First reported by Tom’s Hardware, the patch notes for the most recent replace to Nvidia’s CUDA Toolkit state that help for the Maxwell and Pascall architectures—GTX 9 and 10-series playing cards—might be deprecated in an upcoming replace. Those playing cards will nonetheless be getting GeForce driver updates, and whereas Nvidia has not but introduced for a way lengthy, we will look again on the mothballing of a earlier Nvidia structure to get an thought.
The information comes from the replace 12.8 launch notes for the CUDA Toolkit, Nvidia’s assortment of instruments and libraries for programming GPU-powered functions. Under part 1.5.1, “Deprecated Architectures,” the patch notes learn: “Architecture help for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta is taken into account feature-complete and might be frozen in an upcoming launch.”
Volta was virtually solely utilized in enterprise {hardware}, however Maxwell and Pascal are of expensive significance to PC avid gamers: The 9 and 10-series playing cards symbolize a value vs. efficiency golden age in hindsight, with the GTX 970, 980 Ti, 1060, and 1080 Ti particularly being fondly remembered playing cards that would fairly help a gaming interest to today, relying on what graphical and determination compromises you are keen to make. The 1060 was nonetheless the Steam Hardware Survey’s hottest GPU in March 2022, six years after its launch, whereas the GTX 970 was the minimum-spec GPU for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a triple-A RPG launched 10 years after the 970’s launch. In December’s Steam Hardware Survey, Maxwell and Pascal playing cards collectively accounted for 10.75% of respondents.
Nvidia has not revealed when driver updates will finish for these playing cards, however I believe we will take a look at a earlier era for an thought of the timeline we will anticipate. CUDA help for Kepler, the structure behind GTX 7-series GPUs just like the 780 Ti, began to be deprecated in CUDA v10.2 in November 2019—the archive web page was up to date in 2020, however the Wayback Machine exhibits Kepler’s deprecation was current from when the web page first went stay in 2019.
The closing driver replace for Kepler got here two years later in August 2021, so there’s good purpose to anticipate continued driver help for 9 and 10-series playing cards for the same window after the CUDA deprecation. Maxwell has already outlived Kepler by greater than two years when it comes to CUDA help, and the massive set up base Maxwell and Kepler nonetheless command inclines me to imagine that Nvidia will extend their already-amazing run into 2026, if not longer.
Even with souped-up AI-powered playing cards just like the RTX 5090 crashing on us like an amazing wave, there’s nonetheless loads of mileage to be gotten out of outdated {hardware}. The GTX 980 Ti stays essentially the most highly effective shopper graphics card ever launched to nonetheless boast an analogue DVI port, making it a prize merchandise for these in possession of holy grail CRT screens just like the blisteringly high-refresh Iiyama Vision Master Pro 512. That’s not precisely a typical use case although, and even your common CRT gaming sicko might be well-served by a very good adapter like those made by StarTech.
