I disagree.
It's actually good since there is nothing there can be done for the 9xxx-x19xx series.
The drivers are more than matured. I own myself an old x1950XTX and nothing has changed for me from last few driver-to-driver updates (just did them because I also updated them on my main rig).

I'm with PrEzi on this one, too.

First of all, AMD is not dropping support. They are simply not going to be doing MONTHLY updates for these old cards. Rather, they will include updates on a quarterly basis.

I, too, still have an X1950 in the other PC I own. There's not much left...if anything...to be done to improve after all this time. Let AMD concentrate on improving the newer products.

actualy that old hardware isnt able to work fine with latest games, and for the games it works fine now, since it already works fine, there is no need to try to improve more the drivers

actualy doing such a move could bring them to do better improvement on dx10 hardware and so make the actualy cards able to work fine with the latest games

Mixed feelings on this one, I suppose as the 50% suggests, there are positives and negatives.

It comes down to if 9.3 are the last drivers fully supporting dx9 cards, how well will those drivers fair for those users in Vista/Win7, in games in the upcomming year. If they fair well with little side-effects, and are reliable, then I have no problem at all with them moving their focus to more current cards. But if they are falling over with each new game, unreliable with Windows 7, then they have to back peddle and give updates to the DX9 users, even if it is a seperate driver build for dx9 cards vs dx10 cards.

But I would love to hear about what they think the benefits will actually be, will the DX10 cards run substantially faster without the baggage of supporting older cards?, will the DX10 cards, have broader and faster support for all the latest games with less bugs of any type. What exactly will the benefit to the user be? or is it just a cost cutting on their part due to the current financial climate, with 0 benefits to the end users apart from their financial security.

it's all about resources - think for example bug ironishing and testing.
They need to run 30% more test rigs with outdated hardware to check if it's working.
They need a larger staff for bug testing etc. etc.
Think big - like a company's manager.

And if they do not want to cut the stuff out they could be moved to help the others with later hardware and/or perf optimizations.

I have a lot of friends with X1000 cards. It's working fine even on new games and low resolutions without AA. As you know, most of the people aren't upgrading on monthly basis like us. All these game-related hotfixes also effect old products as well. Don't forget that most of the games today are still based on the DirectX9 API.

If 9500-X1950 owners received poor driver treatment in the last months, it doesn't make it right to drop it entirely. There are still open issues on DirectX 9 hardware and dropping its support won't help. %50 is a large user base and AMD should reconsider it again! support is important to keep customers on your side.

This whole situation shows weakness of high performance graphic cards: their performance is too big and they're enough for long years, but these gpus really fast become outdated becouse of no support for new technologies like e.g. later versions of directx.

That's why i will always buy mid-end gpus.

give me a break rege, its a good thing that their dropping it, its better that they concentrate on new hardware

the new drivers are crap with older cards anyways so why bother? the best drivers for these cards are in the low 8.x, their not gonna get any better then thoes and anyone that activly updates their old gpu is wasting their time and loosing performence, these cards have been taken up to pretty well their peak and now its time that they focus on something else

the cards cannot hack it with new games and the old games that do run well on them arent going to run any better with newer drivers, infact they iwll probably run worse, why is anyone still trying to update these?

wish people would stop crying about this, its a good move, i own one of these cards and I fully support it and look forward to improved support for the newer cards once i get one, and anyone still trying to update the drivers for their old cards need to wake up

+1 blindartist.
Besides - they aren't dropping the support completely - they will only cut it (not release a driver each month but on quarterly basis).
If by doing this they can improve the quality of support & drivers for the newer generation of cards then I fully support this decision.

Exactly, imo they are going above and beyond with supporting these old cards even when they dont have to because no new games will really run respectably on them anyways, even my x1950 is seeing the end of its days, it cant really hack it with the newest stuff coming out this year

If it will help them push out better drivers I fully support this decision.

I think if you take the perspective that the old cards work with current software, and regardless of drivers they are just not going to cut it with next gen software anyway, good move.

Why not go out and by a DX 10 video card? The cheapest HD 3450 is 29.99? If your running a PC with AGP your computer needs to replaced anyway.

word!

hey man dont diss AGP lol

but yea mine's ineed of a replacement, no money for one though, but im all for this move, there is no point in continuin support for old cards which wont really support the latest games anyways, mind you my x1950 puts a valient effort in, only recently have games come out that it really cant hack like empire total war

While updates to thouse drivers are no longer done anyway, it is still a bad marketing decision to announce they are no longer supporting them.

But, this is a wrong statement. They have not dropped support for the older DX9 cards. They will still provide support, just not on a monthly basis. Instead it will be every quarter...or every 3 months. They will even provide HOTFIX drivers on a "as needed basis".

So, I think everyone needs to grasp the real truth of the matter and quit making it like they are throwing the cards off the nearest cliff. It just ain't so.

Most of the latest games are still playable on X1000 hardware.

yea on everything low/med in which case who cares? the drivers arent gonna make that any better and there is absolutly NO POINT in updating thoes cards past early 8.x drivers so tell me why should they keep supporting them in newer drivers?

