GTX Retired – Nvidia confirms plan to drop Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPU support

Nvidia plans to drop support for its pre-RTX/pre-Turing graphics cards with its R500 series drivers

Nvidia has confirmed that it intends to drop support for its pre-Turing/pre-RTX graphics cards with future driver branches. Nvidia’s R580 (Release 580) driver branch will be the last to support Nvidia’s Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta-based graphics cards. This announcement was first spotted by Videocardz.

Once Nvidia moves into its next driver branch, support for Nvidia’s GTX 700 series (Maxwell), GTX 900 series (Maxwell), GTX 10 series (Pascal), and Titan V (Volta) GPUs will end. In other words, Nvidia is dropping support for almost all of its non-RTX graphics cards, with the only exceptions being Nvidia’s Turing-based GTX 16XX series GPUs.

This move from Nvidia confirms that support for popular graphics cards, such as Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti and GTX 1060, is coming to an end. Note that Nvidia’s GTX 1060 is currently Steam’s 12th most popular graphics card. Nvidia dropping driver support for these GPUs will force many gamers to upgrade.

• Support for Maxwell-, Pascal-, and Volta-based GPUs
  The release 580 series will be the last to support GPUs based on the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures.
  – Nvidia

It is worth noting that Nvidia first launched its GTX 10 series Pascal GPUs in 2016. Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti is now over eight years old, and Nvidia’s GTX 1060 is almost nine years old. These GPUs are now legacy products, and Nvidia shouldn’t be expected to support its Pascal GPUs forever. Regardless, it is sad to see Nvidia’s older GPUs lose driver support.

You can join the discussion on Nvidia’s plan to drop support for its pre-RTX graphics cards on the OC3D Forums.