Can NimeZ drivers revive old Radeon GPUs? | AMD GCN 1, 2 & 3 tested

[@IcebergTech]

UPDATE! As of now, AMD have issued a new legacy driver for this and other GCN 1, 2 and 3-based GPUs. This doesn't appear to be a U-turn by AMD, as the cards are all still considered "legacy" products, but it is still a welcome update- especially for those uncertain about installing third-party drivers drivers.amd.com/drivers/radeon-software-adrenalin-2020-22.6.1-win10-win11-64bit-legacyasics-june23-2022-legacy.exe

[@IcebergTech]

I'll have a quick look when I have time

[@phillgizmo8934]

bye bye link

[@shadowracer1259]

It's amazing about how many people are willing to sacrifice so much of their time to help the tech community(such as linux and all other open source community). While AMD screw over all GCN owners during a gpu crisis. Great vid:)

[@sulphurous2656]

Every GPU deserves to have it's full use potential realized until something breaks. Otherwise, you get tons of perfectly usable cards that prematurely wind up as costly e-waste.

[@JoeFay_Tech]

@@sulphurous2656 tell that to miners they produce thousands of dead or tired GPUs every damn year

[@liammhodonohue]

@@sulphurous2656 planned obsolescence 🤷‍♂️ I had a scanner and printer abandoned by canon/HP by Win 7 driver support. With each generation of technology, improvements are marginal. Like iPhone OS salad emojis. Most of this stuff could continue to serve us well for a few more years. Sadly that's bad for business /s I'm curious about the dead GPU on eBay. I don't know enough to begin attempting to fix. A mixture of fake cards (firmware altered to report a better GPU, botched attempts to change bios or overclocked and undercooled. I understand the hate miners are getting - I've heard from many sources miners just don't need the same performance as gamers. With any luck the eth merge should push some GPU into the secondary market.

[@DFX4509B]

AMDGPU actually supports legacy GCN through a compatibility toggle as far as Linux is concerned. That said, Polaris and newer would be optimal as it's not only fully supported by AMDGPU without an environment toggle, but it also supports AMDVLK instead of just legacy vulkan-radeon, and it even supports ROCm for OpenCL where lesser GCN cards than the R9 280 are held back by the proprietary legacy OpenCL implementation, at least per the amdgpu-install manual for RHEL and clones, Ubuntu, or SUSE distros.

[@shinefake48]

talking about modded drivers, this year, we see lots of modded GPUs like mobile 30 series chips being turned into desktop gpus (perhaps for the purpose of mining) and then being sold on websites like aliexpress. Where they are not supported by nvidia and requires Frankenstein drivers that are made from 3rd party tweaked official drivers. Are these two technically the same, cuz both are 3rd parties tweaking the official drivers to make them compatible with gpus that cant install them thru normal procedures.

[@gordon3002]

Nimez drivers saved my R7 360 on Halo Infinite I went from barely 30fps to almost 60 (although the frametimes are pretty bad so I’m still upgrading to a 1050ti).

[@RidinSpinners36]

what settings and CPU? my son struggles barely over 30 with a Ryzen 2200g and r9 290

[@gordon3002]

@@RidinSpinners36 Lowest settings and minimum framerate set on 60 (it enables dynamic resolution allowing the game to adjust resolution to hit the desired framerate).

[@gordon3002]

@@RidinSpinners36 For the CPU I’m using an old i7 3770 but your Ryzen 3 2200g will do just fine (it’s much newer than my CPU, it may even be better).

[@aboveaveragebayleaf9216]

@@gordon3002 not quite holding 60 might be because of cpu

[@WarriorWolfLRB]

I honestly recommend giving the new Nimez drivers a go. They've made a ton of improvements recently.

[@evklinken]

Great editing, great choice of background music, informative, well-written. I dunno what your YT ambitions are, but what you produce should get you a bigger audience if the algorithm gods are with you.

[@marghtellam7440]

Its good to know that I could squeeze a little more life out of my R7 260X under Windows. Though this card had been shifted over to light Linux gaming for me, whose drivers are part of the kernel itself. I may try and pit these OS's against each other

[@utfigyii5987]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 why does dxvk or d3dvk not count when the performance is similar, or sometimes better?

[@thedandyp]

I think the modded drivers should fall firmly into the 'I already have a GCN 1/2/3 card, and I'd like to see if I can extend its life' category, but I wouldn't think anyone would (or should) be basing anything other than ultra budget builds off these cards at this point. If I'd bought a 390, Fury or Nano back in 2015/16, it would take quite the deal to get me back onboard team red.

