within the next 4-12 months. Before this announcement I pretty much assumed it would be an AMD card because lately they have been ahead of Nvidia. I am typing this on XP x64. I also multiboot with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Embedded, but find myself using XP x64 much of the time.

I don't plan to give up using XP any time soon. So now AMD is simply giving up on customers like me. I very much liked having a choice between Nvidia and AMD. This is very unfortunate and AMD will lose customers based on this announcement. Starting with me.

Re:Buying AMD

[0111 1110]

I agree that XP x64 is a decent OS. That is what I am running now. Along with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Standard Embedded. I don't like regular Windows 7 because it is so bloated. 12- 50 GB for an operating system? Seriously? My dog could write a more efficient OS. I don't see why an environment for running other programs has to be so big. My Arch Linux install is around 3 GB and that's with lots of stuff installed. My XP x64 install is bloated enough at around 6.6 GB, having grown from around 4 GB at install time. Doubling the bloat as a best case scenario without any significant benefit is not what I consider progress.

Is Win7 more secure? Yup. Is it a relief to be able to run as non-admin? Yup. I dislike the default GUI but that's mostly fixable. I don't feel that the OSX dock is anything worth emulating, but again that can be turned off. There is no search without indexing but I just use Agent Ransack instead and other third party apps to replace the missing functionality from XP. Still, running an embedded OS as a desktop OS is not without its problems. So I require XP as well at least until Microsoft gets its head out of its ass and starts showing some respect for my hard drive space and memory as well as for actually improving the OS and not just trying to make more money. But I don't think that has any chance of happening with Ballmer in charge. They have made progress in faster boot times as well as better security (from XP to Vista/7 only), but the bloat and sloppy programming overall is inexcusable.

Genuine improvements to an OS are basically what you see with Linux: small, incremental changes and bugfixes. There's no need for the kind of vast overhauls that MS feels they have to do to sell more copies. They accomplish nothing, at least nothing good, and they introduce lots of bugs. The embedded version of 7 is not too bad. I do end up with the most compatibility problems with the embedded system though. More even than XP x64. I probably just need to refine which components to add on my next install. Nevertheless some apps just won't install or run and then I'm left with either Linux or XP.

Re:Buying AMD

[gadget junkie]

Is getting more attractive by the day...

Ironically I am thinking about buying an ATI card for Linux due to its more open nature(Not intel open), so long term support is built into it. Perhaps AMD is only partly responsible.

Since ole Ballmer is playing Santa with the shareholders' money (Nokia, wink wink) he might have made an "agreement" with video card producers to encourage the idea that win XP systems will suddenly cease operating at 12 pm on the night MS ends support. And I have no qualms with that, it's a kind of informed consent: if I want to go on with an unsupported operating system I am on my own. Trouble is, there's somebody out there with a sneaky plan.

. The gist of it is, it's time to quit using basically the same methods of work we started using with windows 3.1. Time to change the interface, to have a more robust and yet open system, which can span the range from cell phones to yes, eventually mainframes as well.
Well, I saw through your dark plan, Linus. It will not work.

Re:Buying AMD

[Anonymous Coward]

Running as admin is stupid, trying to get XP to behave without always admin is a PITA and a lot of programs just won't run,its patches have patches, it suffers winrot, it just wasn't that damned great guys, it really wasn't.

To be fair, that's entirely the fault of developers violating Microsoft's programming guidelines by making their software write into its own directories and ejaculate files all over the system instead of using the Docs & Settings directory. The only reason it works better in Vista+ is because of hacks like registry virtualization plus Windows finally getting privilege escalation prompts (UAC).

Re:Buying AMD

[silviuc]

People that know about the issues with AMD video cards on Linux and still want to buy them must enjoy being in pain all the time.

Re:Buying AMD

[mcgrew]

It's outrageous that anyone is dropping bug and security fixes for any software that's still in use. I have an old XP box on my home network that I use to digitize LPs and cassettes with. I'm desperately searching for a replacement for EAC that will work in Linux. Audacity won't quite cut it. With EAC I can record the analog, and five minutes later I have a CD.

Unless I find a good replacement I'll have to take the XP box off of the network and use sneakernet to get the music into the network.

When hardware outlasts software, the software is pretty damned shabby. My other tower is the same age and is happily running Linux, and still will be when the hardware wears out.

My car is ten years old, and if there's a safety defect the manufacturer will still fix it for free. Microsoft should keep issuing security updates until nobody is downloading them any more. EOLing a still useful OS is pretty damned sociopathic IMO.

Microsoft makes shoddy products and has terrible EOL policies. I hate Microsoft's products and policies.

Re:Buying AMD

[VGPowerlord]

Like the current way to install Windows XP is to do this:
Hope you have a XPSP3 disc, if not...
Install XP without a connection to the internet (VERY IMPORTANT)
Download SP1a offline on another machine, transfer to the XP machine install
Download SP2 offline on another machine, transfer to the XP machine, install
Download SP3 offline on another machine, transfer to the XP machine, install
Connect to the internet, and keep hitting Windows update until there are no more updates
Once you've managed to install everything...
Install Chrome, Firefox or Opera, and never use MSIE. Download the drivers for your hardware if you can find them.

Hell, the last time my brother installed XP on his machine back in 2008*, he had to actually download the latest service pack on a different computer, and create a WinXP + SP3 (possibly SP2 as SP3 came out mid-2008) disc simply because the base XP installer would just crash if you tried installing it on hard drives larger than a certain size...

Then again, modern XP discs have SP3 built-in for various reasons, including this one.

* My brother died a few days into 2009, which is how I know the year was 2008.

Re:Buying AMD

[VGPowerlord]

What is the WinSxS directory and why is it so large?

The TL;DR from that link is that Windows now stores what is basically a copy of the install DVD on the hard drive. Not only that, but when you install libraries, Windows keeps a second copy of them in WinSxS. Forever. Even if you upgrade to a newer version of that library, the old one is still kept and the new version is also added to WinSxS.

It even keeps pre-Service Pack copies of files that got upgraded in a Service Pack.

Re:Buying AMD

[hairyfeet]

And I have to say kudos to the Windows dev that thought it up, its fricking BRILLIANT and fixed one of the major problems I always had with Windows upgrades which was legacy software. With SxS if some older piece of software demands that an older version of a .DLL needs to be installed SxS instead reroutes it to the SxS directory so that at runtime that program "thinks" the old .DLL is installed when in reality its coming from SxS, its great when you have some older software that needs to be run. It also makes it trivial if you need to roll back an update for some reason, no more "please insert your XP Service Pack 3 disc now" kinda crap which is handy if you have a client that has boned his system.

So I personally would MUCH rather have SxS and give it some extra space than I would have to deal with programs having conflicts or refusing to run because X needs DLL rev Y and program B needs the same DLL to be at version Z.

Where is the problem here?

[Bearhouse]

If you have an XP system, you either:
1. Have an old hack that you are never going to update, since it just works, or
2. Are a corp user with (hopefully) a decent tech team which will ensure you don't buy & support hardware where this will be an issue...

