Nvidia Dropping Driver Support for Older Graphics Cards

[iam2thecrowe]

And so was the tale of the 8800.

i still have my 8800gts, and it can still play slightly older games, fallout3/nv etc at 1080p smoothly.

 

[tntom]

The thing is many of these cards are still on store shelves both physical and online and make up the majority of the cards they are selling to customers. Hopefully when the 2 years are up they will have been replaced and not re-branded.

 

[racecar56]

I was at a staples and they still sell that 8600 for around $160.

Wow...and to think I got an 8600 GT for about $30 in 2009.

 

[TUF Enforcer]

Whoever doesn't have at least a GTX 500 series card needs to keep up! A GTX750Ti has approximatly the same performance as a GTX480, but with much more features, and costs a whole lot lesss now days. I'm surprised Nvidia kept up the driver support for so long.

 

[bryonhowley]

This is a very good thing and should have happened much sooner than it did really. It is time to clear the old cards out and only concentrated there efforts on the GPU's that really need updates and would benefit from them. Personally they should have dropped everything but the GTX 6xx and GTX 7xx cards. They also need to drop support for OS's lower than Windows 8/8.1 and OS X 10.9.0.

 

[mcgee101]

Farewell my 9600 I will burn you in effigy.

 

[TUF Enforcer]

This is a very good thing and should have happened much sooner than it did really. It is time to clear the old cards out and only concentrated there efforts on the GPU's that really need updates and would benefit from them. Personally they should have dropped everything but the GTX 6xx and GTX 7xx cards. They also need to drop support for OS's lower than Windows 8/8.1 and OS X 10.9.0.

yeah, agree, its the new cards that need the most driver attention. But lots of people like myself still use windows 7, and still prefer that over windows 8 or 8.1. Also, games still have full support for windows 7, which are somewhat related.

 

[racecar56]

This is a very good thing and should have happened much sooner than it did really. It is time to clear the old cards out and only concentrated there efforts on the GPU's that really need updates and would benefit from them. Personally they should have dropped everything but the GTX 6xx and GTX 7xx cards. They also need to drop support for OS's lower than Windows 8/8.1 and OS X 10.9.0.

yeah, agree, its the new cards that need the most driver attention. But lots of people like myself still use windows 7, and still prefer that over windows 8 or 8.1. Also, games still have full support for windows 7, which are somewhat related.

I concur. Windows 7 support should continue, at least for now. This would not really affect me at this time, as, presently, my only Nvidia GPUs are sorely-outdated ones in spare PCs, but I still would agree that it would not be very fair of them to leave Windows 7 users in the dust so soon, due to how Windows 7 is more-or-less living alongside of 8 right now due to the controversy. I do understand that it's not like the Windows 7 users cannot continue to use their cards with the older drivers, but I think it'd make much more sense to drop support for Vista and below instead, if I understand correctly that they have not done so yet.

 

[LordHaHa]

Huh. I was wondering when they'd do this. About 10 years of supported life, that's pretty incredible for *any* kind of computer hardware, let alone gaming related products.

 

[yogalD]

I have a GTX 260, and I don't care, because new drivers don't benefit me at all anyway. I don't understand why people are so obsessed with always having the latest drivers, because unless they have a configuration that is listed in the update notes as seeing improvements with a new driver, there is almost no point. It's just like BIOS updates, if it ain't broke don't fix it. (Also, don't tell me to upgrade, there aren't any new games I'm interested, thanks)

 

[rolandzhang3]

These cards have had a very good run, they still perform quite admirably today

There isn't a big difference in performance in newer drivers for these cards anyway so no big loss really (even if there were driver problems with some versions there are still a plethora of older drivers to get the job done)

 

[spartanmk2]

My good 'ol GTX 7800 is still alive and well, even though it has seen greener pastures in its day, it does its job of keeping my girlfriend happy playing Candy Crush.

 

[68vistacruiser]

And so was the tale of the 8800.

i still have my 8800gts, and it can still play slightly older games, fallout3/nv etc at 1080p smoothly.

I would still be using mine, but it died and XFX's lifetime warranty was dependent on my registration which somehow got misplaced on their server. I now use a 9800gt, but I should point out these are in my work computer and not my gaming computer. Having a newer driver for it isn't important anymore.

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

It would be nice if they actually fixed the issues with the 5 series cards. I have had a 550 Ti that I couldn't update past 314.22 without BSOD or random crashing and my 560 Ti in a different rig does exactly the same. So does my friend's 550 Ti (which again is in an entirely different PC to mine spec wise).