[@DFX4509B]

The modded drivers' Polaris/Vega/RDNA implementation is also good for at least a theoretical uplift over stock AMD drivers as well, although that implementation is experimental so install at your own risk.

[@2528drevas]

I have a R9 390 8GB card gathering dust. I was going to put it in a lower end Ryzen 3200G build, but ended up just dropping a GTX 950 2GB in it instead. Drivers and features were the primary reason even though I favor AMD.

[@RidinSpinners36]

what??? use that 390! my son's 290 4gb paired with a Ryzen 2200g goes blow for blow with a gtx 1060 6gb

[@machaoverlord5925]

nice informative benchmarks once again but I noticed the 1% were improved on some titles with the modded driver. so I think even if there's some impact on average frame rates atleast the 1% are better than the legacy.

[@fernank017]

I went from 16-20 fps on low 1080p with Halo Infinite, to 40 fps with these drivers

[@MemestiffGaming]

Definitely looking foward to installing these drivers onto my R9 380, mostly cuz my friend really wants me to play Halo Infinite was him

[@jonasGancedo]

Great vid mate ! Always a pleasure to look at them, even if they're 7 months old or even the ones at the beggining of your channel ! I'll maybe get a R9 270X for 55 bucks so I might try them if needed.

[@adelpozoman]

Amazing video and testing! I'm having the same problem on Fortnite on a 7950, the FPS are getting worse as time goes...

[@grahamjohnston5964]

This is the 1st of your videos I’ve watched, I subbed after 13 seconds. Anyone that opens with Q and a quote from TNG immediately gets my attention.

[@raresmacovei8382]

5:16 Incorect statement about Halo Infinite. The game does a driver check, that's why you're seeing the error. The game itself only requires DX12 Feature Level 11_1, which GCN1 DOES have. So using NimeZ drivers WOULD'VE helped. It would've actually allowed GCN1 to run Infinite.

[@plonk420]

man, i remember getting an R9 290 about a year or two after it came out for $215. and then sold it for like ~$180 the last bitcoin bubble 🤣 then i survived on an HD7790 for a while until i got a GTX1060 3GB towards the end of the last bubble for FFXV's launch

[@raresmacovei8382]

Luckily 7790 was the first GCN2 card with DX12_0 support.

[@RaphaelSwinkels]

running Nimez Drivers on a 5700XT it is not that old of a card yet, but i don't like to update GPU driver each and every time when i boot up COD ;p with the anernime nimez drivers, you don't have to update each and every time amd forced you to update to game,again ;p just game, i love those guys/girls @Nimez india Love that you give them the praise they deserve. i would even go so far to want to give them something for problem free gaming. aint that rich, but want to spread the word as well. good video! thnks! I run It long term btw and only once a online game had technologie that my nimez driver could'nt handle, so switched to a server driver for stability (temporary), just waited for a update on the nimez driver and everything was fixed again.. True.. you should be a bit experienced user for nimez drivers to get them working, but i found that it gets easier while they get better at their gui since i'm using them in the last 1,5 / 2 years

[@alexThunderrr]

If you're interested in running older Radeons, the Linux mesa drivers still support the Radeons back to at least R400 aka x700 - x850 from 2004. Earlier drivers are legacy/deprecated. Fortnite won't run on Linux, but the rest of the games should be fine.

[@hatersbby]

i bought an r9 290x last month and i installed the 22.1 driver recently. the biggest differences i saw were oc and power limits were different. ive never had crashes in assetto corsa comp. in 1100 core 1500 memory but with nimez i had to turn the speeds a bit down to around 1070 mhz core. also when i turned the power limit and voltage down alongside with clocks to consume less power idle it just crashed and my oc settings were at windows startup so i had to turn on in safe mode :D on the other hand it also let me run acc in higher settings without costing me much because i wasnt hitting the vram limit in hotlap mode which i connect to hypermemory feature. i dont think it would cause issues with anti-cheat systems as in dxdiag it says its whql signed but its up to you if you want to use it or not :)

[@RidinSpinners36]

nimez drivers makes Radeon drivers recognize my son's 290 as a 290x. still a great card!

