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Some of our favorite Nvidia GeForce graphics cards of yesteryear are about to become obsolete, with Nvidia confirming that GTX GPUs, including the GTX 750, GTX 980, and GTX 1080 Ti, will stop receiving Game Ready Driver updates from October 2025. The company also confirmed that Windows 10 driver support for RTX GPUs will continue for just one more year, ending in October 2026.
It may not feel like that long ago that the GTX 1080 Ti was still the best graphics card around but that card is now eight years old. Meanwhile, Nvidia cards such as the GTX 750 were released over a decade ago. With these cards lacking the firepower needed for modern gaming, it isn’t surprising Nvidia is making this move, but it will no doubt bring some sadness to plenty of gamers out there. If you’re playing modern games on an old Nvidia GTX card, you’re going to need to think about upgrading pretty soon.
In its just-released statement regarding its driver plans, Nvidia says that Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta-based GPUs will see one final Game Ready Driver (GRD) update in October. Following that release, GPUs based on those architectures will move to quarterly security updates for three more years, ending in October 2028. After that, support will drop entirely. The cards will still work but the drivers could be prone to hacking and may not support future games.
These Nvidia driver changes will affect gaming graphics cards with the numbering schemes GTX 700, GTX 900, and GTX 1000, as well as workstation Volta-based GPUs like the Titan V and Quadro GV100. However, this does not affect Turing-based GTX 16 series GPUs like the GTX 1660 Ti, nor will it affect any RTX-branded GPU.
GRD updates typically come out every month and include day one optimizations for the latest games, ensuring that as many existing Nvidia products as possible supported the new titles. The releases also include bug fixes and feature updates.
In contrast, security updates will only address any vulnerabilities to newly-discovered threats in the existing drivers. No new features or game support will be provided during the three year security update window.
The other key announcement Nvidia has made is that its GRD driver support for Windows 10 will end in October 2026. That will be a year after Microsoft has also stopped supporting its old operating system. That means that if you’re rocking an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and still running Windows 10, you’ve now got two reasons to finally make the upgrade to Windows 11.
If you’re running an Nvidia GeForce GTX card in an older rig, it’s time to seriously think about an upgrade. If you’re looking for the most affordable way to get right up to date with the latest features and have the longest possible future driver support, check out our AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review, as both those GPUs support the latest games with high detail settings at 1080p and cost under $300.
If you’re not sure how to go about upgrading your graphics card, check out our how to build a gaming PC guide that includes a section on how to install a new GPU. Alternatively, take a look through our best gaming PC guide for some seriously powerful pre-built options you could pick up today instead.
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