Nvidia Ending Support For DirectX 10 Graphics Cards In 2016

[Andy Chalk]

Nvidia Ending Support For DirectX 10 Graphics Cards In 2016

Nvidia has announced the end of support for DirectX 10 video cards, but you'll be able to keep using your old clunkers for a good while yet.

If you're still rocking a GeForce 9800 or GTX-295 in your PC gaming rig, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself, "Why?" Seriously, this is something you should put some thought into. And maybe you'll find that you have a good reason for it; but you might also discover that it's finally time to gird your loins and brace for an upgrade.

"Why?" Because Nvidia has announced that version 340 of its drivers will be the last to support DirectX 10 generation video cards. "The Release 340 drivers will continue to support these products until April 1, 2016, and the NVIDIA support team will continue to address driver issues for these products in driver branches up to and including Release 340," Nvidia said on its customer support site. "However, future driver enhancements and optimizations in driver releases after Release 340 will not support these products."

If there's an upside to owning an 8800GTX in 2014, that would be it: You've got until the spring of 2016 to do something about it. And of course, you can keep on using it after that point, but with no further support or updates and presumably fewer and fewer games that will actually run on it.

The end of the line for legacy products will affect GeForce 8, 9, 100, 200, 300 and 400 series desktop hardware, GeForce 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 and 300 series notebook products, and a number of Tesla and Quadro products. The list in full is available from Nvidia [http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3473].


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[Kenjitsuka]

"If there's an upside to owning an 8800GTX in 2014"
Sigh, memories!!! Got that the day it came out, for ? 650...
Back then I could spend so much money on parts.

Now I'm rocking a lowly 250GTS

 

[Supernova1138]

Nvidia is actually doing a bit better for legacy driver support than AMD is right now. AMD dropped all driver support for everything before the Radeon HD 5000 series last year (all cards from 2008 and earlier) and I don't think there is even a driver for Windows 8.1 if you do have one of those older cards.

In any case, by 2016 the 8000 series cards would be ten years old by that point, one would think you would have to upgrade by that time simply because the card has died. What might be more painful would be losing support on the 400 series cards, which do actually support DirectX 11, and run the same architecture as the 500 series cards, I'm kind of surprised those are getting cut, but the 500 series isn't in that case, I don't imagine it's any extra work to keep maintaining the 400 series if they're still maintaining the 500 series.

 

[J Tyran]

"If there's an upside to owning an 8800GTX in 2014"
Sigh, memories!!! Got that the day it came out, for ? 650...
Back then I could spend so much money on parts.

Now I'm rocking a lowly 250GTS

I think that's the issue with nVidia... especially since more and more games are drifting away from being graphics heavy due to the costs associated with developing graphics heavy games, so they are trying to strong arm people into buying and upgrading by cutting support. of course if radeon doesn't do this well safe to say this will likely bite nVidia in the butt. especially when they should be steering towards more open sourced areas rather than suckling at the diseased teat of M$

They wont be losing much if they do alienate the kind of gamer that still uses old cards like that in 2016, would any company care about consumers that don't really consume?

 

[William Dickbringer]

So.. wait.. question.. whatruns Dx11 because if you say only Windows 8 nvidia can lick my taint. The performance difference between these drivers is usually marginal in most cases.

Dx11 was around before windows 8 should still be anything but Dx11 should be anything that came out in 2009 or later is good (I could be wrong though the last card I got was 550ti and that had Dx11) and by the time support goes I believe the youngest card on there will be 10 years old

Nvidia is actually doing a bit better for legacy driver support than AMD is right now. AMD dropped all driver support for everything before the Radeon HD 5000 series last year (all cards from 2008 and earlier) and I don't think there is even a driver for Windows 8.1 if you do have one of those older cards.

In any case, by 2016 the 8000 series cards would be ten years old by that point, one would think you would have to upgrade by that time simply because the card has died. What might be more painful would be losing support on the 400 series cards, which do actually support DirectX 11, and run the same architecture as the 500 series cards, I'm kind of surprised those are getting cut, but the 500 series isn't in that case, I don't imagine it's any extra work to keep maintaining the 400 series if they're still maintaining the 500 series.

from what I read only the 405 is getting axed other ones are fine

 

[Under_your_bed]

The end of the line for legacy products will affect GeForce 8, 9, 100, 200, 300 and 400 series desktop hardware [emphasis added], GeForce 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 and 300 series notebook products, and a number of Tesla and Quadro products. The list in full is available from Nvidia [http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3473].

400? But the Fermi 4X0 series was Direct X11 compatible [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_400_Series]. Why would they cancel support for the 400 Series but not the 500? Both were DX11 cards built on the 40NM process. The flagship GTX 580 was just a GTX 480 with all the cores enabled, for crying out loud! [http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-580-gf110-geforce-gtx-480,review-32043.html]

EDIT:

from what I read only the 405 is getting axed other ones are fine

Oh, yes. That makes sense. And it explains why it was dropped: it was just a rebrand of a previous card that did not support DX 11 [http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nvidia-Quietly-Adds-GeForce-405-to-Its-Graphics-Card-Portfolio-221876.shtml], unlike the rest of the Fermi series that does.

