In a recent announcement, NVIDIA’s development team unveiled plans regarding the future of driver support for certain generations of their GPUs. As the company moves forward with its 580 driver series for Linux, this will mark the final set of driver updates for the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs.
These changes come shortly after NVIDIA had already ceased updates for its Fermi and Kepler series, namely the GTX 500 and GTX 600. Now, attention turns to the GTX 700 (Maxwell), 900 (Maxwell), 1000 (Pascal), and Volta families, which will see their last Linux driver updates with the upcoming 580 series. Presently, NVIDIA is operating on the 570 driver series, which launched alongside the GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs.
Interestingly, Windows users of these GPUs will continue to receive updates for a while longer, likely until the 585 driver series, given that NVIDIA typically extends support for Windows slightly beyond Linux timelines. This ongoing support offers a valuable continuation for aging components that are approximately 8 to 11 years old.
While the exact release date for the 580 driver series remains under wraps, it’s anticipated to arrive before the end of the year. Once released, updates within this series will likely continue for several months, ensuring Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPU users on Linux receive ongoing support – and even longer for Windows users.
This shift underscores a common industry trend where legacy hardware eventually phases out of regular update cycles, as technology continues to advance.
