AMD Radeon RX 7900 reference cards lose USB-C power delivery
Yesterday, AMD released a new graphics driver for its Radeon GPUs. Although AMD releases drivers less frequently now, this update did not go smoothly. Someone at AMD apparently uploaded the wrong version of the driver, causing confusion until the correct version appeared about an hour later.
The issue affected Radeon RX 6000 and RX 5000 series support. Back in 2023, AMD moved older architectures such as Vega and Polaris to the legacy branch. These GPUs now receive fewer updates, limited to quarterly releases or security fixes when necessary.
Gamers who want day-one optimizations will need to move to newer RDNA architectures (RX 5000 and above). Or maybe not? The latest driver introduced an unexpected change:
“New Game Support and Expanded Vulkan Extensions Support is available to Radeon RX 7000 and 9000 series graphics products.”
This means game optimizations for version 25.10.2 only apply to RX 7000 and RX 9000 cards. The reason is unclear, but the new combined driver package, now 1.56 GB , includes two branches in one installer: 25.20 for RX9000/7000 and 25.10 for RX 6000/5000. Installing it effectively downloads two separate drivers. AMD has not said whether this dual-branch setup will continue or if this was a one-time release. Either way, it’s not great news for RX 6000 (RDNA 2) and RX 5000 (RDNA 1) users.
AMD disables power on RX 7900 USB-C connector
Another change listed in the driver notes is the disabling of USB-C power output on Radeon RX 7900 cards. This port, found mainly on AMD’s reference design and rarely on partner cards, was primarily used for display output via DisplayPort tunneling but could also supply power to monitors or charge phones.
With driver 25.10.2, AMD is disabling charging over this connector, leaving it limited to DisplayPort Alt Mode. It also doesn’t transfer data. Users who relied on it for power will need to roll back to the March (25.3.1) driver.
USB-C power charging has been disabled for Radeon™ RX 7900 series graphics products. Users requiring this feature are recommended to use AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition version 25.3.1.
AMD hasn’t explained why it made this change, but since no RX 9000 cards include a USB-C port, it may have been removed to streamline the already large driver package.
For comparison, NVIDIA’s drivers are around 850 MB and still support GPUs back to the GTX 700 series. NVIDIA still continues to support its similar USB-C standard, VirtualLink, which is no longer added to cards after the RTX 20 series. The Virtual Link standard was effectively cancelled around 2020.
Source: AMD drivers