 

[Albino Boo]

So.. wait.. question.. whatruns Dx11 because if you say only Windows 8 nvidia can lick my taint. The performance difference between these drivers is usually marginal in most cases.

Its Dx11.2 thats is windows 8 only Dx11 has been around since 2009

 

[lacktheknack]

Look, I loved my 8800GTX. It was a great card. It turned me into a graphics whore. I have no regrets in buying it.

But I bought it in 2006. Are there still people who are too stubborn to upgrade? I thought that Just Cause 2 labeled the card as a minimum requirement.

I'm just amazed that the support lasted this long. Imagine if they were still required to support DirectX 8 cards for ten years.

 

[Zipa]

So.. wait.. question.. whatruns Dx11 because if you say only Windows 8 nvidia can lick my taint. The performance difference between these drivers is usually marginal in most cases.

Vista, 7 and 8 all support DX11. You have to go all the way back to XP to find a OS that doesn't support it. Vista though will need you to download an update from Microsoft to run it but 7 and 8 support it natively.

Also this makes me wonder if Nvidia no something that we don't yet with the recent announcement from Microsoft that DirectX 12 is coming soon.

 

[Zipa]

So.. wait.. question.. whatruns Dx11 because if you say only Windows 8 nvidia can lick my taint. The performance difference between these drivers is usually marginal in most cases.

Vista, 7 and 8 all support DX11. You have to go all the way back to XP to find a OS that doesn't support it. Vista though will need you to download an update from Microsoft to run it but 7 and 8 support it natively.

Also this makes me wonder if Nvidia no something that we don't yet with the recent announcement from Microsoft that DirectX 12 is coming soon.

If it requires Windows 8 microsoft can suck it...besides I get much better performance out of opengl.

Seriously, I'd sooner willingly install Origin than Windows 8.

As I said anything from Vista onwards supports DX11. I wouldn't worry about 12 too much because the adoption rate of Dx11 for games is still very low so it will be around for a good long time yet.

And OpenGL will probably be the future if they get it sorted so it is as stable and fast and DX.

 

[J Tyran]

"If there's an upside to owning an 8800GTX in 2014"
Sigh, memories!!! Got that the day it came out, for ? 650...
Back then I could spend so much money on parts.

Now I'm rocking a lowly 250GTS

I think that's the issue with nVidia... especially since more and more games are drifting away from being graphics heavy due to the costs associated with developing graphics heavy games, so they are trying to strong arm people into buying and upgrading by cutting support. of course if radeon doesn't do this well safe to say this will likely bite nVidia in the butt. especially when they should be steering towards more open sourced areas rather than suckling at the diseased teat of M$

They wont be losing much if they do alienate the kind of gamer that still uses old cards like that in 2016, would any company care about consumers that don't really consume?

That's rather short sighted. See discerning consumers who are happy with their product will come back to you when they are ready to upgrade and better yet they serve as free advertising. But businesses these days are all about fast ash grabs , to hell with brand loyalty, to hell with customer satisfaction, we just want their money. That's teh same logic that gave us that loverly Dungeon keeper Mobile.

Seriously though, it is short sighted since you alienate not one or two people, you alienate whole countries like that. Its the sort of thinking that believes the world only consists of USA CANADA UK JAPAN CHINA. It's the same line of short-sighted thought that cost Apple the PC market in the 70's and early 80's. It's the same line of thought that took down their old rival 3dFX and their voodoo line. When you start marginalising your consumer you create a lovely and eager niche for your competition to occupy.

They are so short sighted they keep making excellent value budget cards, like the recent GTX 750 series. Excluding budget cards consumers have a wide variety of the older midrange models to choose from to, still supporting those is short sighted too?

General computer users will typically just use whatever onboard graphics their machine comes with so they will not really care, any gamer still rocking legacy tech like that wont be spending much money on new games (even indie games are starting to leave old hardware like that behind) and probably wont be willing/able to spend money on a new GPU in the first place. Supporting customers is great but should any tech company go to great lengths supporting legacy hardware for customers that are not spending money in the first place?

 

[lacktheknack]

Look, I loved my 8800GTX. It was a great card. It turned me into a graphics whore. I have no regrets in buying it.

But I bought it in 2006. Are there still people who are too stubborn to upgrade? I thought that Just Cause 2 labeled the card as a minimum requirement.

I'm just amazed that the support lasted this long. Imagine if they were still required to support DirectX 8 cards for ten years.

It's notr a matter of stubborn... people who have bills to play, rent to cough up and who like to eat food are a little hesitant to spend $175 on something as frivolous as a video card... beside,s the shiny golden pixels aren't all that great. midium textures won't make a good game bad and high quality phong shaded optidiggiflex mapped textures won't make a dull crappy game good

That's irrelevant. It's unreasonable to expect companies in a constantly-changing field to support decade-old tech because literally 5-10% of their userbase isn't buying their new stuff, especially since even if they did support it, the tech in question wouldn't be very useful at that point.

Also, if you can't save up enough to upgrade your computer/console once every ten years, gaming is the wrong hobby for you. The only exception is if you're only into retro gaming, in which case discontinuing GPU support doesn't affect you at all.