- Official Nvidia support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta cards ends in October 2025.
- From that date, there will only be quarterly security updates until 2028.
- RTX cards in Windows 10 will get an extra year of Game Ready support.
- Users should consider upgrading if they want full compatibility with new games and technologies.
Nvidia has officially announced Ending general support for graphics cards based on the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures, including the series GeForce GTX 700, 900 and 10This decision represents a significant change for users who still use these models, which are still present in many devices.
El active support period will end in October 2025Until that date, Users will still be able to receive "Game Ready" updates, which improve compatibility and optimization for new titles and fine-tune performance. After that point, will only be launched quarterly security patches until October of 2028. According to Nvidia, this represents a support cycle that reaches 11 years, a lifespan that few manufacturers in the industry match.
Which models are affected?
The measure affects all cards based on the architectures Maxwell, Pascal and Volta. This includes iconic models such as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, GTX 980 Ti, GTX 1080 Ti and others from the series GTX 700, 900 and 10. Instead, the GTX 16 and RTX, which use Turing and later architectures, will continue to receive supportTo determine exactly which model you have, we recommend checking out our guide at How to know the series of my Nvidia card.
This change has a significant impact, especially considering that hardware surveys, such as Steam's, show that About 2% of gamers still use a GTX 1060, and less than 1% uses models such as GTX 1080 or 1080 Ti. In addition, the GTX 970 and 960 are still present in just over 0,5% systems.
Special extension for Windows 10 and new driver updates
In parallel, Nvidia has confirmed GeForce RTX cards running Windows 10 will enjoy an additional year of Game Ready support, to October 2026This measure allows users of recent hardware to continue benefiting from improvements in gaming optimization, even after Microsoft stops updating the operating system. It's an option for those who aren't yet planning to upgrade to newer versions of Windows.
Regarding updates, Nvidia has clarified that, although the security patches During support, advanced features such as DLSS o ray tracing will no longer be available on Pascal and Maxwell models, as they require specific hardware such as Tensor or RT cores.
Implications for users of Pascal and Maxwell
Users with a Pascal or Maxwell graphics card will be able to continue using it normally, but they should consider that in future game releases, performance and compatibility may be reduced, and they will no longer receive specific driver improvements, limited to vulnerability fixes.
Also, Nvidia has reported that Support for the CUDA architecture on these cards will be phased out in new versions of the toolkit.This can affect those who use the hardware for computing or development tasks. To learn more about the differences and which graphics card is best, check out our analysis at Differences between RTX and GTX cards.
With the end of this cycle, a period of success comes to an end for many cards that were extremely popular and useful for years, although they will gradually fall behind in compatibility and performance in the latest titles. Users will need to evaluate whether it's worth keeping their hardware or upgrading to newer models.
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