Nvidia Set to Discontinue Driver Support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs with 580 Series Drivers

Nvidia is set to discontinue driver support for its Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPU architectures with the release of driver branch 580. This update, outlined in Nvidia's official Unix graphics feature deprecation schedule, marks the end of the road for popular consumer graphics cards, including the GeForce GTX 900 and GTX 1000 series. While the schedule is for Unix, it is likely that this change will also affect Windows drivers, given Nvidia's use of a unified driver codebase. The deprecation notice states, “The release 580 series will be the last to support GPUs based on the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures.” Although it is expected this will apply to Windows as well, we have contacted Nvidia for clarification, and they were not immediately available for comment. This transition signifies a significant shift for longtime Nvidia users. When driver branch 590 is released, the GTX lineage, which has been a hallmark of consumer graphics for years, will be largely discontinued. The Turing architecture, found in RTX 20 series cards, will be the next to face the chopping block. However, some GTX 16 series cards, which are also based on Turing, will continue to receive support, likely into the 590 series and beyond. Notable models like the GTX 1660 Super, popular among budget-conscious buyers, will still benefit from driver updates. Nvidia’s decision to phase out older architectures is not unprecedented. In 2021, the company announced that driver branch 470 would be the final one to support Kepler-based graphics cards, such as the GeForce GTX 600 and GTX 700 series. Post-470, Nvidia continued to release security patches, though not major updates. As of now, the latest GeForce driver version is 576.80 WHQL, indicating that the 580 series drivers have not yet been released. This timeline gives users of the affected GPUs a window to prepare for the changes ahead. To stay informed about the latest developments in Nvidia’s driver support and product lineups, follow Tom's Hardware on Google News and ensure you click the "Follow" button to keep the updates flowing in your feed.