If you're one of the few thousand gamers still playing their favorite titles on a 32-bit version of Windows and you happen to have an AMD graphics card, it might finally be time to make the leap to a modern 64-bit operating system. AMD has announced plans to end its developmental support for 32-bit platforms, bringing a close to the final chapter of its transition to 64-bit, which AMD began in the early '00s with the release of the first 64-bit CPUs.
"AMD Radeon Software support for x32-bit Windows operating systems has been moved to a legacy support mode -- we are not planning to support x32-bit Windows operating systems in future driver releases," AMD said in its statement. "This change enables AMD to dedicate valuable engineering resources to developing new features and enhancements for graphics products based on the latest x64-bit Windows-based operating systems."
It did go on to say that the older drivers will continue to work and that gamers will still be able to use them moving forward, but that they will miss out on the performance and feature enhancements of new drivers released in the future.
Running a 32-bit operating system already limits what a PC is possible with its memory limited to just 4GB. Upgrading to 64-bit opens up a world of additional RAM possibilities and will offer performance enhancements to even some of the oldest platforms.
AMD is expected to make one more major driver release before the end of the year as it has done in the past few. It will likely bring a number of enhancements, bug fixes, and feature improvements to the table. Updates that 32-bit users will not be missing out on.