Can Custom Drivers Save Your Old Graphics Card?
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- Today we're seeing if modded / custom drivers can breathe some new life into an unsupported graphics card. When AMD discontinued driver support for GCN GPUs back in mid 2021, cards like the R9 380 entered legacy status.
But what if that wasn't the case?
Source:
forums.guru3d....
Thanks for watching :)
Just watched a ltt video on this and it's great that the community gets together and provides this for people to enjoy there cards for a bit longer.
Fuck ltt they ruined vanced
@@minchrono24lover27 What? Vanced still works fine?
Lol, same
@@fastgecko5799 I'm on it right now. It works as it used to - nothing has changed. I was surprised hearing these sad news about Vanced, but it didn't affect me at all so far.
@@AdaskoGejming Vanced will work for a few months or years but it will end. Support has ended
These are def interesting - what a dedicated community to make their own driver updates!
actually its been standard on linux for years mesa still updates the nano graphics stack for linux a card amd gave up on 2 years ago also there used to be reaver drivers for amd that were the same and impact drivers before that they have kind of always been around mileage may vary
If you think that's interesting let me tell you about gnu+Linux.
Lot of these "unofficial" drivers are created by Russian developers - expect more of that considering current sanctions climate.
Tonga and Fiji are 2 of AMDs Best Architectures (Tonga being exceptionally scalable) yet they both got dropped by AMD for little to no reason. Glad to see Modded Drivers working well on Tonga.
@UCx0J2i3r-1x1jTBg0wf3DDA By the same regard Fermi was almost in a similar place with an emphasis on compute, however Nvidia still supported it to a level it saw a DX12 Release. The R9 Fury was only 5/6 years old when AMD Dropped support. Sure it makes sense but it sure does hurt the consumer, only reason I’ve started to move away from the R9 Fury.
AMD Radeon R9 285X is just lovely
the r9 fury nano (which is just lovely) is still a 1440p Ultra card for almost any AAA game nowadays. but with the prices right now not a option, 3 yrs ago it was around 120-170 bucks which was a steal
people be like: for some totally unknown reasons, a company doesnt want to invest money into developing updates for a 20 year old gpu that 5 people have that doesnt get produced anymore
Got two copies of Tonga in the mxm form and have to say they are perhaps one of the most reliable cards I've seen in a long time plus unlike the countless desktop versions they don't run hot at all.
I used those new drivers on my sons R9 Fury-X. His FPS in halo infinite went from 24 FPS all the way up to above 60 FPS on high settings, except textures, they had to be set to low. Now I no longer feel I have to replace a card that I originally purchased in 2015. This community is truly making hardware last longer.
Thanks for a great video!
Does your R9 Fury X get detected as another card name by any chance?
That's brilliant !
@@SenorBipolar they often do
I have an R9 270 and an HD 7870
Both become R9 370Xs in GPU Z because all of them are basically the same GPU underneath (Pitcairn XT)
The great thing about the 200 and 300 series AMD gpus is that they overclock like a mfer. With the modded drivers and a strong OC the 380/380x still holds its own today.
or undervolt like mfers, sometimes its better ;)
@@Kanivalos80 As an ex 290x owner I concur
@@Kanivalos80 True! But mine definitely runs better with stock voltage and a hellacious OC. Fiddle around until you find what's right haha
@@SlightlyMiscalculated meanwhile im out here running max voltage on my rx480 and 1400mhz lmao, faster than an RX580
Is it worth it since it'll decrease the card's life span?
This totally reminds me of the AMAZING ATI Omega Drivers from back in the day. Wherever Omega is, I salute him and hope his family is doing well!
I think he was hired by AMD
Oh man.. Omega drivers were the only reason I was ever able to run Kotor and half life 2 back in the day.
Also they were great for soft-modding a 9800 SE back in the day.
Literally released just an hour after LTT made a video about custom drivers on an old video card, amazing timing.
I saw this in another video a few weeks ago but can't remember in what youtube channel
theres a rather surge in custom drivers, i can attest based on my own searches and the youtube algorithm, even on my rx 580 i am using a custom driver that squeeze a bit more performance
@@DualPerformance Budget Builds, another UA-camr from the UK...
