AMD switching HD4xxx series and under to legacy driver support?

[gert21445]

Hello,

So I have heard news over the Internet, and statements from AMD as well, which seem to point out that the company is planning to move the Radeon HD4xxx cards (and older), to legacy driver support. However, what it was not so clear about was whether the last monthly driver upgrade for these cards would be this month (with Catalyst 12.5) or next month, Catalyst 12.6, before mainstream driver support is switched off.
I'm asking this because I run a small business, with around 50 or so office computers with an HD4000 series card. The last time I updated the driver for them was Catalyst 11.6b, which has been very stable so far. However, I'd like to take this chance to update these computers to the newest driver, and I don't want to do it twice (takes hours ), and so I was wondering whether 12.5 or 12.6 was going to be the last mainstream monthly driver for these cards? Thanks so much!

 

[JDFan]

When 12.6 comes out just try and update one of the systems -- If they have moved them to Legacy support then the installation file will not include them as supported devices so the install should error out saying it does not detect a supported card !

 

[gert21445]

Yes, but I also want to make sure that either 12.5 or 12.6 is the last update, so that I don't have to carry out the update twice. What I mean is that if I were to update to 12.5 when it is released this week, then find out that a 12.6 was released, then I would have to reupdate all my computers.
Hope this clears it up, and I apologize if I come across as a bit thick! =)

Thanks a bunch!

 

[JDFan]

Ahh -- I see -- Really there is no reason to update them if you are not having problems with the current driver you are using - figure pretty much any optimization available for them has already been introduced and included in the older updates - the newer updates are mainly for optimizations on the newer cards and can cause problems at times due to the implementation of newer hardware components that the older cards do not support (which is probably why they decided to make the 4xxx series Legacy to begin with since some of the newer implementation of things can not be done on the 4xxx series cards and older)

I'd just wait and see what the release notes for 12.6 mentions and if it mentions the 4xxx series not being included then you have your answer (you can always get the last version when needed since they have archives of most every release for at least a year or 2)

 

[rdc85]

As i recall there still update but not each month, more like 2, 3, 4 times a years...