New AMD Beta Driver Drops Windows XP Support
AMD has launched the second version of its Catalyst 13.6 beta driver for Windows that improves performance in PCMark 7 and PCMark 8 on the new AMD A10, A8, A6, and A4 Series APUs for desktop and mobile platforms. It also resolves HDMI Audio drop-out issues on the AMD Radeon HD Series of products. What it doesn't do is support Windows XP.
According to the system requirements, the AMD Catalyst 13.6 Beta2 driver requires Windows 8 (32 & 64-bit versions), Windows 7 (32 & 64-bit versions with SP1 or higher), and Windows Vista (32 & 64-bit versions with SP2 or higher). The aged Windows XP, whose life support will be terminated by Microsoft in April 2014, is not on the list.
Microsoft is currently pushing consumers and businesses alike to ditch the old platform for Windows 8… or Windows 7 at the least. Once April 2014 rolls around, Microsoft will cease all support for the popular platform, leaving customers on their own to fight against hackers finding new holes in Windows XP's cracking foundation.
The first beta driver for AMD's Catalyst 13.6 brought support for the new AMD A10, A8, A6, and A4 Series APUs on desktop and mobile platforms. It also brought AMD Enduro enhancements like detecting when Metro applications have idled and moving them to the integrated graphics component, and showing the hardware and software Information pages for AMD discrete GPUs when paired with Intel integrated graphics.
The new beta driver also includes AMD GPU & AMD APU OpenCL 1.2 acceleration in Adobe Premiere PRO CC and support for AMD Wireless Display for Windows 8 and future Windows releases. The driver resolves a few issues as well including HDMI Audio drop-out and showing Audio display messages at incorrect times.
My concern is playing older games with newer hardware. You can always keep a virtualized install of xp arround for the games. But if the newer hardware stops working on it, then you have a problem.
As long as it still works, even tho its not supported i dont care.
*SMACK*
but it's also a BETA. they could very well include XP support in the final release
You can still use 13.5 on XP, you know...
Being that Microsoft does not support DX10 on XP, I suspect the current AMD support for DX9 on XP is just dandy.
And,
*SMACK*
Agreed!
Have you tried compatibility mode for said games?
Pffft. XP still has support from MS til next year.
If you want tech and security to progress, forget about XP ffs.
My concern is playing older games with newer hardware. You can always keep a virtualized install of xp arround for the games. But if the newer hardware stops working on it, then you have a problem.
As long as it still works, even tho its not supported i dont care.
That's because people are cheap, and don't use a computer for much but the basics. Good for them, but bad for the rest of us that want to see technology progress, not stand still using an OS from 2001.
XP needs to die, and if AMD can give it a little push out the door, I'm all for it.
Which games are these? i play games dating back to the days of DOS on my windows 7 PC and even though some might have to be tweaked a bit to get to run they all work. 10mins on google normally resolves every issue i've had
also people are making out like AMD have dropped all XP support which is not true, you just wont get the latest updates. Which considering that all new games require you to have vista or above (because of 64bit and yes i know you can get 64bit XP but diver support for it is poor at best) it really makes no difference, if you want to play older games on older hardware with an older OS then you can use the older driver