NVIDIA Ends Driver Support for Kepler 600 and 700 Series GPUs with Today’s GeForce Game Ready Driver

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



NVIDIA released its GeForce Game Ready 496.13 WHQL driver today, and it’s somewhat of a significant one in that it marks the end of mainline support for green team’s arguably ancient Kepler-based GPUs. Being the first driver from the 495 branch, the 496.13 driver lacks support for numerous Kepler graphics cards that include old favorites such as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti and GeForce GTX 690. They also include a number of TITAN models.



Kepler products no longer support by NVIDIA:



TITAN Series: GeForce GTX TITAN, GeForce GTX TITAN Black, GeForce GTX TITAN ZGeForce 700 Series: GeForce GTX 780 Ti, GeForce GTX 780, GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 760, GeForce GTX 760 Ti (OEM), GeForce GT 740, GeForce GT 730, GeForce GT 720, GeForce GT 710GeForce 600 Series: GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX...

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[Zarathustra]

Wait, didn't they do this a long timer ago?


Oh no, that was just them announcing plans. Never mind.

Either way, I thought it had already happened.

My original Kepler Titan will be sad. It's been sitting in a backup/test rig forever seeing only occasional use.

 

[MacLeod]

Seems a little soon for the 700. The 600 is coming up on 10 years but the 700 still should have a little life left in it. I don't suppose it's a big deal as I'm sure there aren't that many gaming rigs running a 780 these days. Still I'd like to see a 10 year life span on these cards.

 

[Zarathustra]

Seems a little soon for the 700. The 600 is coming up on 10 years but the 700 still should have a little life left in it. I don't suppose it's a big deal as I'm sure there aren't that many gaming rigs running a 780 these days. Still I'd like to see a 10 year life span on these cards.

Yeah, even the mighty Kepler Titan only performs on the level of an AMD RX480 these days.

Still usable, but that's a lot of heat and fan noise for a mid to low end experience.

I guess all things must come to an end.

 

[Dan_D]

Seems a little soon for the 700. The 600 is coming up on 10 years but the 700 still should have a little life left in it. I don't suppose it's a big deal as I'm sure there aren't that many gaming rigs running a 780 these days. Still I'd like to see a 10 year life span on these cards.

It's not like your existing cards will stop working. You just won't get any newer drivers. Also, a 10 year life span is a bit long for these things. 7 year would be more reasonable in my opinion. It's rare someone will try and play newer games with a 10 year old GPU. At least, I wouldn't think it would be all that common.

 

[Brian_B]

10 years is pretty long in the tooth for a system. I was going to say it may be more common than you think, but the more I think about it, yeah, that's pretty old. I have rigs that are 10+ yrs old, but none of them that get used with any frequency.

Mostly old rigs that have become spare systems that are sitting in the closet, or an old laptop sitting around that only gets pulled out on occasion.

I was going to use Steam Hardware Survey DX12 compatibility to try to tease out "old" GPUs without parsing all the various models, but then I remembered Microsoft did that entire "Compatible" thing with various levels, so you could have a DX12 GPU that doesn't actually support anything in DX12.

 

[Dan_D]

10 years is pretty long in the tooth for a system. I was going to say it may be more common than you think, but the more I think about it, yeah, that's pretty old. I have rigs that are 10+ yrs old, but none of them that get used with any frequency.

Mostly old rigs that have become spare systems that are sitting in the closet, or an old laptop sitting around that only gets pulled out on occasion.

I was going to use Steam Hardware Survey DX12 compatibility to try to tease out "old" GPUs without parsing all the various models, but then I remembered Microsoft did that entire "Compatible" thing with various levels, so you could have a DX12 GPU that doesn't actually support anything in DX12.

According to the Steam Hardware Survey I last looked at, the GeForce GTX 1650 or regular 1660's were the most popular by far. That alone tells me that 10 year old GPU's aren't that commonly used.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I retired my EVGA SC 780 a while back but it was a good card that succeeded 2 x PNY 560 Ti in SLI but was then replaced by 2 x Gigabyte 970 OC editions in SLI. It was an awesome card for its time. Those were all in my first quad core build and some temporarily lived in a 4930K rig that came a few years after and is still in use in the cave. It recently just inherited a Strix 3090 for 4K gaming on the old Sony Z9D.

