NVIDIA to end Game Ready drivers support for Windows 7 and 8 in October 2021

NVIDIA notified its users about the upcoming end of support of the Kepler-based graphics cards, the GTX 600 and 700 series. On August 31, 2021, NVIDIA will stop supporting those cards and no longer provide any driver updates. The only exception is NVIDIA GTX 750 and 750 Ti cards based on a newer Maxwell architecture. Besides ending support for the GTX 600 and 700 graphics cards series, NVIDIA plans to drop support for Windows 7 and 8/8.1.

That suggests Windows 7 die-hard fans will have to move to newer releases if they want to receive future Game Ready drivers from Nvidia. Systems with unsupported Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 will no longer get drivers with new features, performance improvements, bug fixes, and security patches. Moreover, new GPUs that require fresh drivers will not work with Windows 7 and 8/8.1. Still, NVIDIA plans to provide critical security patches for unsupported systems for three more years until September 2024.

The release of R470 GA5 will be the final Game Ready Driver that supports Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7. NVIDIA plans to release it on August 31, 2021. The following public release, R495 GA1, due to release on October 4, 2021, will work only with Windows 10.

Of course, the end of support for Windows 7 and 8/8.1 does not mean that your gaming machine with an old operating system will no longer play games. It will work just fine, but you will not get new features in NVIDIA drivers, plus performance in those games will be inferior to systems with Windows 10 and the newest drivers.

You can learn more about Nvidia's plans to cease Windows 7 and 8/8.1 support from the official announcemnet page on the NVIDIA website. The company also has a special page with frequently asked questions regarding support for Kepler-based GPUs.

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