AMD just patched a nine-year-old GPU to fix Apex Legends crashes
If you're still running an RX 580 or Vega 64 and Apex Legends has been crashing on you, AMD just shipped a fix. The company released Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 26.5.2 — a standalone patch aimed exclusively at Polaris and Vega GPUs. That covers the RX 400 and 500 series, Vega 56/64, Radeon VII, and mobile variants of the same generations. The sole headline fix: game crashes in Apex Legends on RX 400 and RX 500 cards.
A separate driver, by design
This update won't appear in the standard Adrenalin channel that RX 6000 and 7000 owners use. AMD moved Polaris (launched 2016) and Vega (2017) to a legacy maintenance branch in late 2023. Under that split-driver model, the code paths for older and newer architectures are kept separate — meaning AMD can push a targeted stability patch without risking regressions on modern RDNA hardware, per Tom's Hardware.
What that also means: no new features, no frame-generation support, no performance uplifts. Polaris and Vega are on critical-fixes-only mode now. If a brand-new AAA title simply refuses to run on your Vega 64 due to missing instruction support, a future driver probably won't help.
Covered hardware
The full list of supported GPUs in 26.5.2:
- Radeon RX 400 series (including the RX 480) - Radeon RX 500 and 500X series (RX 580 with 8 GB VRAM remains common in budget builds) - Radeon RX Vega 56 and Vega 64 - Radeon VII — AMD's first 7 nm consumer GPU - Radeon Pro Duo - Mobile GPUs of the same generations
Still hanging on
The RX 580 launched in April 2017, making it nine years old as of 2026. It's still a fixture in budget gaming rigs in the US and UK, where used-market prices have held steady and the card remains capable at 1080p in esports titles like Apex Legends, Valorant, and CS2. That enduring install base is almost certainly why AMD keeps shipping occasional patches rather than cutting support entirely.
The comparison with Nvidia is fair: Maxwell and Pascal architectures received more than a decade of driver support. Polaris is at nine years and counting — though at this point it's stability patches only, not feature development.
For anyone on the affected hardware, the update is available now through AMD's support site or directly via the Adrenalin software.
