What goes around, comes around (old product support)

[orion24]

Supporting older products costs some money to the company, but if they think that by not doing so they don't loose customers, they have to think again.

This is my story:

In Q4 2006, I friend of mine wanted suggestions for a new PC. I suggested, video card wise, the X1950XT 256 MB, liking its price/performance ratio at the time. He was happy with it until now.

Now, he is buying a new PC again and wants the same. Meantime he sent me his old PC in order to refresh it with a format/reinstallation of OS and of new games as well. I did that and noticed:

- Lastest official driver for the X1950XT 256MB (all OS) is the 10.2 dated 24 Feb 2010 and NOT WHQL!

Whatever, I said, as long as it works fine, it doesn't matter. I went on installing the games and here we go: TIMESHIFT & NEED FOR SPEED HOT PURSUIT NOT WORKING. Timeshift works in 32-bit XP, but not in 64-bit. Need for Speed does not work even in 32-bit. NVIDIA cards of that time (7900-7950GT) are still having driver support and the last one is dated at October 2010 and is WHQL. And the games are working.

Uppon hearing this he is now unhappy with ATI and for his new PC, he said the video card will be one from NVIDIA.

[Sasquach]

Cool Story Bro

[erek]

Originally Posted by Sasquach

Cool Story Bro

you're just jealous

[Sobek]

I know it doesn't address the... uh... issue? But I'm positive that somewhere there would be later driver versions with modded INF's to support x1900 series cards.

I checked DNA drivers but they don't do that, so I'm not sure who to look to for that.

[koralis]

Originally Posted by orion24

Now, he is buying a new PC again and wants the same. Meantime he sent me his old PC in order to refresh it with a format/reinstallation of OS and of new games as well. I did that and noticed:

- Lastest official driver for the X1950XT 256MB (all OS) is the 10.2 dated 24 Feb 2010 and NOT WHQL!

Whatever, I said, as long as it works fine, it doesn't matter. I went on installing the games and here we go: TIMESHIFT & NEED FOR SPEED HOT PURSUIT NOT WORKING.

Who tries to run new games on ancient hardware? Have him spend $100 on a video card instead of the games. (or is he pirating them?)

An older driver may support Timeshift better. Newer doesn't always mean better. Driver re-writing can cause things to break that worked at one point.

Timeshift works in 32-bit XP, but not in 64-bit. Need for Speed does not work even in 32-bit. NVIDIA cards of that time (7900-7950GT) are still having driver support and the last one is dated at October 2010 and is WHQL. And the games are working.

Uppon hearing this he is now unhappy with ATI and for his new PC, he said the video card will be one from NVIDIA.

xp 64 should never even have existed.

Have him go with nvidia then. Whatever. I'd rather that AMD spend their time getting new games to work on hardware that was put out less than 3 years ago.

This is different from Creative, where they suddenly stopped selling hardware in order to pimp a new model of hardware and just arbitrarily said they weren't going to support the hardware that they were selling a month ago.

[void4ever]

You know threads like this pull me both ways. I'm a HUGE supporter of backwards compatibility (within reason). But I'm also personally someone that makes sure to have at least the last gens card if not current gen.

You and your friend need to look at it this way.

If he had saved just $10.00 a month, which is $2.50 a week, which is
0.32 cents a day give or take. (you can save a child.... wait no wrong commercial!!)

He could have bought a 5670 or a 4850 for under a hundred bucks. Both of which would run circles, were talking HUGE CIRCLES around a x1950.

Now lets look at this closer, since his last build was back in 2006 and he's doing a new machine, if he were to stick to the 10 bucks a month not counting whatever he's saving for a new MB and CPU and what not, he's got around 360 bucks to play with. Now your looking at a 6970 or maybe a 5870 both of which could easily last him another 3 years.

Seriously people i know money is tight these days, but if you simply didn't eat at some fast food place once a week, or didn't buy those cookies or the gallon of ice cream at the store on your grocery run you'd be set. It's not like you have to switch to Top Roman for a month or two just to afford a new card.

Void4ever

[Falkentyne]

I stopped using my X1950 XTX in late 2008, which was when I bought my 4870. At the time, too many games were starting to run too slow on 1950. 4890 is still good to this day, as long as you aren't running high res/settings.
I'd be surprised if he could even get half playable framerates on an X1950 XTX.

I tried running one of the recent need for speeds (forgot which) or was it a Spy Hunter game? on an X850 on my pentium 4, and boy was that torture.

If he still has an X1950, he REALLY needs to upgrade. He can grab something that will run those games, without the infamous x1950 bugs, for not much more than the price of a full cost game. If he's buying games, he should have enough money to upgrade...

If he's pirating games, well too bad.
And yeah, a 512 mb 4850 is very cheap now. You may even be able to get a 1 gb one for cheap.

X1950 XTX is over 4 years old now. You can't expect it to run the newest stuff. And about backwards compatiblity, the X1950 XTX is the last card that supported full backwards dx6/7/8 compatibility (w buffer, etc). Both ATI and Nvidia stopped support for pre dx8 stuff a long time ago (Most DX8 stuff still works).

[cromwell]

Upgrade fever! Catch it!