If you own a PC with an older Radeon graphics card inside, you won"t be getting a monthly driver update anymore. Hardware Canucks reports that, according to a statement from AMD, three older versions of the Radeon family of graphics cards will now be getting maintenance-style quarterly driver updates.
The graphics cards that are affected by this move are members of the the AMD Radeon HD 2000, AMD Radeon HD 3000, and AMD Radeon HD 4000 series. The quarterly driver updates for these card will begin in May. AMD says that from that time period, the drivers for those cards will "focus on resolving application specific issues and critical updates."
AMD says the reason for the decision was they felt the older Radeon cards " ... have been optimized to their maximum potential from a performance and feature perspective." Those cards also won"t be getting much in the way of Windows 8 support. AMD confirms, " ... the In-the-box AMD Graphics driver that ships with Windows 8 will include support for the AMD Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 Series, and it will support the WDDM 1.1 driver level features."
The graphics cards that belong to the Radeon HD 5000 family, along with the cards that are newer than the 5000 series, will continue to receive monthly Catalyst driver updates as previously announced. Those cards will also be getting more Windows 8 driver support. AMD states, "The AMD Catalyst driver for Windows 8 will only include support for WDDM 1.2 support products."