 

[Peter_88]

This really puts me off upgrading to one or two of their more expensive cards at Home,as we only need such high end performance for gaming and HD media.At work we don't require flashing PC's with streaming and 120 fps to look at a spreadsheet and we do use a few basic nvidia cards there.Forcing consumers to upgrade to more expensive hardware may say more about the current state of demand for such high end products and the non human automation of nvidia support as a whole I find is becoming far too common in many companies that have enjoyed and taken repeat continued custom for granted year on year without ever once offering a human representation to discuss our future options - unless,of course we are buying.

 

[Peter_88]

This really puts me off upgrading to one or two of their more expensive cards at Home,as we only need such high end performance for gaming and HD media.At work we don't require flashing PC's with streaming and 120 fps to look at a spreadsheet and we do use a few basic nvidia cards there.Forcing consumers to upgrade to more expensive hardware may say more about the current state of demand for such high end products and the non human automation of nvidia support as a whole I find is becoming far too common in many companies that have enjoyed and taken repeat continued custom for granted year on year without ever once offering a human representation to discuss our future options - unless,of course we are buying.

 

[Ragtatter]

Considering I just recently decided to replace my two SLI GeForce 8000 GTX cards, I would say I got my money's worth out of them. Seven years hasn't been a bad run, and they've held up fairly well.

 

[cklaubur]

Come on people, you knew this had to happen sometime. These are mostly 5-6 year old cards affected by this. Honestly, I'm surprised I was still able to get newer drivers for the Quadro NVS140M in my laptop.@Peter_88: The cards themselves will work just fine, there just won't be any newer versions of the drivers available. Nobody is being forced to upgrade anything.Casey

 

[cfcgreg]

NVidia is famous ending driver support for their graphics cards. I had an $8000.00 Alienware laptop that I wanted to upgrade to windows 7. It was then that I found out that NVidia stopped supporting the drivers. Myself and a lot of others lost the use of perfectly good computers because NVidia wanted all of us to buy new graphics cards. I wish AMD would build faster cards and I would stop buying Nvidia in a heartbeat. Com'on AMD, start building faster cards than Nvidia and you will reap a windfall of unhappy in NVidia users who are tired of being jerked around by these greedy jerks.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

NVidia is famous ending driver support for their graphics cards. I had an $8000.00 Alienware laptop that I wanted to upgrade to windows 7. It was then that I found out that NVidia stopped supporting the drivers. Myself and a lot of others lost the use of perfectly good computers because NVidia wanted all of us to buy new graphics cards. I wish AMD would build faster cards and I would stop buying Nvidia in a heartbeat. Com'on AMD, start building faster cards than Nvidia and you will reap a windfall of unhappy in NVidia users who are tired of being jerked around by these greedy jerks.

I'm sorry but there is just so much misleading and inaccurate information in your post I had to reply.

1) Nvidia canceling driver support for cards that are 5+ years old isn't exclusive to them. AMD has often done the same and continues to do so.

2) If you bought an $8000 Alienware laptop with a GPU that was no longer supported, then it likely had a very old GPU and as such was also a very old laptop. If it was old enough that the GPU no longer had a Windows 7-compatible driver available, it was clearly well over the 5 year mark. (Also $8000 for a laptop is a huge waste of money) Windows 7 was released in July, 2009, meaning if your laptop was so outdated that there wasn't a driver available, then your laptop was built sometime between 2003 and 2005, roughly, making the GPU the least of your concerns.

3) You don't "lose use of [your] computer" due to a driver that's no longer provided. Windows 7 will support drivers for older operating systems in a number of ways. If your GPU was *that* old, then it's time to upgrade anyway. (which you could do like 3 or 4 times for the price you paid for that laptop)

4) AMD makes plenty of cards that can match up to Nvidia cards, for roughly the same price (usually less) - note that this is coming from a guy with SLI'd GTX770s.

5) Alienware is made by Dell. They didn't used to be, AFAIK, but either way, it's up to the OEM to provide drivers for their laptops and support them even after the GPU manufacturer doesn't. I can find Alienware driver support for Win7 on the Dell site dating back to at least 2010 for even the most low-end GPUs and prior to 2009 on the original Alienware site.

 

[Mousemonkey]

NVidia is famous ending driver support for their graphics cards. I had an $8000.00 Alienware laptop that I wanted to upgrade to windows 7. It was then that I found out that NVidia stopped supporting the drivers. Myself and a lot of others lost the use of perfectly good computers because NVidia wanted all of us to buy new graphics cards. I wish AMD would build faster cards and I would stop buying Nvidia in a heartbeat. Com'on AMD, start building faster cards than Nvidia and you will reap a windfall of unhappy in NVidia users who are tired of being jerked around by these greedy jerks.

I'm sorry but there is just so much misleading and inaccurate information in your post I had to reply.

