AMD's brand new Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APUs for laptops featuring the RDNA 3 iGPU are yet to receive official graphics driver support.
AMD's Phoenix Laptops Haven't Received Official RDNA 3 GPU Drivers Since Their Launch Almost A Month Back
The AMD Phoenix APU lineup known as the Ryzen 7040 laptop processors was introduced this year at CES. The lineup was originally meant to launch in March but got delayed to April and only started shipping globally by the end of May with some laptop manufacturers yet to introduce their laptops.
Now, we are almost a month in since the availability of the first Ryzen 7040 APU-powered laptops but AMD has yet to offer official driver support for the new RDNA 3 iGPU which is a bit of a concern considering that some early users have already found issues with the laptops including one where the GPU would enter sleep mode and won't recover until the laptop is restarted.
But having no official driver support even after months of delays leaves a bad mark for customer support. Looking at AMD's official support page, the "Ryzen Processors with Radeon Graphics" tab only covers Ryzen 7045 "Dragon Range" and the older Rembrandt, Cezanne & the entry-level APU lineup codenamed Mendocino. These chips are based on the older RDNA 2 and Vega GPUs so them getting driver support this fast shouldn't be a surprise. Meanwhile, AMD's brand new RDNA 3 GPUs for laptops don't have this kind of support.
Additionally, the only laptops available at the moment feature the Ryzen 7040HS series and only the top SKUs. The rest of the SKUs and the Ryzen 7040U series are yet to be made available.
AMD has multiple Phoenix solutions out with Mini PCs featuring the same RDNA 3 GPUs available since mid of May and those too haven't received any official driver support yet. The whole driver scenario with RDNA 3 has been wonky with AMD leaving out RDNA 2 users for several months to focus on RDNA 3 GPUs on the desktop front and now laptops/Mini PCs with RDNA 3 GPUs being left out in the dark. We hope that laptop users do get some support in the coming weeks.
Despite all of that, the AMD Phoenix APUs do deliver some great integrated graphics performance on all platforms including handheld consoles which has been demonstrated by the likes of ASUS's ROG Ally console. A proper and optimized driver will only carry this performance further up.
News Source: ITHome
