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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system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version.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."
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.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
..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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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system you will not receive audio, chipset, video, or any other drivers for your XP system and must upgrade or use an outdated legacy version.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.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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 If you're still using Windows XP, then you're also stuck on DirectX 9 and all the other outdated technologies.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.
Have a nice time.
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?
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.
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.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
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.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
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.
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.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
..and at least one of us is a myopic projectionist who is unable to see past his own shit.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.