NVIDIA Confirms Plans To Drop "Kepler" GPU Driver Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Confirms Plans To Drop "Kepler" GPU Driver Support

Last month we reported on CUDA documentation pointing to the NVIDIA 470 driver series to be the last supporting GeForce GTX 600/700 Kepler GPUs and that has now been summed up more formally with new guidance out of NVIDIA...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Confirms-Kepler-Ending

[tildearrow]

Typo:

NVIDIA confirmed today that their the R470 driver series is the last to support

[Turbine]

You can't really use Linux for gaming on unsupported cards. A new distro comes out with a newer kernel or xorg, you're stuffed.

[nranger]

You can't really use Linux for gaming on unsupported cards. A new distro comes out with a newer kernel or xorg, you're stuffed.

True, but the old driver doesn't disappear overnight, and is sometimes still updated for newer kernels. Case in point, Fermi cards are still supported on the 390 line of Nvidia proprietary drivers, and the Arch maintainers have tested it with the 5.12 kernel. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#Installation.

I'd still make the case AMD & Intel are better positioned to support old hardware. I've switched to AMD myself, and I do enjoy the seamless install/update experience not playing dkms-roulette anymore.

[scratchi]

I have a GTX670 and its still a great GPU...sucks a lot of power though

It played almost every game I through at it, maybe not at high settings, but medium still looked good and ran OK. Mad Max, Dirt 4, Grid Autosport, RotR in Gentoo and GTA V in Windows 7. I only replaced it recently because I started to need more than 2GB vram. Had I had the 4GB version, I would still be using it.

I replaced it with a GTX 1650 Super as a stop gap until I can get my hands on an RTX 3070 or RX 6800...although that will obviously be a while. But besides the extra vram of the GTX 1650 Super and much lower power draw, performance is pretty much the same...maybe a 20% or so performance boost.

So anyway, thats my life story, and I'm happy the GTX670 will see some support till 2024, I'll probably throw it into some build out of spare parts and continue using it. I have a laptop with a Fermi GPU and still use the 390 drivers in FreeBSD 13 and it still works well too

[theriddick]

You can't really use Linux for gaming on unsupported cards. A new distro comes out with a newer kernel or xorg, you're stuffed.

You don't NEED to be on latest kernel or xorg. Especially so if you run older hardware.

[Linuxxx]

The NVIDIA 470 driver series will be introduced this summer with Wayland improvements and a lot of other new features... This is going to be a big driver update and one of the most exciting out of NVIDIA in recent times for Linux users while for those on GeForce GTX 600/700 series does mean the end of the road.

Michael
Thanks for confirming my prediction!

Oh look, it's a ... NVIDIA?!?!?!

Has been coming for a long time now, ever since Linux kernel 5.3 changed everything for them:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.3-NVIDIA-POWER-Problem
(NVIDIA's Graphics Driver Will Run Into Problems With Linux 5.3 On IBM POWER - 13 July 2019)

That's what the "losing marketshare" meme is hinting at; nVidia is losing out on the VERY lucrative supercomputer wins versus AMD!

Also, how else do you think nVidia is going to support Wayland with the upcoming 470 driver series?
It will most likely turn into a hybrid driver akin to AMDGPU-PRO (open-source kernel part, closed-source userspace blob).

Anything else simply doesn't make any sense!
[MediaTek, Exynos, Vivante... LOL!!]

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'll miss my 670's, but I've not run anything older than a GTX980M in Linux for years... ah, the joys of minimum CUDA versions...

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Global chip shortage are the best times to drop support, all stand, torvalds NV salute in 3...2....1...

[yoshi314]

this makes me worried about 750ti , which is next in line. and it's still a perfectly usable card.

and even though nvidia has long term support for older cards, the driver releases tend to be rare and belated. they just want people to buy new cards, and that's that.