If you’re one of those PC gamers who are still using AMD’s Polaris or Vega series GPUs, you may be happy to know that the red chipmaker released a new WHQL driver update for them. The new Adrenalin Edition 26.5.2 files are separate from the current RDNA series GPUs, and again, are targeted towards older Radeon GPUs.
Specifically, the drivers support GPUs based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) and Vega architecture. These include cards from the Radeon RX 400, RX 500, 500X, RX Vega, Radeon VII, and Radeon Pro Duo series. There is also a reference to the Radeon 600 Series, but this is a notebook reference driver, and support is typically limited for system vendor features.
For another matter, the driver is being released to address just one issue. That issue revolves around an intermittent application crashing while playing Apex Legends on older Polaris GPUs. Take note that the driver does not mention support for any new games, nor does it improve the performance of any other games, current or otherwise, for the lineup.
As is the standard and practice, GPU makers like AMD and NVIDIA eventually sunset their older GPUs over time, as these products are no longer powerful or relevant. For example, NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture, while game changing and revolutionary at the time of its release in 2016, came out more than a decade ago. Its technology has moved on by leaps and bounds in that time, although it can be argued that the new cards do not provide pure rasterisation and instead depend on “fake frames” generated by upscaling technology like DLSS and FSR, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.
While we’re on a history tangent, this writer remembers when Polaris was first introduced. The series and its GCN4 microarchitecture made its debut in 2016, and was technically a response (of sorts) to NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture. Granted, it wasn’t an apples-to-apples fight, but it certainly provided the PC market at the time with a mid-range alternative.
(Source: AMD, Videocardz)
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