Nvidia Drops Driver Support for Pascal and Maxwell GPUs, Signals End of PhysX Acceleration
Santa clara, CA – Nvidia has officially ended driver support for its Pascal (GeForce GTX 10-series) and Maxwell (GeForce GTX 900 and 750 Ti) graphics cards, marking the end of an era for these once-popular gpus. The final driver release, Game Ready Driver 555.85, was made available on may 7, 2024, and represents the last update for these architectures. This change impacts users still relying on older hardware,effectively halting performance improvements and bug fixes for gaming and other graphically demanding applications.
The move signifies a natural progression in the graphics card lifecycle, as Nvidia focuses development resources on newer architectures like Ada lovelace and Blackwell. Though, it also means the loss of PhysX hardware acceleration on these older cards. While PhysX can still function in software mode, performance will be significantly reduced, impacting games and applications that heavily utilize the physics engine. This decision affects a broad range of gamers and professionals who continue to use these cards due to budget constraints or specific request requirements.
Nvidia’s decision doesn’t render the cards unusable, but it does limit their future potential. Games released after this driver cutoff may experience compatibility issues or reduced performance without ongoing driver optimization. The Pascal architecture, launched in 2016, and Maxwell, released in 2015, powered a generation of gaming PCs and professional workstations. The geforce GTX 1080, a flagship Pascal card, was a especially popular choice for high-end gaming.
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Source: Nvidia
