Nvidia to discontinue support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 and 1000 series are often regarded as some of the finest generations of contemporary graphics cards. Despite being nearly a decade old (launched in 2016) and lacking support for newer technologies, many users continue to utilize their GTX 1080s, 1060s, and various other GPUs for PC gaming. Unfortunately, Nvidia has delivered some unfortunate news: the driver support for these graphics cards is coming to an end.

Nvidia has revised its official schedule for deprecating Unix graphics features to specify that driver 580 will be the final version to support three architectures: Volta, Pascal, and Maxwell. Since this driver branch is shared with Windows, the change will impact Windows PCs as well.

For those who are not familiar with Nvidia's architecture designations, TITAN V graphics cards are built on Volta, the GeForce GTX 10 Series is built on Pascal, and the GeForce GTX 900 along with select 700 series cards like the 750 Ti are based on Maxwell. It’s important to note that this change does not impact the GTX 16 series, which is constructed on the Turing architecture. These graphics cards will continue to receive new drivers, updates, and patches.

Currently, there is no indication of when Nvidia intends to launch driver branch 580 (with 576.80 being the latest). Therefore, if you own one of the affected graphics cards, there’s no reason to be alarmed just yet. Moreover, your cherished GTX 1080 Ti will not cease functioning suddenly simply because it can no longer access the latest driver. Additionally, Nvidia's latest driver releases mainly concentrate on fixes and optimizations for far newer graphics card generations. Regardless, it is disheartening to witness Nvidia’s older GPUs losing driver support.

With Nvidia officially discontinuing driver support for older GPUs, it’s evident that the future is leaning towards next-gen performance and AI-powered functionalities. If you’re ready to move on from legacy hardware and embrace the latest advancements, the RTX 5090 is the upgrade that paves the path—offering unmatched power, DLSS 4, and capabilities for 4K+ gaming. As always, for the latest news on hardware launches and industry developments, be sure to follow our dedicated hardware coverage.