Nvidia Continues to Support Legacy GPUs: 9 and 10-Series Graphics Cards Get Driver Updates Despite Phased-Out Developer Support

The End of an Era: Nvidia Phasing Out Support for Older GPUs

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, Nvidia’s latest CUDA Toolkit update marks the end of an era for Maxwell and Pascal architectures, with GeForce driver support for these GPUs to be deprecated in an upcoming update. While the exact timeline remains unknown, let’s take a look at what the future holds for these beloved cards and what keeps them relevant even in today’s tech landscape.

Why Should You Care?

The GPUs in question are the 9 and 10-series cards, which represented a price-performance golden age in the world of gaming. The GTX 970, 980 Ti, 1060, and 1080 Ti are still fondly remembered for their ability to support a gaming hobby, with some compromises, of course. In fact, the 1060 was still the most popular GPU according to the Steam Hardware Survey in March 2022, six years after its launch. The GTX 970 even made a cameo as the minimum spec GPU for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a triple-A RPG released 10 years after its launch.

A Look at the Timeline

Nvidia has not revealed when driver updates will cease for these cards, but we can draw inspiration from a previous generation. CUDA support for Kepler, which powered the GTX 7-series, started to be deprecated in CUDA v10.2 in November 2019. The final driver update for Kepler came two years later in August 2021, so it’s reasonable to expect a similar window of support for 9 and 10-series cards.

Is There Still Life in Old Hardware?

While AI-powered GPUs like the RTX 5090 are transforming the gaming landscape, there’s still plenty of mileage to be gotten out of old hardware. The GTX 980 Ti, for example, remains the most powerful consumer graphics card ever released with an analogue DVI port, making it a prize item for those with holy grail CRT monitors like the blisteringly high-refresh Iiyama Vision Master Pro 512. And who can forget the average CRT gaming enthusiast, well-served by a good adapter like those from StarTech?

So, while the end of an era is nigh, there’s still plenty of life left in the old girls. Hold on to them, and you’ll be gaming like it’s 2015 for years to come!