AMD Updates Catalyst Program to Focus More on Newer GPUs

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[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]Oh, come on AMD... My 4890 is still very serviceable and plays anything I throw at it... The whole HD4000 line still rocks =/Just drop it for the 2k and 3k 8(Cheers![/citation]
They're not dropping support. Just don't expect them to bother trying to squeeze any more performance out of it, and you're not on a rapid release schedule anymore. No biggie. When you need more performance, that will be the time to upgrade - no need to rush because of this "news".

 

[blazorthon]

"That's no different than saying that the 6770 has enough "umph" for most games at reasonable settings. You can only get reasonable settings in some games withthese cards if you use a resolution that is lower than 1080p."

Do you realize how many people game on 19" - 22" Monitors? A Bunch. In fact, I would wager that Gamers cruising in 1080p are still the minority. I dropped a spare 4870 in my son's computer to improve the visuals he was getting in the Old Republic on his 22", and he was very pleased.

I game on a 24" at 1080p and I like my "old" 6850 just fine. The hardware is still ahead of the software for the average gamer.

Whether or not there are a lot of people gaming on monitors that are between 19" and 22" (there are many of 19 to 22" 1080p monitors, so countering my argument with this screen size is a fail in of itself) has absolutely no effect on what I said. Saying that the 4870 has enough umph is like saying that the 6770 has enough umph. I did not say that neither one is good enough to satisfy gamers, only that the two are comparable. You are saying that a mid-ranged card has enough umph and I simply stated where the card sits in the performance hierarchy.

My second sentence is also correct. My whole point is that these are not high end cards and aren't even close to being high end cards, so there is no good reason in people pretending that they are. Judging by everyone's reactions to my comments, I'm starting to think that you've all assumed that I'm some elitest high end gamer. Well, I'm not. I'm hardly even a gamer at all and I don't have high end gaming hardware at all. I am keeping up with the technology in knowing what all of it does and I'm just saying that even if these cards are enough to please you and some others, they are not even close to the high end cards that we have today. A GTX 680 is about four times faster than a 4870 and a 7970 is not far behind that.

The hardware is NOT ahead of the software, not in the least. Any modern DX11 game can not be run at even close to it's maximum quality on any mid-ranged graphics setup. Even games such as World of Warcraft can't be run even close to their maximum on these cards. Going beyond, we only recently have graphics setups (quad 7970 6GBs) that can manage some of the most high end display configurations such as triple 1080p 3D and triple 2560x1600. Granted, these obviously aren't representative of the majority of display configurations, but that the software can do this tells us that it is not behind the hardware. The hardware is and probably always will be behind the software.