Nvidia has made public its plans to drop mainstream support of Microsoft Windows 7 as well as Windows 8 and 8.1. The key dates for users of the older operating systems are; 31st August when the last Game Ready Driver supporting your OS will be released, and 4th October when the first Game Ready Driver is released that no longer supports your OS. Nvidia says that it is dropping support for the older OSes largely as the vast majority of its customers are on Windows 10.
If you are a PC gamer that is still hanging onto Windows 7, or 8/8.1, then you will likely have to re-consider going through the Windows 10 upgrade process, particularly if you want to play the newest PC titles using an Nvidia GPU. Effective from October this year, Nvidia will no longer deliver its Game Ready Driver upgrades with Windows 7 or 8/8.1 compatibility. However, it promises to deliver critical security updates to such users all the way until September 2024.
Nvidia cites a number of reasons for its decision. It says that the older Windows OSes affected have either reached or are nearing the end of their lifecycles. With the "vast majority of our GeForce customers," on Windows 10 already, it goes on to say that resources could be better used focussing on Windows 10.
Kepler's demise follows the same timetable
Back in May, HEXUS reported on the leaked info that Nvidia's v470 driver series would be the last to support Kepler GPUs. On Friday, Nvidia made that info official in a bulletin titled Support Plan for Kepler-series GeForce GPUs for Desktop.
Exactly like above, with regard to Windows 7, 8/8.1, the last Game Ready Driver from Nvidia for affected systems will be released on 31st August, and when the 4th October 2021 (R495 GA1) driver arrives it won't be supporting your Kepler powered system.
Nvidia's reasons for this withdrawal of support are that Kepler is rather old, having initially launched in March 2012 (though it might be better to look at the date when the last Kepler cards were released, not the first). Secondly, it says that developers will be able to on hardware that supports newer technologies like DirectX 12 Ultimate and DLSS.
If you have any doubt whether your desktop PC graphics card uses a Kepler GPU or not, please refer to the list at the end of the support plan page, linked above (most of the GeForce GT/GTX 600 and 700 series of GPUs, but not the popular GTX 750/Ti, are Kepler cards).
