The 25.10.2 Adrenalin release notes also removed Windows 10 from the “compatible operating systems” list, listing only Windows 11 21H2 and later. But AMD confirmed to Windows Latest that the driver packages will still support Windows 10 for the foreseeable future. The company said the operating system is not listed in the release notes because Microsoft has technically ended support for Windows 10, but home users running Windows 10 on their PC can get an extra year of security patches relatively easily. Microsoft will continue to provide support for the operating system in businesses, schools, and other large organizations until at least 2028.
Why all this fuss?
It would look bad if AMD dropped or reduced support for the Radeon 5000 and 6000 series GPUs, given that Nvidia continues to support the GeForce RTX 20 and 30 series graphics cards released in the same time window from 2019 to 2022. But the end of support could have been even worse for gaming handhelds and low-end PCs with integrated graphics.
The RDNA 2 architecture, in particular, has enjoyed a long and continued life as an integrated GPU, including for systems explicitly marketed and sold as gaming PCs. And since many low-end chips from AMD and Intel are just rebranded versions of older silicon, AMD continues to release “new” products with RDNA 2 GPUs. The RDNA 2 architecture is what Valve has been using in the Steam Deck since 2022, for example, but the ROG Xbox Ally series just launched by Microsoft and Asus also includes an RDNA 2 GPU in the entry-level model.
The last time AMD officially reduced GPU driver support was in 2023, when it moved drivers for its Polaris and Vega GPU architectures into a separate package that would only receive occasional “critical updates.” At the time, AMD had released its latest dedicated Vega-based GPU four years prior, and many low-end desktop and laptop CPUs still shipped with integrated Vega-based GPUs.
For the Steam Deck and other SteamOS and Linux systems, at least, it seems like things don’t really change, no matter what happens with Windows drivers. Phoronix points out that the Linux driver package for AMD GPUs has always been maintained separately from Windows drivers, and that GPU architectures considerably older than RDNA 1 continue to receive official support and occasional enhancements.