Or (obscure security-related issues aside) am I missing something?

Re:Where is the problem here?

[Anonymous Coward]

3: Using it in a virtual machine because it is lightweight (works well in 512MB of RAM), runs Web browsers, and even though it has its security issues, a tool like SandboxIE does help things.

With the primary source of computer compromise being the Web browser, it is only prudent to run the Web browsers in as isolated environment as possible, either sandboxed, in a VM, or both. Also, this guarentees that any "supercookies" and such are long gone when a session is done, since the complete filesystem is rolled back to a previous snapshot.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[xiando]

You're missing this: If you have an old Windows XP system and a old graphics card and your harddrive breaks but you want to keep using it and your friend gives you a new harddrive then you'll need graphics drivers.. but they are gone from AMDs website and now you're screwed. You have to use the not-exactly-perfect free drivers for old cards in Linux since support is removed from AMDs proprietary driver and it's hard/impossible to get old versions of it.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[Coppit]

3) ... or you're Chinese.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[readingaccount]

The Chinese would know how to pirate Windows 7 as well as anyone else. It's trivial as hell nowadays.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[epyT-R]

With today's slavish devotion to surveillance, it sounds prudent.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[countach74]

If you're going to create a VM to surf the web on, would you not be vastly better off running one of the many Linux distro's than Windows XP? I mean, even if you're a "MS > Linux" person, you've gotta dig *very* deep to come up with a reason why Windows XP (12 years old) is better than the latest Linux Mint when all you want to do is surf the web. :P

Re:Where is the problem here?

[Fishchip]

I would think it's because XP doesn't require nearly as much horsepower for a VM as the latest Linux Mint, especially when all you want to do is surf the web.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[countach74]

I suppose, but a Linux distro can be scaled down pretty well. But then, I don't use Linux Mint myself; maybe it's a resource hog? :P

Except that is not hapening yet

[tuppe666]

Ummm, yeah. Microsoft is going to stop releasing security patches for the OS. If you're still running XP, using older video drivers should be the least of your concerns.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx except that is not happening for another year. The initial date (although I suspect it will be pushed back) April 8 2014.

Its also the date of the end of support for Office 2003. Most of the i915 and above machines (with 1GB of Memory) should simply be moved to Ubuntu and Libreoffice.

But the reality is as the summery states AMD are jumping the gun on this.

Re:Except that is not hapening yet

[rabbit994]

It's not going to be pushed back. It's already been pushed back once as it should have ended in 2011 (10 years after release date) and it's less then 12 months till April 2014 so yes, less then year.

XP is finished and Microsoft is determined to take it out back and shoot it. At this point, I can't really blame them. Which happened first, 9/11 or XP GA date? XP GA. Mainstream Linux Kernel was 2.2 branch. If you tried to get support for an application on Linux 2.2 these days, everyone would laugh you out of support channel and Red Hat would require a crap ton of money. Yet people expect drivers manf, software developers and Microsoft to support it Windows XP.

Re:Except that is not hapening yet

[JDG1980]

It's not going to be pushed back. It's already been pushed back once as it should have ended in 2011 (10 years after release date) and it's less then 12 months till April 2014 so yes, less then year.

I think it will be pushed back again. Microsoft doesn't want to, but a *lot* of large corporations (and, perhaps more importantly, governments) are still on XP and are going to shit a brick if support is ever dropped. Many of these organizations are still mired in IE6, due to applications that were written for that outdated browser by long-gone consultants and contain business logic that no one remembers. (Yes, they could use Win7 Pro's XP Mode for that, but that requires additional training, which they don't want to pay for. Just teaching employees to use different browsers for intranet and Internet can be a pain.) I believe that Microsoft will receive some not-so-veiled pressure: corporations will threaten to switch to BYOD/"cloud"/Linux or whatever they think sounds good (even if that's only a bluff) and governments will point out that, you know, they could always re-open an antitrust case or something if they don't like what MS is doing.

XP gives rise to a situation I think is almost without precedent: a piece of proprietary software of vital importance to the world economy is about to be discontinued by the vendor, and the potential economic effects are in the multiple billions of dollars. Yes, we've seen disruption before (such as when VB6 was dropped), but not on this scale. The smart thing to do would be for the federal government to seize XP using eminent domain, and transition it to public domain, open-source status for free use by third parties. I don't think that particular solution is going to be used, but I do think *something* has to give.

Re:Except that is not hapening yet

[Zontar The Mindless]

Why would anyone buy a newer version of Windows if they can have XP forever. Microsoft could never compete against a free version of XP. Very few people would upgrade beyond it.

Exactly. This is why my Linux systems are all still running kernel 2.2.

If it works, why worry.

[chromaexcursion]

XP systems are older systems. You haven't been able to buy XP for years.
How many people have XP systems and are buying new graphics cards?
If it still works, who cares.

If you've hit something where the graphics drivers are obsolete, there's probably a lot more wrong.

keeping up with advances and supporting older systems is EXPENSIVE. AMD made a cost decision, it's not worth it.

Re:If it works, why worry.

[Anonymous Coward]

what does a 5 year old USED computer have to do with the availability of buying XP?

Re:If it works, why worry.

[the_humeister]

You have a strange definition of "new". That thing has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 chip, which is only twice as powerful as the processor in my phone (Cortex A9 based) but uses 100x more power.

Re:If it works, why worry.

[Billly Gates]

Your whole post just gave a great technical reasons.

The answer is when your hard disk dies you get a WIndows 7 cdrom and install it. I use Windows 7 everyday and do not see these hundreds of problems and BSOD on an hourly basis. If it were that much of a piece of crap businesses would still be using XP. Remember MS tried to EOL in 2008, 2011, and now 2014. However now they are finally upgrading since Vista is done and WIndows 7 SP 1 has been released.

XP has thousands of bugs too and is not perfect. I hate supporting XP at work. Can't run a system file check is really annoying. The cdroms are not teh same version as our image so half the files are not even checked and can take an hour where you have to keep clicking ignore when it pops up freaking out saying it can't find this .dll becuase of the 1 out of 900 updates since 2001 alterted the .dll.

I will even say it is one of hte most bug free OSes out there. I switched from Linux too it for that reason

Re:If it works, why worry.

[EvanED]

They have already been doing it for nearly 2 decades, there are no infrastructure or upkeep costs at this point that would be substantially diminished by removing XP support.

Says someone who hasn't even written software, apparently. Even if nothing else, dropping a configuration removes a bunch of testing costs.

However, it's even more. When Vista was released, Microsoft made a bunch of changes to the driver model -- basically the API that drivers are programmed against -- usually to move stuff from kernel mode to user mode. (This increases system stability.) Vista through 8 (I think) all use this driver model. Supporting XP as well means writing and maintaining XP-specific code for its driver model.