The only 600 series I had was a special GT 640 OC(EVGA I think but can't remember) limited edition that was only sold at BB and got it for around $80 back in the day on a BF. It was the last card in my old Gateway system that had a core2quad @ 2.5 GHz. It also ran off the PCIe so I didn't have to worry about the factory PSU in the case. That was a fun rig for a little while for 720p/1080p gaming, and media management. I was building/modding PCs at that time but it was a pretty good deal that I also got at the local BB because it was a floor model. Those were the days when our local BB was a fun place to go. At the time it was cheaper than building a new rig since my old P4 was pushing ten years, maxed to the hilt, then and I didn't really want to go through the hassle of trying to source parts for a new build since we were in the process of moving. That thing even came with a 9800GT and 2 drives in raid,a BD player, and optical out. For a prebuilt, back then, it was a great deal at around $800-$900(been so long I can't remember but I know it was around there).

I've still got most of those cards in the closet(sans the 970s that I sold cheap to a friend).

 

[Dan_D]

I had a GTX 780 Ti in service in the girlfriend's machine until the release of the GTX 1080 Ti. At that point I moved one of my Titan X (Maxwell) cards to that machine and retired the 780 Ti. That was basically five years ago. That 780 Ti was in service a lot longer than most of my GPU's. I felt it was old when I replaced it.

 

[Zarathustra]

I retired my EVGA SC 780 a while back but it was a good card that succeeded 2 x PNY 560 Ti in SLI but was then replaced by 2 x Gigabyte 970 OC editions in SLI. It was an awesome card for its time. Those were all in my first quad core build and some temporarily lived in a 4930K rig that came a few years after and is still in use in the cave. It recently just inherited a Strix 3090 for 4K gaming on the old Sony Z9D.

The only 600 series I had was a special GT 640 OC(EVGA I think but can't remember) limited edition that was only sold at BB and got it for around $80 back in the day on a BF. It was the last card in my old Gateway system that had a core2quad @ 2.5 GHz. It also ran off the PCIe so I didn't have to worry about the factory PSU in the case. That was a fun rig for a little while for 720p/1080p gaming, and media management. I was building/modding PCs at that time but it was a pretty good deal that I also got at the local BB because it was a floor model. Those were the days when our local BB was a fun place to go. At the time it was cheaper than building a new rig since my old P4 was pushing ten years, maxed to the hilt, then and I didn't really want to go through the hassle of trying to source parts for a new build since we were in the process of moving. That thing even came with a 9800GT and 2 drives in raid,a BD player, and optical out. For a prebuilt, back then, it was a great deal at around $800-$900(been so long I can't remember but I know it was around there).

I've still got most of those cards in the closet(sans the 970s that I sold cheap to a friend).

Similar transition for me.

I went from the original 2013 6GB Kepler Titan -> Two 980ti's in SLI (hated the SLI experience) -> Pascal Titan X (on launch) -> 6900xt (last week)

I still have the mostly untouched Kepler Titan box from EVGA. It came with a bunch of swag including a hard mouse pad, a tshirt and a buch of marketing material. I never even took those out of the box. The tshirt is still folded in there like I got it.

Maybe I'll try to blow the accumulated dust out of the inside of that Titan and sell it to a collector.

I've just been using it as a spare GPU in my backup/testbench box which I use for things like flashing storage controller firmware, imaging drives etc. I have a ton of other GPU's I could just drop in in its place (like an old Quadro 2000 or something like that)

As far as the pascal Titan goes, I've flushed it out. Was planning on selling it with the water block installed, but there seems to be limited interest (makes sense if you think of it. Custom water loop folks want the best and most impressive systems, and likely don't want to run older GPU's) So it seems like I may have to put the original air cooler back on it, which is a bummer. I was hoping to not have to do that.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

@Zarathustra

Yeah, that's the mixed blessing with the high end cards. We get 'em, they rock for a really long time but by the time we're ready to unload them nobody really wants them. It's not the worst thing though because by then we've usually gotten hundreds, possibly, thousands of great hours with them and for me that's the truest measure of ROI. I'm bummed when they get retired but I don't feel bad for purchasing them.

 

[Zarathustra]

@Zarathustra

Yeah, that's the mixed blessing with the high end cards. We get 'em, they rock for a really long time but by the time we're ready to unload them nobody really wants them. It's not the worst thing though because by then we've usually gotten hundreds, possibly, thousands of great hours with them and for me that's the truest measure of ROI. I'm bummed when they get retired but I don't feel bad for purchasing them.

Ditto.

 

[MacLeod]

I never feel bad for purchasing them. I don't look at them as an investment but more as a toy lol. Plus they make great decorations haha... I've still got every video card I've ever owned set up on a table.