The end of an era is nigh: Nvidia has announced it will end driver support for its GTX 10, 9, and 7-series graphics cards come October. Although the plug’s being pulled on driver updates for these series, RTX owners can breathe a sigh of relief, with support extended until 2026 on Windows 10—essentially giving them a temporary pardon before Microsoft’s own support wraps up.
Here’s the Lowdown
This announcement marks the end for some beloved Nvidia graphics cards that have powered gaming for years. From October, these cards, built on the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures, will stop receiving game-ready driver updates. But all is not lost; Nvidia aims to provide quarterly security updates for these GPUs until October 2028, ensuring no glaring vulnerabilities are left unchecked. This effectively grants GTX owners a decade-long ride on the gaming highway, which is not bad at all.
Nvidia justifies this support timeline by underlining it goes above and beyond industry standards. Typically, many hardware companies reserve major updates for newer models. The final game-ready drivers will be locked and loaded in once October lands, allowing just security shoring up thereafter.
For gamers still holding onto GTX 10-series cards with the cold, dead grip of nostalgia, it’s worth mentioning the GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 aren’t turning grey just yet. They are Turing-based and aren’t included in this scheduled obsolescence.
Windows 10 Extension
While the lights are going out on these driver updates, Nvidia isn’t leaving RTX users in the dark. Windows 10 game-ready drivers for RTX cards continue their lifecycle until October 2026. Notably longer than its OS counterpart’s life, which officially ends its days on October 14, 2025. So, those committed to their RTX cards or stuck with beloved Windows 10 have a bit more wiggle room.
Finally, Volta architecture users might find this news anticlimactic since it concerns enterprise-level GPUs that weren’t exactly the darlings of gamers anyway. The real goodbye here is for Maxwell’s GTX 7 and 9-series, and Pascal’s GTX 10-series.
This move might seem like a sting to some but offers a predictable roadmap for gamers planning their next hardware pivot. Nvidia’s keeping expectations aligned and ensuring its GPU army isn’t lagging in security. With competitors like AMD also curtailing old-gen support, this shift underscores the rapid march of tech progression.
