Nvidia Ends Support For Kepler GPUs, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 On August 31

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The end is near

GeForce GTX Titan Z
GeForce GTX Titan Z (Image credit: Nvidia)

The time has finally come. Nvidia announced earlier today that it would stop supporting its Kepler-based graphics cards on older Windows operating systems with its next GeForce R470 driver. You won't find Kepler on the list of best graphics cards, but plenty of gamers still own one. As a result of the change, they'll no longer have access to new day-zero drivers.

The GeForce R470 driver, scheduled for August 31, is the last driver to support Kepler graphics cards that debuted back in 2012. Owners of Kepler graphics cards will continue to receive critical security updates until September 2024. However, they will lose out on Game Ready driver upgrades, including performance uplifts, new features and/or bug fixes.

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Joseph_138
    This news couldn't have come at a worse time, with the cost of upgrading to a newer generation being as high as it is. It's only going to add to the demand for whatever cards are currently available and drive prices even higher. Also bad is that Maxwell is now on the bubble, so it makes no sense to upgrade from a Kepler to a Maxwell, if it is going to be next to be dropped from support, and who knows how many more driver releases it is going to have. It could have 2 or 3 more years of driver updates, or 2 or 3 more months. It would suck to spend big money for a 980Ti now, only to lose driver support a few months later.
    Reply
  • littlechipsbigchips
    Joseph_138 said:
    This news couldn't have come at a worse time, with the cost of upgrading to a newer generation being as high as it is. It's only going to add to the demand for whatever cards are currently available and drive prices even higher. Also bad is that Maxwell is now on the bubble, so it makes no sense to upgrade from a Kepler to a Maxwell, if it is going to be next to be dropped from support, and who knows how many more driver releases it is going to have. It could have 2 or 3 more years of driver updates, or 2 or 3 more months. It would suck to spend big money for a 980Ti now, only to lose driver support a few months later.

    There is no point in buying such old cards ... IMO if you want to use such cards get a PS5 or XBOX and game on them until the GPU cards prices come down.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    littlechipsbigchips said:
    There is no point in buying such old cards ... IMO if you want to use such cards get a PS5 or XBOX and game on them until the GPU cards prices come down.
    People do things other than "game" with a PC.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    Joseph_138 said:
    This news couldn't have come at a worse time, with the cost of upgrading to a newer generation being as high as it is. It's only going to add to the demand for whatever cards are currently available and drive prices even higher. Also bad is that Maxwell is now on the bubble, so it makes no sense to upgrade from a Kepler to a Maxwell, if it is going to be next to be dropped from support, and who knows how many more driver releases it is going to have. It could have 2 or 3 more years of driver updates, or 2 or 3 more months. It would suck to spend big money for a 980Ti now, only to lose driver support a few months later.
    The Kepler architecture is 9 years old. That's an eternity in this industry. At some point, it is time to move on, and Kepler is past that point. Due to RAM limitations alone, the only card still potentially usable for current generation AAA games at only 1080p is the original Titan. Maxwell is on the clock now, and even though it is 3 years newer, that still makes it 6 years old. If you're paying a "fortune" to buy a Maxwell card today, that's on you., and just a bad use of money.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    USAFRet said:
    People do things other than "game" with a PC.
    Sure, but that's the only reason someone would care about this announcement. What company is using Kepler gaming cards on a Windows 8 box for production purposes?
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    spongiemaster said:
    Sure, but that's the only reason someone would care about this announcement. What company is using Kepler gaming cards on a Windows 8 box for production purposes?
    Doesn't have to be at the corporate level.

    Plenty of people do photo/video/CAD, on a personal level. Which can benefit from a GPU.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    USAFRet said:
    Doesn't have to be at the corporate level.

    Plenty of people do photo/video/CAD, on a personal level. Which can benefit from a GPU.
    When was the last time you think a driver update had any meaningful impact on Kepler's photo editing performance/stability? This announcement is meaningless.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    spongiemaster said:
    When was the last time you think a driver update had any meaningful impact on Kepler's photo editing performance/stability? This announcement is meaningless.
    Oh, I agree.
    My initial response here was just to refute the "xbox/playstation" thing.
    Reply
  • Joseph_138
    littlechipsbigchips said:
    There is no point in buying such old cards ... IMO if you want to use such cards get a PS5 or XBOX and game on them until the GPU cards prices come down.

    There is if you're using something even older. Check out the hardware forums. There are still a lot of people using cards from this generation, and some older than that. Someone using a GeForce 400 or 500 card would consider a 600 or 700 card an upgrade. Not everyone can afford the newest hardware as soon as it comes out.
    Reply
  • foxrox
    The only response to this news that I can provide at this time:

    Bastards.
    Reply