New AMD Beta Driver Drops Windows XP Support

News
By
published

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.

Kevin Parrish
33 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jurassic1024
    Good riddance. If you're still stuck on XP...

    *SMACK*
    Reply
  • kmelaza
    That sucks, i still use windows XP for some games who dont run well on Win 7 cause the OS is not supported, but i use an Nvidia card.
    Reply
  • csf60
    No one blames AMD for this. They supported XP far longer than Microsoft itself.
    Reply
  • vmem
    about time

    but it's also a BETA. they could very well include XP support in the final release
    Reply
  • aevm
    They support Vista (4% of PCs according to wikipedia), Apple (6%), Linux (2%), Windows 8 (4%), but they drop Windows XP (32%). Very interesting decision from AMD...
    Reply
  • lt_dan_zsu
    "I may have windows xp, but I think I'm gonna go get me a 7950."- two people.
    Reply
  • lt_dan_zsu
    @aevm, 32% of PC's might still use xp, but what percent of those are used in office buildings, web browsing, only, etc. That leaves a very small percentage of people who still use it for gaming, and I'm betting a very tiny percentage of those people have a modern GPU.
    Reply
  • Verrin
    @aevm, as someone else has pointed out, these drivers only impact gamers. Office workers or individuals who only use the OS to check for email aren't impacted. I think a more demographic-appropriate way to determine the number of individuals who use XP but also play games is to check the steam survey. In May, it indicated <10% of its users were running XP. This is much lower than the 32% of all users using XP.
    Reply
  • Soda-88
    11073872 said:
    They support Vista (4% of PCs according to wikipedia), Apple (6%), Linux (2%), Windows 8 (4%), but they drop Windows XP (32%). Very interesting decision from AMD...

    You can still use 13.5 on XP, you know...
    Reply
  • gmkos
    No surprise or cause for concern as Microsoft themselves are ending support for Windows XP within a year from now, but good to know.

    Reply