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Linux, an operating system known for supporting older hardware, continues to maintain support for two-decade-old ATI Radeon GPUs. Recently, Phoronix discovered an update for the ‘ancient’ ATI Radeon R300 GPUs, contributed by independent open-source developers. With the Mesa 25.3 version, these GPUs will receive memory-related OpenGL extensions that provide detailed information about GPU memory usage, including ensuring efficient memory utilization.
The interesting aspect is that these features focus on monitoring VRAM sizes of around 64 MB, a figure considered special due to its significance compared to modern standards. The new extensions, GL_ATI_meminfo and GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info, are designed to check memory utilization and were developed by Brais Solla.
Previously, support for ATI Radeon GPUs on Windows ended in 2009, highlighting Linux’s durability when it comes to hardware compatibility. Despite the outdated nature of R300 GPUs, work continues on the Radeon DRM driver to ensure seamless operation on this platform. It remains intriguing which users are still utilizing such hardware in today’s modern computing landscape.
