AMD and Intel Kaby Lake-G collaboration falls apart with end of driver support
AMD will no longer offer driver updates
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WhenIntel Kaby Lake-G processorswere unveiled in 2018, many of us were surprised – pleasantly so – due to its unique collaboration withAMD, which provided the graphics power forIntel’s CPU. However, that rare teaming up of the old rivals seems to have finally fallen apart with AMD apparently ending driver support for Kaby Lake-G processors.
Intel itself discontinued the processorsback in October 2019, leaving AMD to continue to issue drivers for the integrated graphics while it focused on its newer products – including its upcomingIntel Xe discrete GPUs.
Driver support for Kaby Lake-G processors has been pretty patchy in the past – with the chips going a full 12 months without a single update – even though Intel promised five years of driver support.
Ceding updates to AMD brought hope to Kaby Lake-G owners, as they began getting updates through AMD’s Adrenalin 2020 package, which brought security fixes and performance improvements.
However, it now seems that will come to an end.
No more updates
While there hasn’t been an official statement from AMD (or Intel), users with Kaby Lake-G processors have found they couldn’t install the latest WDDM 2.7 driver (20.5.1) and WHQL (20.4.2) drivers.
What’s particularly galling for Kaby Lake-G owners is that it appears they are once again being locked out of the latest drivers, and this seems to includeAMD’s latest enhanced driversthat the company released for the newWindows 10 May 2020 Update.
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Our colleaguesover at Tom’s Hardwaretried to install the new drivers on theirHades Canyon NUCmini PC, and encountered an error message saying the hardware was not supported.
We’ve contacted AMD to find out more about this, but for the moment it seems like support for Kaby Lake-G is now at an end – and so it is that rare collaboration between Intel and AMD.
Matt is TechRadar’s Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there’s no aspect of technology that Matt isn’t passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. He’s personally reviewed and used most of the laptops in our best laptops guide - and since joining TechRadar in 2014, he’s reviewed over 250 laptops and computing accessories personally.
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