Despite being several years old, NVIDIA is still releasing GPU driver updates for older Microsoft operating systems including Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. However, this will no longer be the case once October 2021 rolls in, as announced by the company via a newly published support page on its website.
“Effective October 2021, Game Ready Driver upgrades, including performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes, will be exclusively available for systems utilizing Windows 10 as their operating system,” NVIDIA wrote. “Critical security updates will be available on systems utilizing Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 through September 2024.”
The move isn’t entirely unexpected as even Microsoft had already ceased mainstream support for the aforementioned systems a long while back, and have ever since been focusing on the current Windows 10 platform. Furthermore, it is believed that the company is gearing up to officially unveil its latest operating system, tentatively referred to as “Windows 11”, during an upcoming online event scheduled for 24 June 2021.
In a separate support page published around the same time, NVIDIA also confirmed that it will end support for its Kepler-based GeForce graphic cards including the GTX 600 and 700 series, as well as the GTX Titan series. Similar to the older Windows platforms mentioned above, driver updates for these GPUs will no longer be rolled out by October this year as well.
Seeing that current games and applications are only compatible with the current generation Windows systems, NVIDIA’s (and even Microsoft’s) decision to cease support for the older platforms shouldn’t be an issue to most users. That is, provided that they have already upgraded to the popular Windows 10 system, which will soon hit its six-year-old mark late next month.
(Source: NVIDIA [1] [2] | Header image: Windows 8)
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