Okay, so I was reading this whole thread about AMD dropping driver support for their RDNA2 graphics cards, you know, the RX 6000 series and the integrated graphics in a ton of stuff. And honestly, the mood over there is… pretty furious and disappointed. It’s like everyone just realized their trusted budget-friendly option might have pulled the rug out from under them.
The core of the frustration is how *everywhere* RDNA2 still is. People are pointing out it’s not just in desktop GPUs like the 6700 XT or 6800 XT—which many bought recently as great value cards—but it’s also the graphics inside the current PlayStation and Xbox consoles, a huge number of budget laptops with Ryzen APUs, and even the latest Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors. So the idea that it’s being phased out from active driver updates feels wildly premature to a lot of folks. One person put it perfectly: dropping the older, less common RDNA1 makes sense, but RDNA2 is absolutely still relevant and not that old.
This feeling gets amplified when you look at the competition. There’s a real bitter comparison to NVIDIA’s support lifespan. Multiple comments highlight how even 10-year-old NVIDIA cards, like the GTX 900 series, just stopped getting updates *last month*. Meanwhile, someone who bought a top-tier AMD RDNA2 card in 2023 is now looking at the end of the line for game-specific optimizations. That stings. People bought these cards, especially the ones with lots of VRAM, with the expectation of “fine wine” longevity—the idea that they’d age well. Now that whole concept is being thrown back in their faces, with several saying “fine wine” was just a fancy term for having bad drivers at launch that needed fixing later.
The discussion really zeroes in on a few key pain points. First, there’s a massive sense of betrayal from budget-conscious gamers. A lot of people specifically bought RDNA2 cards during or after the pandemic price craziness because they offered incredible performance per dollar compared to NVIDIA at the time. The sentiment is, “I planned to use this $250 card for 5-6 years, and now you’re cutting support while it’s still perfectly capable?” They feel forced into an upgrade cycle they didn’t sign up for, especially when the next-gen budget options don’t offer a massive leap.
Second, there’s anger about specific products. The new ASUS ROG Ally X handheld console, which just launched, uses RDNA2. People are calling out the absurdity of a brand-new, $799 device using architecture that’s already being sunsetted for driver optimizations. Others mention specific laptops, like certain ASUS models with RX 6800S GPUs, that will lose support while much older NVIDIA laptops chug along. It makes AMD’s ecosystem feel fragmented and poorly planned.
Then there’s the broader strategic confusion. Many commenters see this as a classic “AMD shooting itself in the foot” moment. The RX 6000 series was arguably their most competitive and popular generation in years, often beating NVIDIA in raw value and VRAM. To alienate that entire user base seems like a baffling way to try and gain market share. The phrase “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” got a lot of upvotes, which kinda sums it up. People are saying this erodes trust completely—why invest in AMD’s ecosystem if this is how you treat customers? Several are stating flatly that their next card will be NVIDIA or even Intel, because at least the support timeline is predictable.
Of course, there’s a bit of pushback in the thread. A few point out that the cards will still get critical security updates and bug fixes, just not day-one game optimizations. They argue that for older architectures, driver-level tweaks become less crucial over time. But even that is met with counter-examples of recent games that ran terribly without specific “game ready” driver updates. And the overarching feeling is that this move signals AMD doesn’t care about the gaming/consumer GPU market as much anymore, especially with all the talk about their big AI deals with OpenAI. The CEO, Lisa Su, gets mentioned directly, with the accusation that she’s following the money for shareholders, not gamers.
So yeah, the summary is a community that feels burned. They championed AMD as the value champion, often defending it against the “gimmicks” of ray tracing and AI features, only to feel abandoned first on the feature front and now on the basic support front. There’s a palpable sense that this might be a tipping point for a significant chunk of loyal users. The trust is broken, and the jokes about “Radeon being stupid exhibit #1523” are layered over a genuine and widespread disappointment.