I don't know anywhere near enough about this to say that it costs 2% more or 20% more or 50% more. But to say that "it costs these companies zero dollars" means that you clearly have zero knowledge about what you're talking about.

Re:If it works, why worry.

[Psykechan]

Don't blame Intel for dropping AHCI on XP. Don't blame AMD for dropping it either. Developing drivers for an OS that Microsoft has been telling people to move away from for over 5 years now is a bad business decision. Driver updates cost money. Not just in developer time but in QA time as well. In AMD's case, it's a completely different model (Kernel vs. WDDM).

Microsoft has always been about poor UI choices. Do you not remember Microsoft Bob or Clippy? Do you not remember a time when people complained about how candy coated XP was when compared to Windows 2000 Workstation? Now there was an OS you could be set your watch to, or at least you could until 2007 when Microsoft decided not to release the time zone change patch for it. If you ask me they didn't get bored of "the old way", they embraced it and said "Let's make this look like old Windows!" Everything in 16 colors and only runs fullscreen.

My advice would be to start using Linux. At least with that, you can continue using what you're used to well after the original authors have moved on to relieve their boredom. If you don't like GNOME3 then go fork GNOME2, mate. Take the months that you would have spent ranting and start doing something productive. The idea with Open Source Software is that people can't take it away from you.

Re:If it works, why worry.

[antdude]

I would have to buy a new video card if my old one dies. :P

Re:More than Graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

Hospitals, schools, and many corporations buy the latest and greatest and then image XP on them and expect them to work. ATI Catalyst is the driver mechanism for all AMD hardware now. Not just video cards.

Ethernet cards, chipsets, and other AMD hardware require ATI catalyst drivers to function properly as they are bundled with it.

Many buy AMD hardware because it is cheaper and a better value than a crappy icore3 when they want more than 2 cores for their staff.

except when there's a security bug

[dutchwhizzman]

It won't really be a problem if you're not running into security problems. However, if someone finds a way to use the video driver to get SYSTEM or Administrator access to your computer, you'd really want the vendor of said video driver to come with an update. Since MicroSoft is still supporting the OS in terms of security updates, you'd expect the video driver vendor to do the same.

Mind you, just because there's no XP support in the latest beta driver doesn't mean AMD won't fix security flaws if those would arise. It's pure speculation to suggest that something like that might or might not happen. I have a gut feeling that the people at AMD would be smart enough to at least just fix the bug and do a minor version bump if something like that would happen in the period that MicroSoft still supports XP.

Re:except when there's a security bug

[Rockoon]

This is XP that we are talking about, where people nearly universally run it as administrator.

Using a display driver exploit on XP is like using C4 explosive to open a screen door.

Re:except when there's a security bug

[gl4ss]

I seriously doubt that many people are running WebGL on xp. seriously. other than that, if you're running code that gets to talk to the gpu in feasibly exploitable way, there's no need for the process to exploit bugs in the gpu drivers anyways.

Re:except when there's a security bug

[Anonymous Coward]

No, modern versions of Windows have only unprivileged users by default. "Administrators" is the equivalent of the sudoers or wheel group on *nix.

Re:except when there's a security bug

[petermgreen]

That may be true for home users but in many office and education situations it's common to see locked down accounts on XP

Re:except when there's a security bug

[gman003]

Shouldn't that be a screen window?

Re:except when there's a security bug

[gl4ss]

That may be true for home users but in many office and education situations it's common to see locked down accounts on XP

yeah and those do you really think you need a gpu bug to escalate to admin? no.

Support was already bad

[Milharis]

I've recently bought an AMD card, and it had rendering errors in XP, although it was with a 2004 game.
Upgrading to 7 fixed the issue.

So support for newer cards on XP was already rather poor.

Re:Support was already bad

[Dputiger]

This is a known issue with both NV and AMD cards. Old games aren't tested to ensure compatibility with new drivers. It's not surprising that a nine year old game had trouble on a modern card in an ancient operating system. If you name the title, I might be able to dig up some advice on it.

Re:Support was already bad

[Milharis]

It was Rome Total War.
Upgrading to 7 was both needed and an improvement, so nothing of value was lost.

20% of users still use XP

[tuppe666]

http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201205-201305 you will be one in five users who have not updated from XP

People aren't updating because computers are expensive, Intel and Microsoft take all the profits and walk away with a gross profit margin of over 70%...and new versions of the Microsoft Windows software, are poor tablet interfaces.

Re:20% of users still use XP

[Mashiki]

Computers are expensive? Really? When I'll bet those same people are willing to drop $500-600+tax for a console. They don't want to spend the $400-600 to build themselves a new computer. Yep, genius level thinking there.

Re:20% of users still use XP

[Mashiki]

Way to make an assumption then accept it as correct without any further consideration you dick.

Awww. Anonymous troll gets burthurt when facts are presented, big shock.

Re: Buying AMD? choose cheap old card

[xiando]

Make sure you buy an older card. The free software driver driver for 7000+ cards is a broken joke. Works well for older cards, though. Evil proprietary drivers does sort-of work alright with newer cards but doesn't support older cards. Also know that you can't use 1 old and 1 new card since free driver only works with old cards and proprietary only new.

They should at least make a basic driver

[jfdavis668]

Had that problem when everything went 64 bit OS. I had an Epson scanner, and they made no 64 bit drivers for any older device. Suddenly every old device became useless. It's not like a new scanner is that much better than an old one. Just make a basic driver so you can at least get hardware to function.

Re:They should at least make a basic driver

[gl4ss]

that's a backwards problem from this.
you're asking for them to provide drivers for old ati cards for windows 8...

oh and there is a basic mode, you just wont get accelaration of any kind.

Re:They should at least make a basic driver

[rubycodez]

the SANE-epson driver supports many epson scanners under Linux

XP is Zombie

[turkeydance]

XP is Legend. old Richard Matheson reference.

Old AMD Catalyst drivers pretty easy to find

[iYk6]

Find old versions right here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx

I went to AMD's driver site, which I found with the google search, "amd catalyst download". I clicked on "Windows XP (32 bit)". Then I clicked on "Previous Drivers and Software."

Re:Old AMD Catalyst drivers pretty easy to find

[Hsien-Ko]

Even today you could still get drivers for their Rage line of cards.

And if it's about older hardware i.e. a retro XP system for playing troublesome games like Republic Commando, then this news holds no relevance.

Also Windows 7 can run a LOT of the stuff XP can just fine. DOS games play nicely in DOSBox (and XP's ntvdm sucks for DOS even with that VDMSound hack anyway). What DOESN'T play nicely is anything needing a fullscreen 8bpp video mode, which can be partially resolved by wrappers for DirectX, but that doesn't cover the rest of the games that just do it through GDI or *shudder* Scitech MGL. This was also a problem for earlier versions of Windows NT as it reserved 0 and 255 indexes, XP took a few more for the start button, and then Vista and 7 took much more.

Re:Old AMD Catalyst drivers pretty easy to find

[cbhacking]

Already commented here, but please, mod parent up. The drivers aren't gone, they just aren't going to be updated anymore.