[@goncalomoura9816]

Nice video, was waiting for it, the R9 280 was really bad value back in the day, GCN 1 scaled poorly with more CU's, I just tried the same settings and same driver on FH 5 on my OCed HD 7850 with an i5 4440, and I got a tiny bit better performance, with the AMD legacy drivers the game wouldn't even launch, and setting the car and particle details to High or Ultra fixes all the transparency and car logo issues, but obviously it is too much for this card, I just tried God of War, and even on 1080p with a mix of Original and low settings, it is perfectly playable and amazing to be able to do so on a 10 year old midrange card!

[@NAKADZI]

By the way, to fix black textures in FH 5, it will be enough to enable *TAA* in the graphics settings.

[@HEK-TIK]

the situation with halo is heartbreaking for me. R9 380 here. im positive that my card should be able to handle halo at least playable. but risking a false positive on an anti-cheat, plus the maybe coincidental but consistant lower fps means ALOT of other games that are just about playable, are not going to be anymore, like escape from tarkov or RED DEAD 2

[@livingthedream915]

The video I've been waiting for!

[@wilsonzea5616]

Hello and thank you so much for the videos yo do!! Consider me a subscriber from now on.

[@lensofachannel]

i have AMD radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 384bit... last update from the site still 2015.. i hope they can revive this old monster.. still love this graphic card...

[@williamfogiatto6187]

When I downloaded Halo Infinite on my computer (r9 380x) I didn't understand why the performance was so bad. A gpu that is stronger than an xbox one fat is not able to run this game. Now I understand, drivers.

[@Luredreier]

Hum, what about the R9 285? It's in between the 290X and Fury in architecture generation, although the performance at launch was between 280 and 280x.

[@andystech101]

Nice video bud cheers 👌🏼

[@Johnny76624]

Thanks. I will definitely use modded drivers when I get back to windows gaming. Please do a follow-up. Switched to Linux 1.5 years ago. I hate Spycro$oft.

[@StrixWar]

I have a r9 280 sitting on my shelf Pretty decent card for 10 years old

[@gspotlight]

Great video, keep it up!

[@TheGeekmierder]

This works for CS2? my friend has a R7 360, and the game always crash in the middle of the match

[@1NIGHTMAREGAMER]

uk what i think that extra 1 fps is prolly the glitches causing more fps cause not rendering properly

[@lulu5243]

I need help! I hav a r9 370x that will go blackscreen after the windows update for the default drivers. I tried formatting but after the windows update, my whole screen will go black

[@thomaswest2583]

How about modded drivers for Kelper they could really use them

[@IcebergTech]

Indeed! I spent a little time looking, but couldn't find any. If anyone knows of any, I'd be glad to test them out!

[@alexisjf286]

hi, what are the drivers for the R9 280x I would like to improve the performance of GOW a little but I am a bit confused with the links...

[@appsaucetech]

Late but the performance difference in fortnite is due to dx11 running better on pretty much any gpu.

[@februalist4686]

thank you so much!

[@Zach5558.]

my r9 280 doesnt even do close to 60fps in all low settings fortnite, how does everyone elses do better

[@NAKADZI]

5:25 A strange visual glitch with a black alpha channel in Forza Horizon 5 can be fixed by enabling *TAA* in the graphics settings. At least it works for me on a *R7 260X*

[@IcebergTech]

Thanks, I'm testing a 290X soon, I'll give it a shot!

[@IcebergTech]

Yep, just confirmed on the 290x too. Only has about a 5% impact on frames, too.

[@eyrtrtyjtyrjtryjrtyjtrjrt]

"holy f***ing s**tballs, YES!" LMAO

[@RobertWilliams-oy9qk]

Good Video Iceberg.

[@ninjafrogtemple5290]

Just installed because I’m having a problem with rust. Will say if it worked out for me :D

[@ninjafrogtemple5290]

It seems that the drivers don’t work with rust at all. I wiped my pc due to other issues and this but the same problem still occurs. Not sure if this is just a problem with mine

[@_RedsTech_]

Think this would work on the integrated HD 7640g graphics found in the a8-4500m apu?

[@IcebergTech]

I think you'd need to download the Terascale driver rather than GCN, but I don't see why not.

[@harryhimpson5663]

i need the nimez driver whare do i download im getting real low fps on halo

[@justden1093]

Great video! Thanks!🙂

[@billybatts8283]

Can't use them with Elden Ring due to the anti-cheat unfortunately... I have a r9 390x and had to uninstall and revert to the previous drivers to launch it.

[@adamsendler9669]

Who knows which AMD adrenaline driver is up to version 21.5.2 whql most stable and performance for amd a6 9225 radeon r4 graphic 🙏🤔???

