Goodbye Radeon RX 6000/5000?
AMD launched the Radeon RX 5000 series in 2019 and continued releasing new models the following year. The RX 6000 series, which arrived during the peak of GPU shortages caused by the pandemic and cryptocurrency boom, received updates until 2023, when the last GRE models were released. It now appears both architectures are entering maintenance mode.
Following an earlier story and the latest driver update, AMD has confirmed that future drivers will no longer focus on game optimizations for RDNA2 and RDNA1 architectures. Instead, development will shift toward RDNA3 and RDNA4, the company told PC Games Hardware.
“RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 graphics cards will continue to receive driver updates for critical security fixes and bug corrections. To focus on optimizing and delivering new and improved technologies for the latest GPUs, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 places Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series graphics cards (RDNA 1 and RDNA 2) into maintenance mode . Future driver updates with specific game optimizations will focus on RDNA 3 and RDNA 4 GPUs.”
— AMD to PC Games Hardware (translation)
AMD’s statement does not clarify what will happen to RDNA2-based Ryzen APUs. Many products use this architecture, including the Steam Deck, which has Windows drivers, as well as the Mendocino APU, recently rebranded as the Ryzen 10 series .
ComputerBase speculates this could also mean no FSR Redstone support for RX 6000 and RX 5000 series cards. It’s worth noting that AMD has said the upcoming upscaling technology does not rely on dedicated acceleration cores but instead uses ML2Code , an optimized compute shader implementation. This approach allows the new FSR version to run on other vendors’ GPUs. However, it remains unclear whether RX 6000 and RX 5000 cards will lose support entirely or if Redstone will simply follow the same driver optimization policy applied to older architectures.
Radeon RX 6750 GRE, the last RDNA2 GPU from 2023, Source: AMD
AMD has greatly expanded its software engineering teams, but their focus is now on data center products and improving the ROCm platform. That focus shift leaves consumer GPUs behind, which is disappointing, especially considering that the last RDNA2 card launched in 2023. A card barely two years old will now stop receiving timely driver updates.
Source: PC Games Hardware