Vista and later will download video drivers (not latest-and-greatest, but well-tested versions) from Windows Update; I've forgotten whether XP does that as well or not. I don't use MacOS 9, and I don't use XP.

Keyword: Beta Driver

[rsmith-mac]

The submitter is reading too much into this. The drivers linked are beta drivers - this is not the first time AMD hasn't published an XP version of a beta driver, due to the relatively low number of XP users on 5000/6000/7000 series video cards (all of which are post-Win7). XP is supported by the current WHQL certified driver (13.4) and I expect the next certified driver will support XP, too. If and when AMD does drop XP support they'll announce it a couple of versions ahead of time, just as they did for Win9x and Win2K.

Re:Over 8% of Gamers use XP on Steam

[whoever57]

In the statscounter data, where is Android in the "Operating System" chart? IOS is there at 3.18% and if you select the "Mobile OS" chart, Android is higher than IOS. So where is Android in the Operating System chart?

Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[cbhacking]

Also, there's an important point here which isn't being addressed in the summary.
Vista and later (all NT 6.x versions) use a new "WDDM" driver model for video drivers. Although there are various characteristics of WDDM, the really defining one is that only a tiny shim that basically wraps the direct hardware access lives in kernel mode. Everything else - the actual program logic of the video driver - lives in user mode. This is fantastic for a number of reasons:
1) All the crash-prone code is now user-mode. When a XP video driver crashes, it causes a bluescreen. When a Win7 video driver crashes, it causes a blank screen for about a second while the user-mode driver restarts.
2) Updating and rolling back video drivers no longer requires a reboot; in fact, it only takes a couple seconds. It's actually practical, if you really want to, to switch video drivers between games (for example, if the latest and "greatest" doesn't work with one of your older games, but you want to use it for everything else).
3) Developing and debugging user-mode code is a lot easier than doing the same for kernel-mode code. This change lets developers spend a greater portion of their time improving the driver logic, rather than making the driver work with the various configurations of the NT kernel.

My guess is that AMD decided the benefits of item #3 were worth more than continuing to release drivers for 12-year-old OS. By no longer maintaining the pre-WDDM version, they can focus their resources on supporting modern platforms that are also easier to develop for.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[cbhacking]

Um... no. That's ridiculous, in fact. As a MSDN subscriber, I can still download, from Microsoft, MS-DOS 6.0. That doesn't mean I have to call it a "0 year old" operating system!

If you want to get picky over the "12 years" claim, you could argue that I should count from the last time a major upgrade was released, which would be 5 years (and SP3, unlike SP1 and SP2, was hardly major).

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[EvanED]

That's ridiculous, in fact.

I would say that a reasonable measure is (or you could argue is) the time at which it was superseded by a new version. But that's still Jan. 2007, so almost 6 1/2 years ago. Even Windows 7 is almost 4 years since release.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, unlike Windows, Xorg never could gracefully restart.

So from the end-user perspective, it was still a frozen machine, although a Linux expert might have been able to ssh in and kill the process ... maybe. And you'd still lose the state of every gui program, unlike Windows.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[hobarrera]

So FreeDOS is a new OS?
XP is about a few minutes old (I still see it sold - distributed - in plenty of places nowadays).

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[hobarrera]

No, XP is still 12 years old. Vista's existance just means that XP was superceded 6 years ago, and has been deprecated since. The age of ANYTHING is how long ago it was concieved.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[Belial6]

You are being nitpicky. No, I don't mean distributed in bundles of discontinued software like that made available by MSDN. Telling people that the the software that they bought on a brand new computer with the full blessing of the OS's manufacturer is 10 year old piece of software, so they shouldn't expect support is ridiculous.

By the last date distributed, I mean last date of general distribution.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[cbhacking]

If the WDDM driver crashes twice within a timeout period, the kernel figures it's completely hosed and bugchecks (bluescreens). I've only ever personally seen this happen with nVidia drivers, but from late 2006 (early and pre-release Vista, under which I had no problems with ATi) to late 2012 (Win8) my primary PC used nVidia graphics (Vista and then Win7, not counting the various *nix distros) so it's possible I just missed the problem period. My Win8 machine with AMD graphics is very stable; I haven't even had user-mode graphics crashes (much less any bad enough to cause a bluescreen) in that period.

For the record, XP is perfectly capable of generating a kernel or full memory dump (I'm pretty sure 2000 was as well). You can also disable the immediate reboot after bugcheck for all NT versions since it was added (XP and later).

For Vista and later, the path is:
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced system settings (left sidebar) -> Startup and Recovery (Settings button)
For XP, it's similar except it's System -> Advanced (tab)

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[bingoUV]

That is the age of Windows XP design. But since Microsoft doesn't sell Windows XP design, but just copies and licenses to use it - design age is immaterial from a support perspective. My car is 2 year old, this model was released 5 years ago. That doesn't mean my car is 5 year old, mine is just 2 year old. From support perspective, 2 years is what matters, though if the design has some inconvenient feature that wasn't fixable 5 years old technology, one might not find fault with the car manufacturer that much. But if battery starts giving issues, they can't say it is a 5 year old car and hence no support for you.

Similarly, from the last date a license of Windows XP could have been purchased (I hear for corporates that date is still not past, but I am not sure), or another license purchased and downgraded to XP - is the age of Windows XP that matters from a support perspective. Such support duration, of the last customer, is not really long in case of Windows XP at all.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[bingoUV]

So FreeDOS is a new OS?

Yes, and it still gets exactly the same level of support from its makers as it got 5 years ago. I don't see a problem.

XP is about a few minutes old

And people buying it now are getting about a year of support from Microsoft. Not exactly a stellar accomplishment in supporting their products by Microsoft, is it?

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[hobarrera]

It's sensless to compare software and cars age-wise.

Cars get degraded as the years pass. Software is identical, it's not worn of or anything like that.
If you assume that cars have no sort of degradatino with time just like cars, then the manufacturing date is irrelevant, since all that share the same design are identical.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[bingoUV]

And your age determination is "senseful"? A customer who bought something yesterday should be deprived of support in a year just because the first release of the software was a million years ago after which the company couldn't manage to release anything for thousand years, bungled a release, and generally made an ass of itself?

Anyway, you didn't understand the car example either. The car was manufactured 2 years ago and sold to me. It's first identical piece was sold 5 years ago. But in the 3 years in between when it was not yet manufactured, the car got worn and degraded? Talk some sense.

In those 3 years, car is exactly like software as far as maintenance goes - it is just a design, an idea (many, actually), not yet manufactured physically. Car manufacturer also doesn't sell the design but only a copy - a working model. If customers are not expected to suffer a lossof those 3 years, why should they suffer a loss of 14 years of windows xp being released WHEN THEY DIDN'T BUY IT?

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[Osiris Ani]

It's sensless to compare software and cars age-wise.

Cars get degraded as the years pass. Software is identical, it's not worn of or anything like that.

