NVIDIA announces end-of-life support for many of its GTX cards — but it’s not all bad news

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NVIDIA has announced that its GeForce Game Ready Driver update will bring some unfortunate news. For over a decade, NVIDIA’s Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta graphics cards have been reliable partners, but they will no longer receive the same level of support updates as newer models moving forward.

In October 2025, NVIDIA intends to release another significant driver update for these architectures, following which they will switch to quarterly security updates only. Notably, this timeline aligns with the end-of-life date for Windows 10, set for October 14, 2025.

As an analyst, I can confirm that NVIDIA has announced that quarterly security updates for these GPU architectures will be provided uninterruptedly for a period of three years, extending until October 2028. However, it’s important to note that the routine “Game Ready” updates, which typically include new features and optimizations, will no longer be applicable moving forward.

Here’s the quote from the NVIDIA blog:

Beginning in October 2025, following the final Game Ready Driver release, Nvidia GeForce GPUs based on Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures will continue to receive quarterly security updates for a span of three years, extending up to October 2028. This exceptional support period exceeds industry standards by lasting as long as eleven years.

Andrew Burnes, NVIDIA

2014 marked the debut of NVIDIA’s GPUs based on the Maxwell architecture, a milestone over 11 years ago. The series commenced with the GTX 700-series models and culminated with the GTX 900-series hardware, among them being my cherished GTX 980 Ti Founders Edition. I hope it’s still in service somewhere.

2016 marked the transition of NVIDIA to the Pascal architecture, as evidenced by the debut of the GTX 10-series graphics cards. However, this architecture was maintained for a single exceptional generation before it was phased out.

The original Turing architecture, featuring ray tracing acceleration, was launched simultaneously with NVIDIA’s RTX 20-series graphics processors. Over time, these GPUs advanced through the 30- and 40-series hardware stages, eventually leading to the release of the RTX 50-series Blackwell cards in the year 2025.

Regarding the Volta architecture, it debuted in the year 2017, and it was initially limited to being utilized on Titan, Quadro, and Tesla series of workstation graphics processing units (GPUs).

Despite Maxwell cards being largely outdated now, NVIDIA’s Pascal hardware remains popular among many gamers. Unfortunately, this isn’t ideal. A glance at Steam’s hardware survey shows the GTX 1060 ranked 12th overall, powering 2.15% of PCs in June 2025.

In other words, during the latest survey, the most commonly used GPU, NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 Laptop model, accounted for approximately 5 out of every 100 GPUs.

Certainly, many players continue using Pascal graphics cards today, although it’s important to note that the absence of new features doesn’t mean your card will stop functioning. While they may not perform as stably as they once did, you can generally keep enjoying games with minimal trouble.

NVIDIA plans to offer Windows 10 driver updates for an extra year

In the very same statement, it was disclosed that NVIDIA intends to prolong the compatibility of their latest RTX GPUs with Windows 10 Game Ready drivers up until October 2026 – an entire year beyond the operating system’s retirement date.

Furthermore, we’re expanding the compatibility of Windows 10 Game Ready Drivers for all GeForce RTX GPUs up until October 2026, which is beyond the end date for the operating system. This extension aims to guarantee that users will still receive the most recent day-0 optimizations for new games and applications.

Andrew Burnes, NVIDIA

It’s beneficial for individuals who either won’t or can’t transition to Windows 11, as the complete support for Windows 10 will end in approximately one and a half months. With this deadline approaching, numerous users are searching for alternative solutions.

For those choosing to stay with their current setup — as I haven’t moved my primary gaming computer from Windows 10 to Windows 11 yet — there is a small, comfortable window of time to strategize about the next steps.

NVIDIA has shown great generosity towards updates. It’s not often that a piece of hardware lasts as long as Maxwell cards, which have been consistently updated over the past 11 years, a gesture that deserves praise.

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2025-07-31 22:10