megatron

Latest build from the site is 9.3, whereas later GPUs are 9.6. I am having issues with America's Army 3 and I was told to use Omega drivers but these have not been updated since Jan 1st 2008.

I paid £275 for this card a couple of years ago.

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Matth

Yep, 9.3 - the rumours that legacy updates would be quarterly seem to be unfounded.

Maybe the DX9 hardware will get a final update on XP/Vista/Win7 when Win7 is final

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Mary had a little lamb,
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Nachbrenner

Here is "AMD's official response":
PC Perspective - Update: Upcoming Catalyst 9.3 last to support R500 and below

Judas

275 couple (2?) years ago..... ouch.... that's a bit expensive..


could when they were brand spanking new (3 years ago+) i paid nearly 800+ per card before taxes.... got 3 of them... sold 2 of them, still have the crossfire mastercard on hand.

YES the 9.3's are the latest.... and there is a remote possibility that the 9.7's will support it again.. (more infrequent updates)..

3+ years for a video card is a good run... i'm actually impressed that ati have been updating their drivers for these older cards for as long as they have. Before driver updates for a generation or 2 older cards were simply non-excistant.

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megatron

I bought it for a the best price at the time, maybe 3 years ago now. Drivers were compatible from 8500 the first gfx card I bought to 9700, and then support for all between that range is cut. That doesn't seem like such a great deal since if I had waited a few months I would have a card which has current driver support.

The 9700 is overkill for what I play usually and could run newer games (america's army 3) with ease from a hardware perspective but not if the drivers are not updated. I didn't expect to buy a card which cannot play future games not due to being outmatched but simply not updated with drivers.

__________________
My system specs and 3dmark2001se score
Rad8500 bioses, UT2k3, GTA3 pages & more. Also watercooling endeavours.

Matth

First to go were the DirectX8 hardware and below - last supporting driver is the 6.11 Pre-R300 edition, and that is a rollup after support was discontinued in about 6.6.

Actually, the very first to go was Win98/ME support with 6.2 final, or Win95 at something like 5.2.

Next to go is the DX9 hardware family, current last supporting driver is 9.3, and from what they say, some further updates may turn up.

Fact is, there are not going to be any month by month tweaks, and I guess next on the list will be Windows XP to go "legacy support".

By which time, the only thing NEEDED in any update would be major bugfixes, since any performance updates will have come and gone long agao.

__________________
Mary had a little lamb,
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school,
Between two crusts of bread

jandarsun8

Yeah, unfortunately it happens. I've got a X1950 Pro card that has since moved in to my spare box and an X850 Pro card that is in my daughters box. Both cards have the last drivers in them and that's it for them now. Both will also stick with XP in the machines until they are dead as there is no control panel in Win 7 for my x1950 card for 3d options.

I think this would be more of an issue if there wasn't cards for less then 100$ that can give you the same, if not faster, performance now though. Replacements for the X19xx series are pretty cheap now.

As for XP drivers moving to legacy support, I don't see that happening until Win 7 comes out and eventually takes up a majority of the market. XP just has to much market share for it to go into legacy area any time soon. I'm sure it would cut down on dev time if they didn't have to but I don't see it happening for a while yet.

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