Although it's true that the car analogy was highly flawed, it's also unwise to imply that Windows installations do not degrade over time. There was a time, in the not-too-distant-past, when Microsoft would recommend periodic re-installation of Windows.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[hobarrera]

And your age determination is "senseful"? A customer who bought something yesterday should be deprived of support in a year[...]

Yes, he'll be deprived of the support he knew he wouldn't get when he purchased the software and accepted the terms. Nobody forced him to buy it, and even after that he had a chance to return it to the retailed if he didn't accept the terms.

Anyway, you didn't understand the car example either. The car was manufactured 2 years ago and sold to me. It's first identical piece was sold 5 years ago. But in the 3 years in between when it was not yet manufactured, the car got worn and degraded? Talk some sense.

You're saying that is I install an OS I purchased 10 years ago, it will not be the same quality as it was 10 years ago?
Sure, it doesn't have the same features as modern OSs, but it's 100% IDENTICAL to an installation made 10 years ago. There is no difference at all.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[bingoUV]

You're saying that is I install an OS I purchased 10 years ago, it will not be the same quality as it was 10 years ago?

No, and being irrelevant to the topic, I would not say so. Why do you ask?

Sure, it doesn't have the same features as modern OSs, but it's 100% IDENTICAL to an installation made 10 years ago. There is no difference at all.

Right. And for a car whose first "copy" sold 5 years ago, a new copy made 2 years ago is also identical to the first copy sold 5 years ago. But support from manufacturer starts as of 2 years ago, not as of 5 years ago.

Yes, he'll be deprived of the support he knew he wouldn't get when he purchased the software and accepted the terms

Yes, and convicted monopolists are known for the fair terms. Thanks for the clarification.

and even after that he had a chance to return it to the retailed if he didn't accept the terms.

Yes, how simple. Even in successful cases, just lose a day's work and struggle for a few weeks making it a lossmaking adventure for most people; to say nothing of the countless unsuccessful cases.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[bingoUV]

Although it's true that the car analogy was highly flawed

car was manufactured 2 years ago and sold to me. It's first identical piece was sold 5 years ago. But in the 3 years in between when it was not yet manufactured, the car got worn and degraded?

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[hobarrera]

Yes, and convicted monopolists are known for the fair terms. Thanks for the clarification.

Even assuming that you have no choice but to use MS Windows, they actually sell newer software with lots of support remaining.
How is holding a monopoly relevant to purchasing that the monopolist is telling you NOT TO buy anymore?

and even after that he had a chance to return it to the retailed if he didn't accept the terms.

Yes, how simple. Even in successful cases, just lose a day's work and struggle for a few weeks making it a lossmaking adventure for most people; to say nothing of the countless unsuccessful cases.

a) It's pretty hard to find a new machine with XP preinstalled nowadaya. And I mean really hard! Why would you even bother searching for one if you don't want XP?
b) Why the hell did you buy a computer with a pre-installed OS if you didn't want it? My above statement applied to someone who purchased a box set and wanted to return it.

Re:Probably wanted to drop pre-WDDM

[bingoUV]

How is holding a monopoly relevant to purchasing that the monopolist is telling you NOT TO buy anymore?

Irrelevant to the point. For a particular XP customer, his XP's age, as far as support is concerned, is to be calculated from the time he bought it. Exactly like the age of a 2 year old car designed 5 year ago is 2 years, and not 5 years. Not from when Microsoft first sold another copy of XP to some other customer, like you wrongly stated

a) It's pretty hard to find a new machine with XP preinstalled nowadaya. And I mean really hard! Why would you even bother searching for one if you don't want XP?

Doesn't make it any simpler for return, does it, contrary to your implication?

b) Why the hell did you buy a computer with a pre-installed OS if you didn't want it? My above statement applied to someone who purchased a box set and wanted to return it.

Irrelevant. Your statement implied it is easy to return while actually recouping one's license costs. I proved it is unlikely to recoup one's license cost because of loss of a day's work.

And you also deliciously side-stepped the VALID comparison between unbought software that has been released; and unmanufactured car whose first copy has been sold; strictly from a support perspective. Any justification of lack of support for the former while the latter is supported all over the world is indefensible.

Probably a non-issue

[asdf7890]

There are a few reasons more likely than the simply no longer supporting XP at all:

* Perhaps this release changes nothing that is relevant to XP. Perhaps all the changes are in codepaths only touched under DX10 or later which is irrelevant to XP.

* Perhaps the early testing was done on limited systems. OK so it is odd for a platform to be ignored in beta tests, but I perhaps if the expected impact on XP is low or zero (see above) they didn't publically release the alpha for XP and someone forgot to update the release details for the beta.

... to state two.


While XP's market share is dropping rapidly now, there are still plenty of home installs out there - plenty enough that ATI/AMD aren't going to risk creating uproar by not supporting them until the official death date from MS (April next year).

Re:Probably a non-issue

[petermgreen]

Another important thing to remember is that the display driver model was overhauled between XP and Vista. So afaict while they are packaged up in the same installer the XP driver and the Vista+ driver are really two different drivers. While i'm sure there will be some shared code I suspect that a heck of a lot of the code is specific to either the "XPDM" driver or the "WDDM" driver.

Irrelevant news for nerds

[heteromonomer]

Stop this shit Windows XP news. It's 2013. Why is this relevant news for nerds? I mean come on editors! Is this submission better than so many other worthy submissions? How many of us care about this crap? Stop assuming that most of us are some XP support drones looking for jobs on Dice.com. Many of us are scientists, engineers etc in various fields.

Re:Irrelevant news for nerds

[epyT-R]

..and at least one of us is a myopic projectionist who is unable to see past his own shit.

Re:Irrelevant news for nerds

[rubycodez]

I use windows XP for doing taxes and running vmware vcenter client for admin of machines remotely.

plenty of tooling, scientific and engineering machines use XP for controller.

Re:Irrelevant news for nerds

[hobarrera]

I live in Argentina, and the AFIP (our version of the IRS) has lots of web systems that only run on IE6. YES, IE6 is they only browser they officially support.
Hence, anyone that's self-empoyed and need to constaltly be doing taxes has an XP VM somewhere around.
This includes any freelance developer, quite a nerd, IMO.

And I'm pretty sure plenty of other non-firstworld countries have similar issues.

arbitrary

[epyT-R]

Seems arbitrary to me. It shouldn't be difficult to maintain the extra package as the code is largely the same anyway. The only thing that changes from 2k/xp to vista/7/8 is the kernel module itself, a tiny part of the whole driver.

Lots of people still use XP, supported or not, and it's stupid to not support the platform even past the OEM's due date. AMD's customer isn't microsoft, it's the people using hardware with their gpus.

Big deal

[Waccoon]

I've had so many issues with newer Radeon drivers screwing up my system, I stopped updating once I hit Catalyst 12.02. Hardware acceleration under XP-32 is totally broken, IMO.