@Marko Idžan Cheers 👍
My first thoughts
A few months back I bought my brother a used R9 Fury for his birthday - and was surprised to see AMD dropped support for a major flagship card that still outperforms entry level cards today. Thankfully, I saw this video, and custom drivers came to the rescue, and I couldn’t thank you enough for bringing this to my attention. I’ve been watching pretty much all your videos since and honestly didn’t even realize I wasn’t subscribed until now. Good show, my man
I remember that msi heatsink being so common on older MSI GPUs
The R9 290/380/390/Fury series of GPUs are still very capable and they do fully support DX12. I still find it sad that AMD turned their back on those GPUs, but at least custom drivers like these exist.
Indeed man… I changed my old Sapphire R9 380X 4GB for a Asus Strix 960 OC 4GB because of the driver support ending… now I feel a bit dumb as I had no idea about these customs drivers and the 380X was more capable (although the 960 4GB still holds up just as well to be honest).
they don't fully support it. Only 290 295x2 300 series do. 280 270 do not
@@ZantasuHD I know, that why I wrote 290
Agree those cards are still fairly capable and should have had driver support maintained for at least another 12-18 months.
OMG i have been looking for this for the past 5 months. Man did you ever save me, i have an r9 290x and i had problems with some games. Ty for making this one!
Discontinuing this generation seemed too early to me. Nvidia still keeps Maxwell alive, why couldn't AMD do the same with its cards? If they did so this year, might've felt a little different
Yeah the cards have got loads of life yet, was a shame to discontinue support
@@RandomGaminginHD I'd even go to the extreme to say that Kepler shouldn't have been killed off either. Up till 2018 680 and 1050 ti were for example on par performance wise, then 680 fell to a 1050 , whilst the hd 7970 got faster
It's because they sold way less compared to other generations, and are just a money waste on driver support from AMD point of view
@@somehow_not_helpfulATcrap If the cards are capable of providing playable performance (which they are) then they should keep receiving support. 7-8 years should be mandatory, they make billions off us, I certainly dont want to upgrade every 3 years. Kepler's 780 ti in raw benchmarks is on par with a 1060 , and yet it's dead officially, I cant tolerate such practices
@@patience__8051 i mean how much could it really cost for them in the grand scheme of things really though. A drop in the bucket they could do to support the fans who bought them. As I did.
Its interesting to see.
If in terms of hardware these gpus are still capable and all they need is updated drivers its unfortunate to see them lose support.
Funny timing LTT just did a video on this, but knowing your videos yours will be more relevant to us
LTT tends to be highter level only now
Its very Interesting, both you and Linus releasing similar content at the same time !!
Great effort you put in those video. I like your video style and voice over so much!
A thumbs up from me for the Nimez drivers too. I put together a kind of poor man's gaming PC for a friend of mine with an i7-3770, 16gb RAM and an R9 290 and it runs stuff for him astonishingly well for his basic 1080p screen :)
Looks like the GPU prices are finally creeping down a bit so maybe he can eventually upgrade for something more recent but its really amazing how such old parts can still run most stuff somewhat well.
Well I guess a 1080p 60hz screen is a pretty basic screen nowadays? 67% of Steam hardware survey users are using 1080p resolution. Doesn't that make it quite basic?
Good timing with the Linus video coming out just a few hours earlier. Hopefully people watch both!
ITT: Omg two content creators made the same style of video!!! SHOCKING
Thx for this Test.
Nice to know there is a chance to get newer games playable.
Your content is always so full of information. Thank you. 👍
Obligatory: beside custom Windows 10/11 drivers, driver support and performance for AMD GPUs under Linux is also amazing, so that's also an option.
Awesome, I really need to check Linux out properly
@@RandomGaminginHD AMD open source drivers are now excellent, and actually baked into the current Linux kernel versions, so you don't need to install any extra drivers to get them working. For something with cutting edge (but not unstable) software, try Fedora sometime, maybe with one of these old cards. See what sort of support/frame rates you can get out of them! Would love to see a video on that.
