Nvidia Will no Longer Support 32-bit Operating Systems After 390 Driver Release

DooKey

DooKey

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If you're running a 32-bit operating system and are using an Nvidia GPU you better start thinking about upgrading to 64-bit if you want to continue to get game ready drivers. Yes, you read that correctly. Nvidia will no longer provide drivers for 32-bit operating systems after the 390 driver release. Not a surprise to me because 32-bit is really long in the tooth and needs to die.

Driver enhancements, driver optimizations, and operating system features in driver versions after Release 390 will not be incorporated back into Release 390 or earlier versions.
 
Not surprising. Existing drivers will probably keep extreme legacy programs on older operating systems going for another 10 years or so. That should be adequate.
 
New games usually require more than 4GB ram (32 bit OS limit), so I don't see a problem with this.

The only systems I'm still running a 32 bit OS on is a windows tablet, and some systems at work that still need to run an old 16 bit app.
 
I still have a 32bit win10 system sitting around for emergency purposes.

It's an oddball that I have around, only because the key I had was a win7 32bit upgrade from starter edition, that was upgraded to home 32bit, then upgraded again to win10... 32bit.

No worries though, since it uses intel LGA1150 Pentium and whatever intergrated graphics it comes with.
 
32bit on the PC has needed to go away for some time. I was completely bewildered that Microsoft even decided to offer a 32bit version of Windows 8, let alone 10

I haven't even seen a 32bit x86 CPU since 2003 when I bought my first Athlon 64...
 
I have some old computers still running Win7 32-bit, but they all have AGP slots and use cards that are already on the legacy drivers.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
32bit on the PC has needed to go away for some time. I was completely bewildered that Microsoft even decided to offer a 32bit version of Windows 8, let alone 10

I haven't even seen a 32bit x86 CPU since 2003 when I bought my first Athlon 64...
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They wanted people to pay money as an upgrade path from 32 bit.
 
With a 3GB process size overhead limit, is it surprising with the size of today's games?
 
32bit should of been dead before windows 7. Honestly if you still running old hardware there really is not much sense to use a modern OS. They haven't made a 32bit cpu since what core2?
 
Crap, I guess I am screwed.
speccy-E6700-1080tiSLI-XP.jpg
 
I still have my XP Pro x64 cd somewhere. You should be able to uninstall reinstall windows to x64 w/o too much trouble.

Or man it up, take the plunge, going all the way, and get Win 10 x64 and join the modern era. :)

Well I suppose you could upgrade to Vista x64... The driver issues from launch have largely been resolved, the reputation still persists though.
 
AMD has been 64 bit since what? 2003? Early 2004?

Windows 7 should've been what killed off 32 bit OS support.
 
I have a Q6600 that dual boots XP and Win7 (64 bit) The XP install is only so I can rebuild one of my old NAS units if a drive goes out. The rebuild process will not work on a 64 bit OS and anything above Win XP.
 
criccio said:
That CPU is 64-bit compatible. Leave the dark ages and upgrade your OS.

..unless this is a joke..
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I have Windows 10 running on Q6600s in 64 bit, so I'm going with this is a joke.

Spaceninja said:
I have a Q6600 that dual boots XP and Win7 (64 bit) The XP install is only so I can rebuild one of my old NAS units if a drive goes out. The rebuild process will not work on a 64 bit OS and anything above Win XP.
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I actually had to look up XP because I thought it only supported up to 2 cores. XP doesn't care about core count apparently, it just matters the number of sockets. You can't run XP home on a dual socket board, and you can't run XP pro on a quad socket board. A single socket with 20 cores sounds like it would be fine however.
 
gtrguy said:
Earlier- P4E in 2004...
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Nope, the actual last CPU was one of the Atoms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom

Apparently Lincroft that came out in 2010 was the last version of an Intel CPU that didn't support 64 bit. What's worse though is that it's technically possible that 64 bit support could have been disabled on some of the atoms that would have supported it.
 
Good. It's been about half a decade since I've done anything with a 32bit Windows OS...at home or at work.
 
My wife's recently work-assigned PC was running like shit so I recommended a RAM upgrade. Unfortunately they had set her up with a pretty nice notebook with 4GB and a 32 bit OS.. in 2017.

I'll never understand why companies will pay big bucks for people's time, then kneecap them with terrible tools that are a one time expense.
 
bman212121 said:
I have Windows 10 running on Q6600s in 64 bit, so I'm going with this is a joke.



