GeForce 590 driver branch is the first without feature support for GTX 9- and 10-series GPUs — Linux release marks the end of the line for graphics cards that defined an era
Pour one out for the fallen.
The Nvidia GeForce cards released in the mid-2010s were a pretty hot commodity. Many here will likely have fond memories of the massively popular GTX 970, 1070, and 1080 GPUs. All good things must come to an end, however, and the recently released Nvidia 590-series Linux beta drivers have confirmed what we'd already figured would happen: feature support for 900-series and 10-series cards is officially finished.
Linux users have historically actually been luckier than mere Windows peons, as feature support on the penguin-infused operating system used to continue for longer. That's no longer the case since 2024, as Nvidia's release schedule for both OSes has been in lockstep, especially as they share a common development branch. Reportedly, Nvidia forum users installed the 590 beta release and confirmed the older cards' deprecation.
It should be noted that the newer drivers not supporting the vintage cards doesn't mean that support for them is ending completely—much the opposite, in fact. Last October, as per usual procedure, Nvidia announced that 900- and 10-series GPUs would be moving to the legacy support model, with their respective final drivers seeing security updates until October 2028.
That's conveniently longer than Windows 10's actual final EOL. The outgoing operating system still has one year of free security updates for users willing to sign in with a Microsoft account or, alternatively, pay a little cash.
It was a good run, though. The GTX 970 came out in 2014, while the bulk of the 10-series cards, including the mighty GTX 1080 Ti, came out between 2016 and 2017. That marks the better part of a decade of Nvidia Game Ready game enhancement features for those cards.
If, like me, you played a lot of games on the outgoing cards, pour one out. My former GTX 970 served me well during its day, and the 1080 Ti that replaced it cost me a kidney and a half but saw me through the COVID shortage at high FPS, and netted me a decent sum when selling it. Totally worth it.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
-
ezst036 Planned obsolescence strikes again.Reply
Sad. Many of these cards are still plenty fast and usable, serving their owners well to this day. -
Joomsy Reply
Did you not read the article? This doesn't mean these cards are going to outright cease to function. It just means they're no longer going to receive feature updates through the proprietary driver. They will continue to receive security updates for another three years, though. Your take also disregards the work being done to make NVK+Nouveau viable enough to make the proprietary driver unnecessary. These cards will more than likely get their feature updates through that, which is what gives Linux a pretty good edge over Windows. Also, an OEM supporting a device like this for over a decade is not common. They had a good run. They have to be sunsetted at some point, and it's not like RTX 20s and 30s are prohibitively expensive these days.ezst036 said:Planned obsolescence strikes again.
Sad. Many of these cards are still plenty fast and usable, serving their owners well to this day. -
bit_user Just replaced my GTX 980 Ti, last week! Got a RTX 5070 for about the same $$$ that I paid ($480, since the 10-series had already been announced when I got my 980 Ti) with twice the VRAM capacity and bandwidth and like 8x the compute performance at about the same power consumption. I hope this new card can also last me 9 years, but we'll see!Reply
Fun fact: the main reason I went with Nvidia, 9 years ago, was that I was still using analog CRTs and AMD had dropped VGA support by that point. The GTX 900-series was Nvidia's last product line to have it! I wonder if that could have anything to do with why they supported it so long? -
Bubba Jones Reply
A 1080Ti is completely obsolete, eclipsed by cards now more or less e-waste, or available for peanuts. Hanging onto a 1080 into the mid-2020's is simply ludicrous.ezst036 said:Planned obsolescence strikes again.
Sad. Many of these cards are still plenty fast and usable, serving their owners well to this day. -
bit_user Reply
It idles about as low as much newer cards:Bubba Jones said:A 1080Ti is completely obsolete, eclipsed by cards now more or less e-waste, or available for peanuts. Hanging onto a 1080 into the mid-2020's is simply ludicrous.
Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/evga-gtx-1080-ti-sc2/29.html
It's still fine for casual games or many non-gaming uses. That's why I kept my GTX 980 Ti for as long as I did. Because it just kept doing what I currently needed it to do, even after I upgraded my monitors.
Granted, my needs did shift over the course of my owning it. I no longer need a card that's at that same point in the performance curve, which is why I was happy to replace it with "only" a RTX 5070. -
Ogotai Reply
so are the prices for a new vid cards, when some one has other things to spend their money on that is more importantBubba Jones said:Hanging onto a 1080 into the mid-2020's is simply ludicrous. -
Bubba Jones Reply
When a basic 4060 will match a 1080Ti and offers DLSS, etc. hanging onto a 1080Ti is simply insane. Also, WFT does idle power have to do with anything? The 1080Ti was a power-hog under load.bit_user said:It idles about as low as much newer cards:
Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/evga-gtx-1080-ti-sc2/29.html
It's still fine for casual games or many non-gaming uses. That's why I kept my GTX 980 Ti for as long as I did. Because it just kept doing what I currently needed it to do, even after I upgraded my monitors.