@Xaphan Vassago That isn't true at all. You'll see a massive increase in performance for anything using OpenGL for a start. That covers plenty of native Linux games and emulators. Not everything is run via DXVK/VKD3D, but even then there are titles which outright perform better via DXVK. Hell, I sometimes use DXVK on Windows because it has a transformative effect on garbage ports like GTA IV, making them run far better than they do natively via DirectX.
AMDs Linux support is why I chose AMD over Nvidia, my RX 5600 XT ran much better out of the my 1070 ever did, and being able to use FSR on any game was a nice touch
RADV all the way baby
I still remember the golden days of the Omega driver for ATi GPUs in the early to mid 2000s. You often could get some drastic performance boosts, compared to the official drivers.
The GCN based Radeon cards still offer some good gaming in many newer titles that normally wouldn’t be support by AMD software. It’s great to see the tech community stepping up to give these GPUs some much needed and deserved support! AMD imo, should have kept support till at least the end of this year considering the GPU issue that’s still occurring (although much improved) allowing budget gamers to get into the gaming arena. Awesome video once again RGinHD 🥰🥰👍🎉
My R9 390 8GB is still a great card, I was a little bitter about it becoming Legacy so soon.
I love you, man. This channel rocks.
They’re currently saving my r9 fury lol. Have to reinstall drivers every time I play a game with easy anti cheat though
Why?
@@andrijacpvb6647 because easy anti cheat doesnt like some of the files, causing it to flag a couple of the files as cheats.
A small price to pay for saving a bundle of guaparino tho
@@windows9556 There's a WHQL patch in the installer itself that should take care of EAC problems.
You shouldn't need to do that with the latest version at least. I've been playing Elden Ring just fine on my R9 285 with them and haven't had any complaints from EAC.
I have an MSI R9 280x 3gb model in my daily driver system, and it's a very capable little card even without modded drivers, so I daresay I'll be giving them a try soon!
I have an R9 270x 2gb model that is a champion overclocker (it's a Toxic branded card) so trying out these drivers could bring it back into relevancy despite only having 2gb of vram. I'll have to have a look into it!
Just downloaded NimeZ drivers for my 280x. Helped me out a lot with Elden Ring.
i just started using modded drivers for my r9 390 lol. its less of a headache if nothing else
I litterally just watch a LTT video about old GPU and modded driver a second ago
same!
wow you are so fast to look into it in minutes after LTT posted a video related to this
i love this thanks for the video , the community is always amazing!!
In my country, most of the sellers of these 8+ years old GPUs already do their research, so this custom driver become their reason to mark up the price.😑
In my country, there's almost no used market for PC components, and those who sell theirs, they sell them at the same (marked up) price as if they're new... 😑. So that's why I buy refurb from Aliexpress (but now they're also marked up A LOT)
GTX 750 Ti is going for 20k to 25k in my country. I fucking hate the sellers.
@@cerealkiller5599 if you can, try aliexpress it's not as cheap as us prices but better than prices we pay in our countries
@@ilyasovich The customs suck here. Sometimes you have to pay more than the price of the item to receive it and other times, the item just disappears into thin air.
Great vid as usual mate! Would love to see a modded driver that adds RSR support to AMD APUs 2200g thru 5700g. 🤞
@Xaphan Vassago How would you go about that?
these drivers are really useful, i have an s9170 with the w9100 bios (to get it displaying on windows), and the nimez drivers basically make this card run like an r9 390x with 32gb of vram.
you should try to download one of those applications that injects FSR support into games such as magpie, and see if that could pump a little more performance into this old r9 380.
I know I heard it is possible to force FSR support on older GCN Cards. This could be a real game changer.
I've tried it. My only gripe is that induces some input lag. It's just enough to be noticable. It might be due to my hardware (i5 7200u and Radeon 530)
@@abhimaanmayadam5713 Try using magpie and capturing using your Intel iGPU, I did that and got much less latency. Actually 50+ fps in Elden Ring at max graphics at 900p... which I thought was impossible on my rig, but nope... Just needed low grass and lod mod + Intel fsr and I'm good. Looks very clean and sharp. And it improved my fps from 15-35 to 35-59.
@@samuelswenson1505 That makes a lot of sense as my laptop doesnt have a mux chip.
respect to those developers for keeping old gpus alive
Yeah absolutely
Funny that Linus also releases a video on custom drivers for old graphics card on the same day similar timings too...