I actually had to look up XP because I thought it only supported up to 2 cores. XP doesn't care about core count apparently, it just matters the number of sockets. You can't run XP home on a dual socket board, and you can't run XP pro on a quad socket board. A single socket with 20 cores sounds like it would be fine however.
Click to expand...

lol typo, just a single Q6600. 4 Gigs of ram and a 32 Gig WD RAptor HDD. Windows XP runs like a beast on it.
 
brentsg said:
My wife's recently work-assigned PC was running like shit so I recommended a RAM upgrade. Unfortunately they had set her up with a pretty nice notebook with 4GB and a 32 bit OS.. in 2017.

I'll never understand why companies will pay big bucks for people's time, then kneecap them with terrible tools that are a one time expense.
Click to expand...

I went to a new customers site the other day and they had new Surfaces they wanted to be joined to the Domain and they couldn't figure out how to do it. Too bad all of the machines had Home Edition on them. Why was that even an option?
 
Hameeeedo said:
LOL even the 1080Ti is limited to a 3GB of VRAM! Your 32 bit OS is handicapping your entire hardware stack.
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No, Speccy reports the VRam incorrectly on cards with more than 4GB.
speccy-hal-x100-1080ti.jpg


It looks like Speccy only reads the last bank of VRAM, a 6GB 980ti shows as 2GB.
 
erexx said:
Its only for specific needs. Usually for compatibility in offline manufacturing systems.
Click to expand...

People can purchase it though.

The issue is Win10 can be viewed as an upgrade for the much maligned Win8, and since Win8 supported 32-bit, MSFT kept it in 10.

I'd argue that for normal consumers there hasn't been a need for Win32 since Vista, but I know a few fringe cases where 64-bit outright breaks a few apps in the embedded world, so I understand why Win32 kept hanging around for so long.
 
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Zepher said:
No, Speccy reports the VRam incorrectly on cards with more than 4GB.
View attachment 47372

It looks like Speccy only reads the last bank of VRAM, a 6GB 980ti shows as 2GB.
Click to expand...

What was *typically* done was that within Windows, only 1GB of address space was actually allocated for the GPU, with the GPU driver having to manage how to actually load VRAM internally. That's why you could run SLI'd cards with VRAM greater then 4GB; the entire VRAM isn't mapped 1:1 into the Windows address space.
 
vegeta535 said:
32bit should of been dead before windows 7. Honestly if you still running old hardware there really is not much sense to use a modern OS. They haven't made a 32bit cpu since what core2?
Click to expand...
Many Atom x86 processors before the last few generations were 32-bit only, and that has only very recently changed.
But I agree, 32-bit mainstream support really needs to go bye bye.

The 4GB limit (~3GB RAM + 1GB+ hardware upper-address reservation) is beyond limiting in modern software, and even running just a few basic applications can quickly blow past 3-4GB very quickly, dipping into SWAP or virtual memory.
This must have been how people felt in the mid 1990s when 32-bit applications and CPUs (Intel 80386 and Motorola 68000 from 1985 and 1979, respectively, and beyond) really started to catch on, and their aging 80286 16-bit CPUs were becoming long in the tooth with the 24-bit 16MB address limit (12MB + 4MB hardware upper-address reservation).

Now just imagine how people felt with their Intel 8086/8088 16-bit CPUs with 20-bit address buses when 1MB was the limit (640KB RAM + 384KB hardware upper-address reservation)... or even earlier!
RIP 32-bit: 1979-2018 :D
 
gamerk2 said:
What was *typically* done was that within Windows, only 1GB of address space was actually allocated for the GPU, with the GPU driver having to manage how to actually load VRAM internally. That's why you could run SLI'd cards with VRAM greater then 4GB; the entire VRAM isn't mapped 1:1 into the Windows address space.
Click to expand...
Yep, that happens when I run 32-bit on my system as well with similar GPUs.
32GB of RAM and I can use 2GB of it. :D
 
I remember 8-bit and 16-bit, and they are gone. So will 32-bit, although it will still be used for a while longer.
 
Bigshrimp said:
I remember 8-bit and 16-bit, and they are gone. So will 32-bit, although it will still be used for a while longer.
Click to expand...
I suspect they will eventually make 32 bit something you have to enable (Windows Feature) like they did 16bit on 32 bit Windows.
 
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