Last year I bought my first nVidia card in 6 years, and I'm astounded at how many of my old games now work properly. If AMD isn't going to bother making XP drivers that work, they may as well stop updating them.

Re:Big deal

[drinkypoo]

Last year I bought my first nVidia card in 6 years, and I'm astounded at how many of my old games now work properly.

It's quotes like this that make me wonder why anyone is dumb enough to buy ATI. Is it worth it to save twenty bucks?

Re:Big deal

[Waccoon]

One of the biggest disappointments is that AMD has apparently done nothing to improve the compatibility of ATI's drivers since the buyout. I think it's just the priority of the brand to offer more hardware bang for the buck, at the expense of the software. I'll take stability over performance any day.

Death knell for whom?

[fustakrakich]

XP or AMD?

Re:XP service Pack 3 only replace by Vista Jan30 2

[JDG1980]

XP service Pack 3(XP was awful pre service pack 2 and delayed Vista for years) only had replaced by Vista Jan30 2007 and only then was not a viable replacement (XP continued to be sold on Netbooks)

And how many netbooks have ATi/AMD graphics chips? Didn't they almost all have crappy Atom CPUs with equally crappy Intel graphics processors on the northbridge/PCH? (Most of them didn't even support hardware decoding of H.264 and other common video formats; Atom was the last PC platform to not include this feature.)

Re:More than Graphics

[JDG1980]

Ethernet cards, chipsets, and other AMD hardware require ATI catalyst drivers to function properly as they are bundled with it.

Virtually every AMD motherboard I've seen in the past couple of years has had a Realtek NIC (usually 8111E). Likewise, the onboard sound is usually one of the Realtek HD codec chips. All of these drivers are available from Realtek's website, including for XP.

You do need "text mode" AHCI drivers to get past the install screen on XP, unless you switch the SATA ports to legacy mode in the BIOS. (And these have to be either slipstreamed into the CD or loaded from a *floppy* at install time – no thumb drive allowed. Ugh!) But these can be found with a bit of digging, and aren't part of the main Catalyst distribution as far as I know.

Re:Dropping AMD/ATI support

[epyT-R]

You should always assume the system's not secure whether you have patches for it or not. Think about it, if there were patches yesterday, and you can assume there'll be patches tomorrow, that means it's still not secure right now. This is true for any software really.

I like XP

[rsilvergun]

because I have an nVidia GT240. It likes to pretend it's a Directx 10 card, but it's not fooling anyone. Games run like crap in Win7 for me, but run great in XP. If I had $200 lying around I could just buy a new card, but I've got better things to spend, and Arkham City runs just fine on my 6 year old 6000+ with a GT240.

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

Dude pick up an ATI HD4850, you can pick those up for like $35 if you look around. I am running one and I can tell you all my games run GREAT in Win 7, I can fire up Just Cause II and do the whole "cool guys don't look at explosions" bit, Batman AA and AC run great, the Borderland series run fine, its no problem.

If you want something faster and have a little bit more green an HD7750 runs close to the 6850s while using half the power and again runs great in windows 7. XP is nearly 14 years old man, hell it can't even take a full 3GB of RAM if you have a decent amount of VRAM on your GPU, if my GF's Pentium D can run Win 7 (slapped in an HD2400XT,cost a grand total of $9) then so can your PC.

A final bit of advice, go to Starmicro and pick up a dual core if that board will support it, hell I've had pretty decent luck getting AM2 boards to take the MOR Athlon 64 X2s even if the board's chiplist don't show one and their chips are cheap enough you can afford to take the chance. I've been buying from those guys for years, great bunch and they'll have a chip for just about any socket. You'd be surprised how little money it takes to turn your system into a pretty kicking Windows 7 machine, and the increased security and extra features are WELL worth the upgrade. When I use XP now I feel like I've gone back to Win95, how I lived without jumplists and breadcrumbs is beyond me. Well worth a few bucks friend.

Re:I like XP

[rsilvergun]

The trouble I've found with ATI is since the 9800 they've gone back to the bad 'ole days of stability issues on their low end. Top tier stuff like Batman is rock solid, but oddball stuff like Psyconauts, No One Lives Forever 2, Streetfighter X Tekken, Sonic Generations, Sonic/Sega All Stars Racing, etc crash. Lots :(.

I miss my 1650 (an overclocked 9800 with a smaller die for less heat). The image quality blew my GT240 away. But it couldn't keep up with SFxT much less Arkham. I tried one of the low end 4xxxx serious (4050? Can't remember), but it crashed lots. I've heard if you shell out the big bucks for the $300 range you don't get that, but that's too rich for my blood...

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

Hell you should have come to me bro, old Hairy would have set you straight.

You see the trick with AMD/ATI is knowing what the card is made for and sticking with that. Take my GF for example, she watches movies, does a little video chat, plays FB games, so any of the low end chips, the 24xx,34xx,43xx, those all work great, solid as a rock.

Now for your mor games that aren't gonna be filling the sky with splosions? The x5xx and x6xx cards really do well there, again you just can't crank the AA and AF and expect it to run smooth, its more for your WoW type players. finally if you want to play anything with plenty of bling? then x7xx and x8xx are the cards for you, hell I'm still gaming on an HD4850 and it just rocks, I had the bling cranked to 11 in Just Cause II and I NEVER dropped below 37FPS in the demo runs, not once. in the actual game it runs even better, I have filled the screen with so many fireballs and pieces of debris i couldn't even see where the road i was driving on was.

But while I can't comment on all of your games I have NOLF 1 and 2 and the youngest has Psyconauts and on these HD4850s? great, smooth as butter, and like I said look around, you can find those cards in the $35 range so its not like you have a real investment here. Good rule of thumb? stay a version or two behind, you'll save money while getting the most stable drivers. Like I said you can get the HD7750 for less than $80 at amazon, it beats the HD6850 cards in a lot of benches while pulling so little power that it can just run off the PCI-E bus, no external power required. I bet if you were to try one you'd see that all those games would just smoke, I've been selling them to customers for a couple of months now and nothing but happy results.

But if you got the HD4250 there is your problem, that was one of those "turbo-cache" cards that both ATI and Nvidia experimented with where they would put a shitty little amount of RAM on the card and supplement it with system RAM. There is a GOOD reason why neither makes those anymore, they found trying to keep two different RAMs running at different speeds synched equaled a crashy mess, which is what it sounds like you went through. if you are gonna be doing more than FB games I wouldn't recommend anything lower than an HD4650, but as i said with the HD4850 at $35 and the HD7750 at $75 there really is no point in getting any smaller than that.

Re:I like XP

[Pubstar]

Hell, the HD7770 in my spare box runs BF3 at Med-High settings, 1920x1080 @ ~60FPS. Not bad for a $110 card (That I got on sale for $90 with a free game voucher).