My HD 7870 also does pretty well with the nimez drivers. I can play Forza horizon 5 at about 40-60fps :D
Yeah a couple of weeks ago Budget Builds Officials did a video about the HD 7870 on custom drivers, Heck even Linus Tech Tips gave him a shout out in his recent video regarding old GPUs.
@@Russell970 i know i saw all of them. I was pretty surprised :)
i love your outdoors shots
That GPU on the thumbnail sure would look good in those colors if it was real
Love the recent stream of content :)
love that shout out to tech yes city, he's the man when it comes to turning potatoes into french fries
I really like the black and grey shroud in the thumbnail, wish they actually made that!
Those modded drivers save my r9 390 I bought 2 months ago for 120 dollars
Name dropped in a Linus video...You've got it made :D
IDK about old drivers (have a 380x I'll have to try them on when I install it on the grandkid's PC) but I can tell ya they work a LOT better than the latest drivers for the RX 580 8GB! With the latest AMD driver my FPS jumped all over the place and if I tried to use Relive? I would get a stuttering slideshow, it was so bad I was constantly having to roll back the drivers when WU would force an update.
But now? Solid as a rock on the modded drivers and Relive has frankly never worked better, a smooth as butter 60FPS with zero dips. Thanks modders keep up the great work!
so this one's strange, Linus Tech Tips and RGinHD released a video about custom drivers for 380 on the same day
I absolutely LOVE the design of the 2014-2015 MSI cards
Yeah this one looks great
i have seen a few videos on this now. the best benifits from these drivers that i can see is better support for older api's like direct x 9 and so on. also it alows you to enable SAM which is typically only a 5000-6000-7000 series feature and this does have an impact in cirtain games. i think if you do a follow up video testing older games which run on older api's then you will see better improvements.
This exact model was the first ever gpu I owned personally. It sadly failed on me while running Fallout 4 on a hot summer day. I was really bummed out since it was barely 2 years old. I didn't have the money to buy a replacement at the time, so I had to use the integrated graphics of my i5-4460 for over a year. Great memories lmao.
G'day Random,
While not making a huge difference in some 2021 games that was a HUGE uplift in Halo😲, While it is sad that AMD dropped Continued Support for HD & R7/9 Series it is understandable that with a team so much smaller than nVIDIA that they need to focus more on Current 6000 & Next Gen 7000 Drivers to keep Competitive or strive to perform better than nVIDIA & Intel when they land.
The biggest worry I have for Non-Manufacturer Drivers is "Can they be Trusted & Can I trust the Download Site not to Infect me?" so it is great to see Guru3D hosting these & with a detailed page for those interested, at a time when people are hanging on to older GPUs having help from those who Love Sharing their Knowledge for Good by continuing to create updated Drivers compatible with new Games released is Awesome🥰
I still have a pair (not in use) of Radeon 7870s
I believe they are basically the R9 270 and was interested in these drivers and bringing them back to life.
I used to crossfire them ages ago and in firestrike back then when they worked in CF they got the performance of a GTX 970.
Overclocked they even passed my stock 970 in FS.
your videos are all simply splendid
My old R7 360 has been revived thanks to NimeZ! Been enjoying forza horizon 5 for a over a week now. With the old 21.5.1 driver it was unplayable, and I had to deal with a lot of stutters and crashes in quite a few other games as well. Now pretty much everything runs with better performance than the og xbox one im able to get locked 30/60 fps without stutters.
Amazing that people do this, it gives some more life to the old beasts yet! I wonder if you could get similar with some now defunct Nvidia drivers, such as ones for the GTX 770?
If they open the source code then it’s possible but it’ll take way longer if it remains proprietary
@Xaphan Vassago it helps to have open sources drivers.
Also AMD drivers on windows aren't open source but the code is accessible. I think it's something about the AMD software wrapped with it that is not open source
Linus published a video on same topic on same day and almost same time.
Wow.
GPU manufactures should always release the source code of the BIOS and Driver when they drop support for their old hardware so the community can keep it alive.
Sadly they do not. The community has to waste a lot of time just trying to reverse engineer the code and some times its too hard, practically useless due to validation or encrypted.
