Credit: AMD

Last week, AMD released version 25.10.2 of its Adrenalin driver package for Radeon GPUs. It seemed like a relatively routine driver release with a typical list of bug fixes and game performance improvements, except for one accompanying announcement: AMD said at the time that it would be moving support for Radeon RX 5000-series and 6000-series GPUs (and their RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 architectures) to “maintenance mode.” That meant that a bunch of GPUs, including some dedicated graphics cards launched as recently as 2022, would no longer get fresh fixes and performance optimizations for newly launched games.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, AMD released several clarifying statements to address the ensuing backlash, saying that these older GPUs would still get “new features, bug fixes, and game optimizations” based on “market needs.” That must not have quieted the complaints, because AMD then made an entirely separate post to confirm that the 25.10.2 driver release “is not the end of support for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2,” and that integrated and dedicated GPUs based on these architectures would continue to receive “game support for new releases,” “stability and game optimizations,” and “security and bug fixes.”

AMD did confirm that these older GPU architectures had been moved to a separate driver path, but the company says this is meant to keep fixes and features intended for newer RDNA 3 and RDNA 4-based GPUs from inadvertently breaking things for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 GPUs.

“These [RX 5000 and RX 6000-series] products now benefit from a dedicated, stable driver branch, one built on years of tuning and optimization,” reads AMD’s post. “This approach helps deliver a smoother, more consistent experience for your games while insulating previous generation GPUs from rapid changes designed for newer architectures… By separating the code paths, our engineers can move faster with new features for RDNA 3 and RDNA 4, while keeping RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 stable and optimized for current and future games.”

The release notes for the 25.10.2 Adrenalin release also dropped Windows 10 from the list of “compatible operating systems,” listing only Windows 11 21H2 and later. But AMD confirmed to Windows Latest that the driver packages would still support Windows 10 for the foreseeable future. The company said that the OS is not listed in the release notes because Microsoft has technically ended support for Windows 10, but home users running Windows 10 on their PCs can get an extra year of security patches relatively easily. Microsoft will keep providing some kind of support for the OS in businesses, schools, and other large organizations until at least 2028.

Why all the fuss?

It would look bad if AMD dropped or reduced support for those Radeon 5000- and 6000-series GPUs, given that Nvidia continues to support GeForce RTX 20- and 30-series graphics cards launched in the same 2019 to 2022 time window. But the end of support could have been even worse for gaming handhelds and lower-end PCs with integrated graphics.

The RDNA 2 architecture in particular has enjoyed a long and ongoing life as an integrated GPU, including for systems that are explicitly marketed and sold as gaming PCs. And because so many of AMD and Intel’s lower-end chips are just rebranded versions of older silicon, AMD continues to launch “new” products with RDNA 2 GPUs in them. The RDNA 2 architecture is the one Valve has used in the Steam Deck since 2022, for example, but Microsoft and Asus’ just-launched ROG Xbox Ally series also includes an RDNA 2 GPU in the entry-level model.

The last time AMD formally scaled back its GPU driver support was in 2023, when it moved drivers for its Polaris and Vega GPU architectures into a separate package that would only get occasional “critical updates.” At the time, AMD had launched its last dedicated Vega-based GPU just four years before, and many lower-end desktop and laptop processors still shipped with Vega-based integrated GPUs.

For the Steam Deck and other SteamOS and Linux systems, at least, it seems like things aren’t really changing no matter what happens with the Windows drivers. Phoronix points out that the Linux driver package for AMD’s GPUs has always been maintained separately from the Windows drivers and that GPU architectures considerably older than RDNA 1 continue to get official support and occasional improvements.