As Windows 8 has now been officially released I was hoping to get some drivers for my HD4850. From the amd website I could gather that there are only legacy drivers available. Well, these have several problems under Windows 8 and I can't use the newer drivers. The drivers I got via Windows update are basically useless for anything other than Office. No hardware acceleration in photoshop, no OpenGL in Cinema 4D.

Can I expect somehing new on this soon? If not this surely was my last ati card I bought. And it woldn't be just for being left out with the drivers after only about 3 years. Nvidia would at least have Cuda as well....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5775/amd-hd-2000-hd-3000-hd-4000-gpus-being-moved-to-legacy-status-in-may

Intel I7 960 @ 3.87ghz *Intel DX58SO *HIS HD6970 2gb *Corsair TX650M *2x4gb Corsair XMS3 *WD Black 1TB *Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit *Gateway HD2401 24" 2ms 1920x1200  ***Asus N71Jq laptop *Intel I7 720QM Processor *Mobility Radeon HD5730 1gb *8gb Ram *Windows 7 64bit  ***Acer 5750 laptop

* A clear conscience is usually a sign of bad memory *

I posted this over at the Adobe Photoshop forums, and I'll repost here.  This worked for me, solving Photoshop and OpenGL issues with my Radeon HD 4980 it seems.  Didn't realize this was a problem with all OpenGL!  Minecraft wouldn't even start with the default driver. 

Specifically, I followed these steps: 

Downloaded drivers from: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/legacy/Pages/legacy-rade onaiw-vista64.aspx

Unpacked files (run it or extract with 7-zip) but cancelled Catalyst install process after unpacking.

Went to device manager (control panel -> device manager or winkey+x -> device manager)

Right clicked my card under Display Adapters -> 'Update Driver Software...'

Click 'Browse My Computer For Driver Software', then 'Let me pick from a list of devices on my computer', then 'Have Disk', then 'Browse' and find the directory where the drivers are in the package you just extracted.

Example: 'C:\AMD\Support\12-6-legacy_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc_whql\Packages\Driver s\Display\W76A_INF'

Example: 'C:\AMD\Support\12-4_mobility_vista_win7_64_dd_ccc\Packages\Drivers\D isplay\W76A_INF'

Here I had two inf files and I wasn't sure if I needed the one that began C7 or CH.  I guessed C7.

Clicked next, drivers installed, screen flickered - Photoshop and Minecraft both working fine.

For those of you on Mobility devices, there's some specific steps here:

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1086017-ati-radeons-and-windows-8- the-fix/#entry15523571

LockerGnome echos these steps for both mobility and desktop cards, giving them some credit:

http://www.lockergnome.com/windows/2012/09/29/make-your-old-graphics-d rivers-work-in-windows-8/

But I was not at all able to find the LH6A_INF folder he mentions, just W76A_INF

I'm also not going to try the "bcdedit" commands he recommends until I see reason to, like if the driver reverts after reboot or Windows Update or something.  Nor have I seen any graphical issues in Metro yet.

Again - Photoshop GPU functions and other OpenGL applications like Minecraft seem to be working fine.

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This workaround just solved my OpenGL problems I had

under Windows8 with my Radeon HD 4290. Thanks.

This workaround fixes OpenGL support, but breaks video streaming in metro apps. Even playing local video files is broken.