This should also be applied in many other kinds of software and hardware. Especially ones that are not made for/needed for digital security.
Imagine how many old online only games could come back to live if devs released the source code.
guild wars 2 is dog crap on newer hardware if youre talking about stuff like that
@@patrickh92able what?
The source code could actually mean alot to newer drivers and therefore, may cause leaks.
@@frozenturbo8623 Leaks of old hardware/software's that are already dead due to the lack of support?
I don't see its a problem.
2:05 Finally, a Cyberpunk NPC who did not actively run towards a shotgun.
WTF LTT uploaded a video EXACTLY like this like some hours ago!!!!!
you and ltt made a video on the same subject at the same time, great minds think alike.
I just got done watching today's LTT video where he discussed community driver and UA-cam recommends me this too
would love an R9 Fury with Nimez drivers video!
Swear u have a ltt spy watching what productions you are making . Love the videos
nicely made video, indeed halo receives a huge boost in fps judging from all the comments which i have received over a few months, as for the rest of games it's about 1% improvement overall, nothing crazy :)
Nvidia needs to have its own NimeZ drivers. Kepler and Fermi cards can still handle modern games with newer API drivers.
couple weeks ago I also try the NimeZ Adrenalin 22.2.1 on my R9 290 Vapor-X (recognized as R9 290X) but had issue with the idle GPU usage being quite high (around 50%) so I decided to rollback into Adrenalin 21.5.2 WHQL for the sake of the temperature & power consumption
For any who may come along after this video was made, AMD improved drivers in general so there is more performance using different game API now, so for low end 1080p gaming the RX 580 is a capable GPU. Pricing is everything. I wouldn't pay over $150 for it and I wouldn't pay over $120 for the Chinese variant "Radeon RX 580 Graphic Cards, 2048SP"
AMD still can update 500 series GPUs but GPUs older than that are done I believe.
It's amazing that you just came across the topic Linus Tech Tips is working on today.
It’s interesting how manufacturers abandon their hardware support, especially with Windows.
Yes they can! I'm using some sort of custom driver utilites to make my RX 5500 XT working faster. And I'm fascinated about this!
I had this exact graphics card and it was good for something so cheap and old. It is fried now...
Ive used one of those drivers on guru3d for the radeon 6850 after they discontinued support and it ran so much better with higher fps than the latest driver amd had. Thankfully, I dont need to be running a 6850 anymore...
I just came from a Linus Tech Tips Video about old Gpu´s and modded Drivers and now this got recommended. :D
I haven't done much gaming in ages. On a whim, I just bought parts and built a computer. For the first time. I've upgraded parts before, but I've never bought every component and built a new PC.
So, I have a Ryzen 5 5600x processor. New mother board, new ram, M.2 storage and an SSD (and an HDD). The one new component it didn't buy was a GPU. Obvious reasons, crazy prices.
So, I have a Radeon r9 200 series card (unsure of anything more specific than that), with 4gb ddr5. Unsure speed, think 1400 mhz.
What I do know is that AMD dropped driver support.
I'm not a tech savvy person, but I'm not tech incapable, either. I mean, I manage enough that I bought parts that all work together and put it together myself, and it works, so I consider myself minimally competent, but there is a LOT of this stuff that flies over my head. What I do know, however, is that my card is 8-9 years old, and I'm not sure if the system is even better off with it at all or if I should be doing onboard graphics at this point.
So, appealing to other people here who know better than I do... is there a chance that these drivers will breathe more life into my old card? Or would slowly and ponderously working my way through installing the drivers and getting them working, be a waste of my time with negligible improvement?
Lol you and ltt coming out with bangers on the same topic :D.
This is only like $50 on ebay rn in nice shape. this is like, the perfect card for a mid tier budget build rn
Dropped an hour after Linus made his custom drivers video. Totally a coincidence but kinda funny!
Not only that can save the old GPUs but those modded drivers from Mimez are super 👌 i used it for my rx570x and its very stable and works flawlessly
will give this a go. My old trusty hd7670m laptop is still chugging to this day.
sadly, only Leshcat's driver works.
