Hardware Unboxed experts fear that limiting support for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 will affect not only Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 video cards, but also portable devices, including the recently released ROG Xbox Ally.
The recent release of the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.10.2 driver has raised concerns among video card owners. It showed signs that chips with RDNA 1 (Radeon RX 5000) and RDNA 2 (Radeon RX 6000) architectures have been put into maintenance mode.
Later, PC Games Hardware contacted AMD for clarification, and the company confirmed that game optimizations and feature updates will no longer be released for these generations, and support will be limited to fixing critical errors and vulnerabilities.
However, as Hardware Unboxed experts note, it is not only desktop video card owners who should be worried. This AMD decision may also negatively affect portable gaming systems using RDNA 2. Among them is the recently released ROG Xbox Ally, based on the Ryzen Z2A chip, as well as other devices with Ryzen APUs on the same architecture.
In turn, Hassam Nasir from Tom’s Hardware notes that, unlike desktop GPUs, the performance of mobile platforms is more dependent on driver optimization, so the termination of regular updates may affect the operation of new games.
«We are talking about a brand new $600 device — or rather, an “Xbox” — that may be left without support a month after its release. For a platform claiming a console experience, this could be one of the biggest failures in history.»
It is separately emphasized that Valve's Steam Deck will suffer less, since it uses open RADV drivers under Linux, which the company optimizes independently.
It is worth noting that the flagship ROG Ally X model will not be affected, as it is based on the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip with RDNA 3.5 architecture. However, in addition to Steam Deck, there are many devices with RDNA 2 graphics on the market — including models from ASUS, Lenovo, MSI and other manufacturers.
