Yes, AMD Is Still Supporting Radeon RX 6000 And 5000 GPUs But With A Key Caveat

AMD made some waves recently when it announced that it would be relegating its RDNA 1 and 2 based Radeon RX 5000 and 6000 Series GPUs to a security-update focused branch of its Radeon GPU driver software. In follow-up comments made to Tom's Hardware, however, AMD has since clarified that this does not mean the GPUs will no longer be supported with day-one patches for new game releases. The move to split off the older GPUs to their own branch of Adrenalin Software was met with some pushback, since the Radeon RX 6000 Series remain competitive in today's GPU market and NVIDIA has maintained its older GPU drivers for much longer. While AMD's original wording suggested that its older Radeon GPUs would no longer be receiving new game optimizations, it seems this is not the case. Or that it was, and AMD has since changed course.

Additionally, AMD's patch notes included an erroneous claim that USB-C functionality would be getting disabled on RX 7900 GPUs, but this fortunately turned out to be a mistake according to another comment.

So, why would AMD split off the original RDNA and RDNA 2 architectures into their own driver branch if AMD still intends to keep them updated? Well, they are still being placed into what is being called a "maintenance mode branch", just not in the NVIDIA sense where the drivers only receive security updates. AMD seems focused on providing "new features" to its more recent GPUs, which probably won't find their way to RDNA 1 and 2, making the likelihood of an official FSR 4 INT8 patch unlikely despite demand and proof it would work.

AMD said, "New features, bug fixes and game optimizations will continue to be delivered as required by market needs in the maintenance mode branch". What market needs AMD is referring to, what features will and won't make the cut, and even what specific games will receive optimization on Radeon RX 6000/7000 Series GPUs all remain unknown, but at least owners of those graphics cards won't be getting left in the cold.