Breathing life back into old cards! Keeps from sending e-waste to the dump.
Wow, I just watched Linus' video and this dropped.
I bought a R9 280X a couple days ago for 50€, guess I´m selling my 770 for the same and got a smal but free upgrade. Also gotten lucky on other occasions, compelte i3 2100 system, MSI Z390 Gaming+ and HD 6970 for free, the HD was for give away due to pixel errors. Removed the fossilized thermal stone for some fresh paste (was never changed, had to pry the heatsink of), installed drivers and pixel errors using HDMI, swaped to DVI port and "tada, card is working fine". Unfortunetally the shroud is broken and doesn´t hold on it´s own, but a cable tie does fix that problem. If now I could just find a freakn 8th or 9th gen i5 for a decent price (to swap my quadcore i5)........life would be good.
That's funny, Linus literally just put out a video talking about this same exact thing lmao
Oh what a copycat 😂
These are beneficial to anything before Navi, you can get SAM on Polaris and Vega, and I'd guess RSR next update
Actually, NAVI are got benefit from 3rd party driver especially on Mobile, they can use RSR which blocked by APU. The Developer still tested on remote laptop R7 5800H + RX 5500M. Unfortunately, Polaris/Vega still can't use RSR for now.
@@KazukiKun96 good point
hey i'd really like to see some ''pro'' graphics cards tested on the channel, i think that'd be cool (like radeon pro wx5100 or 6100, or some of 2016-18 quadro cards)
i saw those t100,600 and 1000 videos and wx2100 and they were really interesting btw.
I have been running a 380x I got off of CEX for 80€ about 4 years ago as an upgrade for my 9800gt (yeah, I know). Has been running fine since. I've had a few crashes in GTA but then they magically fixed themselves. If I run into issues with the discontinued driver I'll definitely give the unofficial one a try.
Holy shit. 9800 GT... that's a name I haven't heard in a while! Once upon a time it seemed everyone had that card (except me, sadly)
@@HazewinDog It's kind of legendary. I don't remember it ever reaching framerates higher than 20 but it was still "playable" for me hahs
Yes, everything form a 280/290x and up (380 390 470 570 ) still a very good med/high 1080p card for 40 bucks (when the prices will be like 2019 again) and 80 bucks for a rx 580
oh and also try, when u get a 2-bios GPU, flashing a 390/390x / 380x bios onto your 380 for some extra fps. and undervolt + OC.
i still use my sapphire nitro r9 380 and after this will be looking into those drivers, last time i used 3rd party onec was mit my voodoo3 oh the times :)
I have a feeling Polaris and Navi are next on the chopping block since they didn't get RSR
I wonder if there's some custom drivers for older NVIDIA cards like my GTX 660, any extra performance would be welcome.
You should definitely revisit the r9 290/x it's still kicking ...
I had r9 380 just like you have .But I did sell it to get rx 570 :)
R9 380 was good card for me and my gameing .
Nice review @RandomGamingHD, on Polaris/Vega there is a beta to use the DXNavi kernal over Polaris. It gives back some of the DirectX9 Unreal Engine 3 optimizations which AMD deleted for Polaris & Vega in 17.7.2 which to this day they only reintroduced for Navi after we have been reporting its' loss on Polaris since 2017. Pretty bad business from AMD in my opinion. It boosted the FPS by 30-40FPS extra in minimum FPS scenarios.
i love this channel so much :D
Pre-liked the video cause it's always gonna be a banger
I had to use 3rd party drivers back in the mid 2000's (when they were still ATI). They (ATI/AMD) always were bad at giving you gimped final drivers to try to force you to upgrade. I had to install one when my ATI Radeon All in Wonder Card became defunct due to them no longer supporting a older OS., and the last official driver was dog "crud" to say the least..... In fact recently there was talk on the Dying light 2 forum about not being able to play it on a similar GPU (forgot if it was a 280 or 380) due to upgrades in the game not working well with the final drivers so I pointed the OP about 3rd Party drivers. In most cases this is the only way to keep your older GPUs running past their EOL.
Had 2 of these last less than 2 years each and they were the exact same model.
man, do i regret not buying a 4gb version of this card in 2015... 2gb is what's slowing it down way too much