[@rolandmoot4108]

R.i.p GCN.

[@Thelango99]

Polaris and Vega (GCN 4 and 5) is still officially supported.

[@benoittheminerandgamer]

So what about my 2 HD 5870 in CF ?

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

Will these driver work on an HD7850?

[@bardofhighrenown]

The Halo Infinite results seem too good as to not be suspicious. Almost as if the official driver or the game is purposefully made to run poorly on these cards.

[@IcebergTech]

Hmm, I dunno, you're delving into a bit of a rabbit hole here. I dare say given time and effort it would be possible to prove that theory, one way or another...

[@bardofhighrenown]

@@IcebergTech I can't remember another time where drivers doubled the framerate of a game. I think I remember a RandomGaminginHD video where he saw like a 20% or 20fps (I can't remember) improvement in a game, maybe Forza? But on the other hand there likely isn't a huge profit for AMD in making the cards obsolete in this one specific game. I wonder what exactly in the custom drivers is causing that performance bump. It would be interesting to find out.

[@IcebergTech]

I made a video a while back in which I saw a ~ 80% difference in Forza Horizon 4 going from June 2018 drivers (3 months pre game release) to the June 2021 drivers on an R9 270. I called the difference "freakish", as most of the other games tested saw much smaller differences in performance. I didn't look any more into it at the time, and I don't really know how I'd go about finding the answer now!

[@bardofhighrenown]

@@IcebergTech ​ @Iceberg Tech Whoops, I apologize. I think it was you. Sorry about that. It definitely is interesting how some games see massive performance increases from just a driver. I'd be curious if Forza 4 has any major changes with the Nimez driver since it didn't seem to massively impact the framerate of Forza 5. Idk maybe it's worth keeping track of these games as they crop up and try to find some kind of pattern.

[@elmariachi5133]

I can't agree- - the 'human race' is no good thing.

[@_bushy]

??? just edit the register - it takes less than 30 seconds - i'm playing battlefield 2042 with an R9 200 ......

[@abyssalczech6719]

is it not your gpu i got R9 290x never experienced the bugs in fh5 playing all ultra high textures at 60 fps droping to 49at 1% lows

[@IcebergTech]

If you mean the alpha transparency issue, I've recorded it in all three cards in this video as well as a FirePro W7100. I've also looked at other people's videos on the same generations of cards and seen it there, too- the telltale sign is the license plates, though cars like Hoonigans and any others with lots of decals show it too. I just watched zWORMz video on the RX 570 and saw it on the license plate there too, which I guess means even GCN4 suffers from it. Perhaps it's related to ultra textures? I didn't test that on any of the cards I have used so far, I mostly use the Low, Medium and High presets and I don't have the cards any more to test the theory. I have just ordered an RX 480 4GB so I'll be sure to test it for that video.

[@ninjafrogtemple5290]

I got a r9 fury coming in this week :D

[@白濫]

win7+RX470 can use it ?

[@metalkarim9]

Windows 11 support?

[@histrigaming7344]

Could you Benchmark Linux performance? The R9 cards have Vulkan Support and they get great mesa driver, so they might be Linux gaming cards for cheap

[@IcebergTech]

I wouldn't consider myself knowledgeable enough in Linux to be able to give other people advice!

[@histrigaming7344]

@@IcebergTech Well if you want to get into Linux gaming you might wanna look at pop os They have everything documented how to get Proton up and running Got it right the first time, but you need Vulkan for best performance the Mesa Driver are installed out of the Box

[@RidinSpinners36]

how much performance increase is 3100 over 2200g with 290?

[@IcebergTech]

I haven't started doing CPU comparisons yet, so I don't really know the answer to this one. It's got double the thread count, a 200MHz higher boost clock and 15% better IPC, but all that will only count in games that are notably CPU intensive or that don't play well on basic quad cores.

[@rithwickraikar252]

Does it support amd 3050u released in 2020

[@IcebergTech]

I'm afraid I don't know, you might have more luck checking this Guru3D thread: forums.guru3d.com/threads/3rd-party-driver-amernime-zone-radeon-insight-22-2-2-whql-driver-pack-validate-signature-22-3-1.436611/

[@Unemployedgamer69]

is it safe?

[@YippiekayoRom3o]

add the radeon rx 480 red devil

[@slaydog5102]

Ofc you don’t show the install process

[@Born_Stellar]

unless your playing Halo infinite then stick with legacy drivers. thanks.