I really wish people would stop crying and moaning about this, its a good move and one day when they update their dinasour cards they will be glad because hopefually this will result in better drivers for the newer generations

So why need any further driver updates. They don't, and people are saying they will get quaterly updates or hotfixes if something requires it. Don't get the fuss on this at all.

I wouldn't worry too much, for sure there will be unofficial "optimized" versions which have support for slightly older cards. Eventually it's just better to get a new card altogether. you can easily snag a newer faster card in the 90-140 range, which are several times faster than the Radeon 19xx series especially on newer games.

Am I the only one who can add?

No, there is 34.85% using Dx9 hardware, it's still not a small number, but if you look at the graph, you'll see that Dx9 is slowly being phased out (May never be phased out completely, look at the 13.12% still using DX8 or lower hardware).

As for ATi dropping support for Dx9 hardware, it's not too bad, not great, but at least there is a decent driver revision to go back to.

its just a way to make everyone buy new cards, and make more money....

Once again: AMD/ATI is NOT dropping support for these cards. What they are doing is simply not making updated drivers every month for them. They ARE making updated drivers every quarter...or 4 times per year. AND, in addition to this, they will provide HOTFIX drivers on an 'as needed' basis.

I think there's been too much ado about nothing on this issue.

even if they were dropping support.

its 5 year old hardware people, who gives a crap.

jesus christ.. people who dont know anything need to seriously shut up

the x1950 cards can play crysis on medium and games like assasin's creed on high
they are pci-e cards so they're compatible with good cpu's like core 2s and phenom IIs
they are not 5 year old... not even close

so why do we have to update? if i have a geforce 7950 i dont have to, they're perfectly supported in the lastest forceware (i can tell for sure, my friend has one)
so why yes with an ati card? easily, cos AMD (im sure ati is just following corporate orders on this one, since they used to support everything) wants to milk the consumer
seriously, they're worse than intel and MS together
cos MS does give you basic Windows 7 drivers for these cards while they dont

andddd...AMD/ATI *IS* DROPPING SUPPORT!
as to this day, there are no plans to support Windows 7 on "legacy" cards.. zero
despite that Windows 7 will replace Vista and xp. If anyone reads any reviews, even in the beta stage Windows 7 was faster and more stable than both, supported more hardware, etc, etc... long story short, Windows 7 is here to stay
They will use lame excuses, like Win7 requires DX10 hw... LIE, it doesn't
My guess is, again, they either wanna milk the consumer or get back at MS for what they did with DX10 (read any DX10 vs DX11 article on the web)

wow this is getting stupid

Ok, as cards get older support in drivers tends to shift towards newer cards (this is true for Nv too) and older cards actually sometimes start to loose performence with newer drivers.

Cards like the x1950 have already reached their max potential (and im not just saying this to down them because I own one) you will not gain any new benefits from drivers, I have been running 8.3's for a long time now and have aboslutly no intention to ever bother updating thembecuase there is no point.

It is pointless to update old cards and is usually counter productive, AMD made a damn good move my dropping the old cards from their mainstream drivers to focus on newer cards and they are beeing very generous by even bothering to release quarterly updates for these.

As for windows 7, why the hell would you bother with it if your not going to play dx10/11 games? there is absolutly np point in upgrading to 7 or even vista for that matter, except for being able to utilize dx10, why do you think m$ made dx10 vista only? because no one would switch from xp otherwise, if your not going to use vista or 7 for dx10/11 gaming then just stick with xp because its a watse of time and money to "upgrade"

someone please lock this stupid topic

thats actually not correct blindartist.

Windows 7 is meant to improve performance of Dx9 titles via optimisations to Dx.

yea but who cares? the probably negliable improvements arent worth the price tag on windows 7, if your going to upgrade to 7 then you might as well spend a couple hundred on a decent dx10 card, the dx9 cards cant really keep up with new games anyways, my x1950 cant handle the latest titles and its only going to go down hill, i dont play games on medium or low its max or nothing.

FTR, I don't give a flip for the comments of those who refuse to register to make comments. Or, even those who log out so that they can make "unregistered" comments.

I also have an X1950 Pro PCIe card here that I bought myself a couple of years ago. But, it's now sitting up on the shelf gathering dust until I find a good use for it sometime down the road. It served me quite well in my 2nd XP Pro machine until about a month ago when I transferred my HD 3870 to that PC and installed my new HD 4770 in my main rig.

and its not like it doesn't already have working drivers anyway.

lol i wanna know how currect ati card users will feel when they drop dx 10 card when the dx 11 comes out.

i can play crisis on my x1950 pro but i cant play silent hill homecoming, or resident evil 5 even though theese games are way less gpu/cpu intensive than crys...
i cant play them because drivers are broken.
if resident evil and SH:H are dx 9c games that require shader model 3, and i BOUGHT with my money a ATI directx 9c card.. i have the right to play the games, even if it is at 1fps a second, i have that right, i am entitled to play.