1) Nvidia canceling driver support for cards that are 5+ years old isn't exclusive to them. AMD has often done the same and continues to do so.

2) If you bought an $8000 Alienware laptop with a GPU that was no longer supported, then it likely had a very old GPU and as such was also a very old laptop. If it was old enough that the GPU no longer had a Windows 7-compatible driver available, it was clearly well over the 5 year mark. (Also $8000 for a laptop is a huge waste of money) Windows 7 was released in July, 2009, meaning if your laptop was so outdated that there wasn't a driver available, then your laptop was built sometime between 2003 and 2005, roughly, making the GPU the least of your concerns.

3) You don't "lose use of [your] computer" due to a driver that's no longer provided. Windows 7 will support drivers for older operating systems in a number of ways. If your GPU was *that* old, then it's time to upgrade anyway. (which you could do like 3 or 4 times for the price you paid for that laptop)

4) AMD makes plenty of cards that can match up to Nvidia cards, for roughly the same price (usually less) - note that this is coming from a guy with SLI'd GTX770s.

5) Alienware is made by Dell. They didn't used to be, AFAIK, but either way, it's up to the OEM to provide drivers for their laptops and support them even after the GPU manufacturer doesn't. I can find Alienware driver support for Win7 on the Dell site dating back to at least 2010 for even the most low-end GPUs and prior to 2009 on the original Alienware site.

With a post count of 5 cfcgreg comes across as an AMD shill or just someone who doesn't know diddly squat!

 

[Tiny Tee]

This really puts me off upgrading to one or two of their more expensive cards at Home,as we only need such high end performance for gaming and HD media.At work we don't require flashing PC's with streaming and 120 fps to look at a spreadsheet and we do use a few basic nvidia cards there.Forcing consumers to upgrade to more expensive hardware may say more about the current state of demand for such high end products and the non human automation of nvidia support as a whole I find is becoming far too common in many companies that have enjoyed and taken repeat continued custom for granted year on year without ever once offering a human representation to discuss our future options - unless,of course we are buying.

Your cards will still work and if you don't need that much from them in terms of performance I doubt you ever need to update the drivers anymore. You've had several years use out of those cards so be grateful for it. Sure, they need to support some older tech but that should only go so far and they have a duty to cater to more current customers.

 

[cfcgreg]

Just to let you smart guys know, monkey and Chris, I bought my unit in 2008. If you add 5 years to that date I should enjoy driver support until 2013...not so. When Dell bought Alienware the next year, they did not support the drivers of the older units. In fact, the Dell website does NOT support the older version. As far as the comments go, here is my reply:
1. 2013 would be the 5th year of driver support, so your comment is not valid.
2. The only driver available was Vista driver (after 2009) so your statement is untrue. Also, I used the computer to do CAD work and teach so I needed it portable, thank you very much.
3. OK, just try to use a computer without updated drivers. I guess you don't know that new driver support comes out practically every month for most computer CPUs and GPUs.
4. OH, who is the "shill" for AMD???
5. Dell did not own Alienware when I bought mine, they were getting their buts kicked by Alienware and decided to buy the company when they could not compete. FACT. Also, your comment about finding driver support back to 2010 on Dell's site under minds your statement about "5 year driver support"

Conclusion, you are misleading and you are inaccurate, not us who bought an expensive laptop and ended up with an expensive boat anchor. Never, buy an expensive computer in the hopes of avoiding upgrades. You will find out that that reasoning is pure folly with the state of computer development today.

 

[cfcgreg]

This really puts me off upgrading to one or two of their more expensive cards at Home,as we only need such high end performance for gaming and HD media.At work we don't require flashing PC's with streaming and 120 fps to look at a spreadsheet and we do use a few basic nvidia cards there.Forcing consumers to upgrade to more expensive hardware may say more about the current state of demand for such high end products and the non human automation of nvidia support as a whole I find is becoming far too common in many companies that have enjoyed and taken repeat continued custom for granted year on year without ever once offering a human representation to discuss our future options - unless,of course we are buying.

Your cards will still work and if you don't need that much from them in terms of performance I doubt you ever need to update the drivers anymore. You've had several years use out of those cards so be grateful for it. Sure, they need to support some older tech but that should only go so far and they have a duty to cater to more current customers.

 

[cfcgreg]

Oh, and monkey, just for the record...my current system

ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
Intel i5-3570K CPU 3.4 GHz (OC to 4.2 GHz)
16 Gigs of 1800+ Ram
NVidia GeForce GTX 770 4 Gigs VRAM times 2 in SLI
Windows 7 Ultimate 64
So much for the "AMD shill" comment. BTW, I built it myself and have been building my own desktops since 1992.