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

See? That is what I'm saying, this whole "If I had $200+ to spare" doesn't really apply anymore, it really doesn't. The only reason to spend that kind of money is for ePeen bragging rights. Me personally I'm waiting for the HD7770 to hit the $70 mark (which I figure it will by this fall) that way i can get a couple and try the CF on my board but from what I've seen the HD7770 by itself is gonna smoke so it'll only be so I can say I got CF, not because i really need it.

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

Well he seemed to be implying that he had money issues and frankly the "legacy" drivers run great on Windows 7 and Windows 8 so I don't really see that as a problem. Hell I picked up an HD2400XT and slapped it in my GF's PC and it runs Windows 7 solid as hell and its not like you are gonna want Windows 8 on a non touchscreen device anyway.

But anybody worried about having "legacy" drivers should just pick up an HD7750, you can get those for less than $80 at Amazon and if they stick to their previous timelines that should get at least another 3 years worth of driver updates. Personally if the drivers are solid i have NO problem with them only putting out drivers if there is a bug to fix, putting out a monthly driver just to say you put out a driver is kinda dumb and they have already squeezed every drop of performance they are gonna get out of the 2xxx-5xxx cards at this point. I'm still gaming on an HD4850 and i have no problems with the latest games and the driver is solid as a rock under windows 7, no worries.

Re:I like XP

[Pubstar]

Now I feel like an ass for having an XFX 7970 Black Edition with the Double D cooling. Thanks hairyfeet. Then again, I am pushing this out to a 2560x1440 monitor, and the card barely stays above 70FPS at maxed settings on BF3 at that resolution.

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

Dude get a CF board, you want to crank out the bling at crazy resolutions you REALLY need to be using CF. Look up the benches and see how say 2 HD7770s push compared to your 7970 and you'll see you can get damned close without spending even half what you did.

But of course if you get a CF board you can wait until the 7970s hit the below $150 range (but in the future I'd avoid the x9xx cards, sure they are insanely fast but they are a lot rarer than the x8xx cards so the price never drops as far) and slap a second one to get totally insane-o frame rates. Nice thing about CF is you can buy cheaper cards and get equal or better performance.

Re:I like XP

[Pubstar]

The only problem is that you start running into problems where games require alot of VRAM. Since in a CF setup the VRAM is mirrored across both GPUs, you are limited to 1GB in that setup (2GB if you run this card), but then you are around the $300 mark. BF3 at the settings I run eats up about 2.3GB. So I'd rather pay the $150 extra, have the higher frame rates, and the extra stability... and possibly have an upgrade path for later down the road.

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

Well that would still let you get another 7970 when the price drops so you'll get the crazy bling for longer. Honestly the price of CF capable boards, especially the AMD ones are so damned cheap if you want to game you are probably better off with a CF board, they can usually hold more RAM and have better options for tweaking anyway.

Being a PC fixit shop guy in a poor state and having a couple of teens that game I just can't go batshit on the cards, as any card i get for myself I'll end up having to get the boys something equal to it so we can game together so if its one thing I've learned its how to stretch out that bang for the buck and get the most for the money. that is why me and the oldest are running Thuban Hexacores and the youngest an AMD quad, by going with the AMD chips I was able to build 3 pretty damned nice PCs for less than a grand, and that is why I'll end up getting the HD7750s to replace the HD4850s we are running now as 3 of those this fall will cost less than your single card.

But if it were me I'd still stick with the x7xx and x8xx simply because with CF you can buy one card now and in six months buy another when the price is cheaper. With the x9xx cards they really don't sell those in mass quantities so the price never drops nearly as far,whereas with x7xx and x8xx you can get some crazy cheap prices if you watch out.

As far as VRAM...you ever thought about a caching SSD? i have a gaming customer running a Sandisk caching SSD and he just raves about how fast game levels and textures load, with that caching SSD working as a buffer between your HDD and your RAM/VRAM you can seriously cut down the time it takes to feed that beast of yours, but of course with you running ultra HD I'm sure nothing is gonna top insane amounts of VRAM, still if you have already bought the monster card nothing wrong with having the option to CF it down the line. It'll let you squeeze more bang for the buck without having to keep buying the insane-o priced cards constantly.

Re:I like XP

[Pubstar]

I guess the thing is that I just enjoy having a powerful system. I could only afford budget rigs growing up (you can only do so much on minimum wage) that now that I have a high paying job, I just like to treat myself to some expensive hardware. I bought the 7970 with a tax return last year (early Feb), and I see no reason to upgrade for a decent time. Maybe, just maybe, in another year or so, I'll look at CFing it.

I already have a 512GB SSD for my OS/Game storage. Yes, load times are amazing, but playing at higher resolution means that more stuff gets stored on the card's VRAM. Trust me, I've had to build budget rigs to get by before, and I know how to pick and choose items carefully to squeeze the most power out of the least amount of cash. Hell, I build my friend a 6950 rig and did the BIOS flash to a 6970 to get that extra boost out of it.

Re:I like XP

[hairyfeet]

Alright you got the cash, old hairy has got the advice...get a RAMDrive. I got a dev customer running SSDs with a 32Gb RAMDrive and I swear the fricking times are just AMAZING, with those bad boys feeding into a fire breathing Core i7 its just a screamin' demon when it comes to...well pretty much any damned thing he wants to run. SSDs are fast but nothing will touch a 32GB or 64GB DDR 3 RAMDrive when it comes to squeezing every drop of performance that the chips will do.

Re:Over 8% of Gamers use XP on Steam

[tlhIngan]

XP had a 64-bit version and supported multi-core since service pack 2 :).

XP64 is a joke- there's very little driver support for it and things were wonky. It was more of a beta test by Microsoft than anything really significant.

The new driver model is much better - and if you're going to do a 64-bit driver, you might as well start afresh with the new driver model than to try to maintain a dead 64-bit port as well.

Re:AMD botnet

[kthreadd]

Dude as someone that has to work on PCs six days a week let me make ONE thing clear, there is NOTHING extra you gotta do to pwn XP, that OS is oooolllllldddddd, okay? It has had 3 service packs, God knows how many patches, hell when it came out a decent PC was a 700Mhz P3 with 128MB of RAM!

Look I get wanting to save old gear okay? But XP wasn't great to start with and its practically ancient now, let it RIP okay?

There's nothing wrong with an old OS as long as it is supported. It's actually often a good thing since nothing is perfect and needs time to be proven.

Re:Over 8% of Gamers use XP on Steam

[kthreadd]

XP64 worked just fine as long as you ran it on supported hardware and used only supported software. It was never mainstream, but it sure wasn't a joke.

Any official announcement?

[ET3D]

Googling for AMD dropping XP I found posts from October 2012 claiming the same thing: a driver came out with no XP support, end of the world is coming. I haven't been able to find anything official about AMD discontinuing XP support. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I feel that a post will at least have a link to relevant proof. Linking to a beta driver as a form of proof just doesn't cut it IMO.

Non issue on Linux

[devent]

On Linux I just update to the new and shiny new Fedora, Ubuntu or Debian. Zero costs and I get new software versions with added features or fixed bugs. So I don't really understand why it is to update from Windows XP to Windows 7 is such an issue.

