On August 31, 2021, Nvidia will discontinue driver support for its GeForce GTX 600/700 series GPUs. Built on the Kepler architecture, first introduced in 2012 these GPUs have received constant support across operating systems.
But with newer GPUs, support for older chips tends to happen. The same reality happened with the Fermi architecture, which is known for the GTX 400/500 series.
The Kepler GPUs were succeeded by award-winning GPU architectures like Maxwell, Pascal, Turing, and the recently released Ampere. The newer architectures have both better performance and efficiency over the years, hence, Nvidia would want to promote its newer GPUs.
Starting October 2021, Nvidia will begin releasing drivers for Maxwell, Pascal, Turing, and Ampere series. Despite the end of driver support, desktops powered by Kepler GPUs will continue to receive critical security updates until September 2024. Besides Kepler GPUs, Nvidia will also end the support for older Windows: Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.
The reason why Nvidia is doing this is due to the dramatic evolution of gaming technologies, including DirectX 12, RTX series, and DLSS.
For older Windows versions, Nvidia has taken the decision as Microsoft itself has officially discontinued support for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Also, most gamers are now moving to Windows 10 as it is now considered the standard OS for gaming. To ensure that gamers receive the best support, security, and features, Nvidia will only focus on Windows 10.
The final Game Ready driver for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 will be released on October 4, 2021.
Here is the complete list of Nvidia GPUs that will be affected by the upcoming change:
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Black
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (192-bit)
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Ti OEM
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 740
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 730
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 720
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 710
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 640
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 635
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 630
