Due to the current bottleneck and the extremely high prices of current graphics cards such as the Geforce RTX 3080 and Co, many gamers use older models from Nvidia and AMD. However, both manufacturers have now announced that they will discontinue driver support for certain older cards.
We’ll tell you which models are affected, when support will be discontinued – and what exactly the end of support means. In this article you can find out why current models are so expensive and why it should stay that way for longer:
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Extreme prices: why hardware will remain expensive for a long time to come
Support ends for these graphics cards
On the part of Nvidia this decision affects all cards in the Kepler family. This starts with the Geforce GT 630 and extends through the Geforce GTX 780 to the GTX Titan Z. Support for these graphics cards ends on August 31, 2021, when the last driver for them is released.
Old Windows versions are also affected: Incidentally, Nvidia’s active support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 will also end at the same time. This means that new drivers will only be developed for current operating systems such as Windows 10 and Windows 11.
These Nvidia cards will soon no longer be supported:
- Nvidia Geforce GT 600
- Nvidia Geforce GTX 600
- Nvidia Geforce GT 700
- Nvidia Geforce GTX 700 (except GTX 750/750 Ti)
- Nvidia Geforce GT Titan/Titan Black/Titan Z
In addition to Nvidia also provides AMD support for many graphics cards. The spectrum ranges from the Radeon HD 5000 series to the Fury series. The support has even been removed with the latest driver. Unlike Nvidia, AMD retains support for older operating systems.
These AMD cards are no longer supported:
- AMD Radeon R5 200/300 Series
- AMD Radeon R7 200/300 Series
- AMD Radeon R9 200/300/Fury Series
- AMD Radeon HD 5000 – HD 8900 Series
- Sempron Series APUs (R3)
- Athlon Series APUs (R3)
- Pro A-Series APUs (R5/R6)
- A-Series APUs (R4/R5/R6/R7)
In addition, AMD explicitly names the mobile offshoots of the desktop accelerators mentioned. One full list of all affected AMD cards is available on the AMD website. Nvidia has one too Overview of all affected graphics cards released.
What does the end of support mean for you?
What do you as a player now have to consider if your graphics card or your operating system are affected by these decisions?
Basically, you can continue to use your graphics card with an older driver version without any problems. Many gamers do not always install the latest graphics card driver anyway.
In new titles, using the current driver can bring slight performance advantages because it has been optimized accordingly. However, the increase in speed due to new drivers is usually very limited and rather plays a role on paper.
Even new titles can very often be played with older drivers without any restrictions. It can look different when new technologies such as ray tracing come into play. However, due to their age, the affected cards cannot do anything with that anyway.
Our assessment: If you need a graphics card and have considered an old model due to the current market situation, a lack of driver support does not generally speak against a purchase. If your wallet allows it, it is better to choose a model that is still supported.