Re: Buying AMD? choose cheap old card

[fa2k]

Make sure you buy an older card. The free software driver driver for 7000+ cards is a broken joke.

I have the 6770. The open source driver worked well when I briefly used the very latest kernel in Arch. I couldn't stand the constant updates and installed Scientific Linux. Now the open driver is back to being slow and horrible again. The proprietary driver crashes instead. I can use the 6770 on the desktop without compiz-like effects and it doesn't crash, but I can't do any gaming in wine. I'm getting an nVidia GT640, it's been ordered. I think it's a bit sad because ATI are clearly working on their open drivers, but I just need a video card that works. I think it's a bit unfortunate, as the ATI seemed to work well on 3.9 and possibly 3.8 kernels. I played some Heroes of Newerth and it worked well, and I don't expect much from Wine gaming even with nVidia.

*I'm 99 % sure that the issues I have are due to the video card and driver, but I also run ZFS which does some funky memory management things, so I can't rule that out as the culprit. Will post back here in a few days if nVidia one is just as troublesome.

Re: Buying AMD? choose cheap old card

[fa2k]

I almost forgot about the nice way to enable power management on the open driver.
echo profile > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
You can set it to low speed or full speed. Even on a desktop it's kind of annoying to have to do that manually. I ended up running at low speed all the time because I forgot to change it (except when using Gnome3, but that's a separate rant) and it worked fine, but it's still kind of lame.

Re:AMD botnet

[hairyfeet]

Thank you and I do NOT sound like a damned 13 year old, watch any of those god damned reality shows featuring teens to see how they talk like fricking aliens.

And the P3 was EASILY the most popular CPU when XP was released by a long shot, at the time i stayed pretty damned close to the cutting edge and i had a P3 running at a blistering 1100MHz. The office boxes i was working on at the time were new enough they had WinME stickers on them (needless to say I got a LOT of work wiping ME for XP) and the average was between 650MHz to 900MHz depending on the OEM line and RAM was 128Mb pretty much across the board.

I know people were shocked as hell to see mine had a full 512Mb because that was practically unheard of at the time but I got lucky and knew a guy that could get me RAM at cost and it was still a pretty penny for 2 256Mb chips my friend.

Re: Buying AMD? choose cheap old card

[drinkypoo]

So the proprietary driver at least claims to work with some not so new cards.

ATI just supports whatever they want, and fuck you if you don't like it. They still don't provide mobile driver downloads directly. The free driver has never supported R690M properly (I get massive trashing even with accel disabled) and neither has fglrx. When I bought the system with the chipset in it, fglrx already claimed it was too old to be supported. And I can't download a Windows 7 driver from ATI, unlike nVidia which is happy to provide mobile driver downloads and has been for years. Stupid me, this was my third ATI GPU. Never again.

How cares?

[hobarrera]

Honestly, users who are still using windows XP [quite clearly] don't care about getting software updates, why would they care?

Even thought this sounds like flaimbait/troll, I'm being pretty much sincere. Someone who's using an unsupported, 12 year-old OS doesn't seem to be the type of person constantly updating their driver anyway.

Re:Over 8% of Gamers use XP on Steam

[hobarrera]

You make it sound like getting supported hardware was a hard thing.
My mum bought her computer about 5 years algo, and XP x64 worked fine without any issues. We never consulted if it would work or not - you could just assume it would, much like XP would run on almost any machine you could build at the time.

Re:AMD botnet

[hairyfeet]

That would be true of Win 7, hell even Vista, but XP had a serious flaw you just can't easily fix, and that is the entire OS and ecosystem expecting you to be running as Admin 24/7/365 which is just BAD design friend.

With XP there are just too many programs, hell too many drivers, that expect admin and will choke and pitch a fit if not outright crash if you try to run as a limited user and even if you manage to get it working the number of permission pop ups will drive you nuts, it'll make Vista look quiet in comparison.

Look I get wanting to keep some of the old stuff, i really do, but XP is just waaaaay past its prime. its had patches on top of patches, 3 service packs, you can run a clean install for a week and then run something like CCleaner or Comodo system cleaner and find the registry already starting to pile up the orphan links and crap,its just not that good to begin with and now that hardware has passed it by (hell the $100 specials at a lot of places have more RAM than XP can handle without hacks) it really is time to let it go.

I mean for the love of Pete we are talking 14 fricking years by the time MSFT pulls the plug, in OS terms it might as well have come on 8-track.

Re:Over 8% of Gamers use XP on Steam

[Chaos Incarnate]

XP64 was problematic because it wasn't a 64-bit build of XP; it was Windows Server 2003 with the server features stripped out.

Re: AMD botnet

[Grishnakh]

24 * 7 = 364. There's 365 days in a year (366 on leap years), so adding the extra "365" does make sense. 24/7/52 would be stupid, because you're effectively saying that 1 day out of the year, something different is happening or not working.

Re: AMD botnet

[petteyg359]

Actually, 24 * 7 = 168. Nice try, though.

Re: AMD botnet

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, 52*7 = 364.

Re:AMD botnet

[niftymitch]

Yes OLD...
Hardware that old ... just load a version of Linux or FreeBSD.

XP joining OS/2...

[dtjohnson]

The example of OS/2 provides an example for what the future might be for Windows XP. IBM (and almost all vendors) dropped support for OS/2 in 1996. However, even to this day people are still able to use OS/2 due to support from the open source community and new vendors who provided the support that the old vendors dropped. If there are enough Windows XP users, it is likely that drivers and software support for XP will appear from similar new vendors. Windows XP was the last Windows that Bill Gates was involved in. The story of its demise might be premature.

Re:Over 8% of Gamers use XP on Steam

[Creepy]

To be fair, XP64 was more than a beta test, as the Windows NT it was based on was ported early on to a 64 bit architecture and many of the kinks worked out (specifically NT Workstation on the DEC Alpha). Driver support, on the other hand, was a nightmare. I had to support both Alpha NT and XP 64, and the latter was definitely less trouble, but still not perfect.

As for AMD/ATI killing XP support, I guess I can understand - XP is the last supported version of Windows with the old driver model, so this most likely cuts support costs significantly.

Does it matter ?

[bobjr94]

Most XP machines are sitting in offices, warehouses or your parents house. The will run facebook or office just fine on outdated drivers. I have a xp laptop with display drivers last updated in 2008 and it still works fine for daily tasks. Unless your playing breaking edge games or doing serious video editing updating your drivers with each new release isnt needed.

Re: AMD botnet

[petteyg359]

24/7/52 may not be exact, but 24/7/365 is stupidly redundant. Just say 24/365. Or, if the issue is being exact, then go with 24/365.242 :)

Re:AMD botnet

[hairyfeet]

She is suddenly able to talk again, its the damnedest thing and all I get from docs is "Your guess is as good as mine" which is frustrating as hell but what can you do? Just enjoy these periods and hope they last, all I can do really.