Yesterday, the HEXUS editor took a close look at AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology, with a deep dive into the tech and some pixel peeping of FSR in action in the first games that support it. Alongside that welcome new feature, a new driver, Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1, was launched to support it, as well as support the new AMD Radeon RX 6800M Graphics for laptops, and the Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance game.
If you visit the driver release notes, via the link directly above, you might quickly notice the truncated list of AMD Radeon products that it is compatible with, and which I have reproduced below.
Graphics products supported by the latest Radeon Software Adrenalin driver
Notable by their absence are a lot of GPUs which were supported by the previous driver, version 21.5.2. In the briefest terms I can think of, this is because AMD has ended support for all its pre-Polaris (Pre-Radeon RX 400 Series) graphics products. Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.5.2 was the last driver to support this older hardware. Such graphics products are now moved to a "legacy model".
For the sake of completeness / clarity, the Radeon products which are no longer supported as we move from Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.5.2 to 21.6.1 are tabulated above.
Cute but showed no mercy, the AMD Radeon R9 Nano from 2015
Windows 7 support gets the chop
AMD kept its axe sharp to not only prune its older graphics products from support, but Microsoft's Windows 7 64-bit. The above driver version transition moves Windows 7 to a legacy support model – which means only a severe security flaw will likely precipitate any update for systems running this OS.
AMD explains in a blog post that the above driver support shake-up was to enable it to "dedicate valuable engineering resources to developing new features and enhancements for graphics products based on our latest graphics architectures". Nvidia trotted out a similar statement last week when it announced the impending end to Windows 7/8/8.1 support in its Game Ready Drivers (October). Nvidia Kepler GPUs are to face the same fate as Windows 7/8/8.1 following the same driver release timetable.