Granted, my needs did shift over the course of my owning it. I no longer need a card that's at that same point in the performance curve, which is why I was happy to replace it with "only" a RTX 5070.
There are much better cards that are nowhere near as ancient, like a 2070 Super, etc. and can be had for relative peanuts. Just because it can "work" does not mean that it is practical, or reasonable, in that task any more.
GPUs are pretty much the only PC components that are very "time-sensitive"; even "old" CPUs (say, 8th-gen Intel, early Ryzen) have a minimal effect on system performance with a mid-range GPU, but correspondingly, an old GPU will be severely limiting.
Far too many people hang on to old GPUs too long, to the point where they are literal e-waste, compromising their experience for absolutely no valid reason. You're always better off leveraging retained value before the market for them complete collapses (like now, when the drivers will stop support)
To be clear, the idea that you buy a flagship GPU and then "upgrade" 10 years later is patently insane. Sell your old GPU, and incrementally move up the food-chain to newer (NOT: "NEW") tech for relative peanuts. Do this every three years or so and you won't be stuck with e-waste. -
Bubba Jones Reply
If you're running a 1080Ti, you could also run a 2080, 3060Ti, whatever.Ogotai said:so are the prices for a new vid cards, when some one has other things to spend their money on that is more important
It's sheer stupidity to sit on a "flagship" for a decade when it becomes more or less obsolete in less than two generations. Used 3060Ti's have been cheap for a long time now, so sitting on a 1080Ti is simply stupid. -
bit_user Reply
If you're a gamer. However, if you don't have very stringent requirements for your GPU, then it's cheaper to hang on to the one you have while it still meets your needs.Bubba Jones said:When a basic 4060 will match a 1080Ti and offers DLSS, etc. hanging onto a 1080Ti is simply insane.
Well, if newer cards had lower idle power, then there could be an argument that even if you're not using it to play games, that upgrading could offset the cost of doing so by lower energy consumption & air conditioning costs.Bubba Jones said:Also, WFT does idle power have to do with anything? The 1080Ti was a power-hog under load.
By skipping several generations of "peanuts" upgrades, I saved enough to buy a much better card than those.Bubba Jones said:There are much better cards that are nowhere near as ancient, like a 2070 Super, etc. and can be had for relative peanuts.
I disagree. You appear to be looking at this from a purely gaming perspective. I spend a lot of time waiting for code to compile, where the gains in recent generations of CPUs have really been a godsend!Bubba Jones said:GPUs are pretty much the only PC components that are very "time-sensitive"; even "old" CPUs (say, 8th-gen Intel, early Ryzen) have a minimal effect on system performance with a mid-range GPU, but correspondingly, an old GPU will be severely limiting.
My GTX 980 Ti still meets my daily needs. I'm replacing it because, when I have time to dabble with graphics programming again, I want something with decent ray tracing performance. Neural shaders is another fertile area of exploration.Bubba Jones said:Far too many people hang on to old GPUs too long, to the point where they are literal e-waste, compromising their experience for absolutely no valid reason.
9 years, and I stopped needing a flagship GPU, in the meantime. That's why I replaced it with only a RTX 5070, which should last me another good, long while. Maybe I'll happen upon a use case for something much more powerful, but that's a bridge I'll cross when I come to it. By not spending too much now, I'll be in a better position to upgrade in the RTX 60 or RTX 70 generations, should I want to.Bubba Jones said:To be clear, the idea that you buy a flagship GPU and then "upgrade" 10 years later is patently insane.
BTW, I briefly toyed with the idea of upgrading to a 12 GB RTX 3080, when the GPU market collapsed at the end of 2022. However, I didn't find quite the deal I was looking for and didn't expect the RTX 40 generation to offer such an unappetizing value proposition. -
Ogotai Reply
is it ? sounds like you wre talking from a gamers perspective, or someone that has money to spare...Bubba Jones said:It's sheer stupidity to sit on a "flagship" for a decade when it becomes more or less obsolete in less than two generations. Used 3060Ti's have been cheap for a long time now, so sitting on a 1080Ti is simply stupid.
i play games, and im still using a 3060. why ? cause vid cards are just too damn expensive. and paying a mortgage, car payment, and buying food for my family, is more important.
before saying some one is insane stupid or rediculous, for still running an old video card, think about why they are. not every one has a disposible income, or their use case, doesnt justify the need for a newer card.