NVIDIA Moves Fermi GPUs to Legacy Status, Ends 32-Bit Driver Support

Megalith

Megalith

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NVIDIA has ended mainstream graphics driver support for Fermi-based GeForce GPUs: they will no longer receive Game Ready driver enhancements, performance optimizations, and bugfixes. The company is also following up on their promise from December about dropping mainstream driver support for 32-bit operating systems, though critical security updates will continue through January 2019.

In context, NVIDIA’s previous architecture retirement came in March 2014, when their D3D10 Tesla architecture GPUs were moved to legacy status after around 8 years of support. And with this week’s announcement, Fermi has received mainstream support for around the same amount of time, marking the beginning of the end for NVIDIA's first D3D11-class GPU architecture.
 
do you think there'll be any significant performance increases because they dont have to support these anymore?
 
vegeta535 said:
Cue people bitching they ending support for out dated hw.
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Damn straight I'm bitching, I've been waiting for over a year to buy a new video card, but the prices are outrageous, and now they're ending support for the best card I own. And this is happening while NVIDIA has been forced to slow their product cycle because the people in engineering and marketing are too busy wiping their ass on $100 bills to bring out a new platform. Is it too much to ask that they continue to support a 4-year old video card during the current mining madness?
 
seanreisk said:
Damn straight I'm bitching, I've been waiting for over a year to buy a new video card, but the prices are outrageous, and now they're ending support for the best card I own. And this is happening while NVIDIA has been forced to slow their product cycle because the people in engineering and marketing are too busy wiping their ass on $100 bills to bring out a new platform. Is it too much to ask that they continue to support a 4-year old video card during the current mining madness?
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are you sure 4 years?.. lol, the GTX 580 (if that's the card you are using) it's almost 7.5years old.. and if that's the best card you own during all these years, then you can for sure wait a little longer as anything in the last 3 years i't's probably too demanding for that kind of old GPUs even at low settings.
 
I think my 480 qualifies as a fermi. It died years and years ago which prompted me to go 680 then a 780, which are cards still in use by my wife and a spare box.
 
Araxie said:
are you sure 4 years?..
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Well, 4 years ago is when I bought the card... BUT, it's a GTX 770, and after your post I went and looked a little harder, and I've found an error (I think.) I have an older installation of RedHat that I use on my main computer because it has a copy of Oracle tools that ... uh ... that I can't afford to replace ... that might have come from my last workplace ... 'cause Oracle is even more expensive than a new graphics card ... Anyway, I was using lspci+, and it's telling me it's a GF104, but it can't be, it should be at least a GK104. This all makes me wonder if this is why I've had so much trouble with Wine on this computer.

But now I can't even find lspci+, and this RedHat installation is at least 10 years old, so I'm wondering if it's looking at something from a config file, because I don't think NVIDIA puts architecture information in their BIOS.


P.S. But in any case, fuck NVIDIA! Those assholes can clean my weenie, if you know what I mean.

P.P.S. Thanks for ruining my Saturday, 'cause now I'm gonna fart around with this Linux installation until midnight, I'm already thinking I should order a clean hard disk and make a duplicate of this drive before I start, I've never liked the way that Windows 10 plays with Linux in the boot sequence.

P.P.P.S. I just reread my post, and I realized that it makes me sound like a fatheaded Linux pimp, which is AWESOME, 'cause I'm mostly just an idiot. I'm going to print out this post and use it in my .sig so that people will be impressed with my lin'fu.
 
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This is kind of what I've been nervous about for a while. I have a Kepler card, and that's the next architecture after Fermi... I hope that doesn't get discontinued any time soon.

I've been running this GTX 670 for about 6 years now. I skipped Maxwell because I wanted to wait for Pascal, and then I wanted wait for an overclocked version rather than jumping on a Founder's Edition. There were stock issues early on, but I kept waiting for them to get resolved like they did with Kepler. It seems like instead they just got worse and stayed that way right up until the end of Pascal's life. So here I am, sitting here with a GTX 670 and a PS4 Pro because I wasn't willing to take the best deals available before the stock issues started, wasn't willing to settle for a stock card, wanted the GTX 1070 specifically, and then wasn't willing to pay the inflated prices when it became clear the stock issues weren't going to resolve themselves in a reasonable amount of time.
 
seanreisk said:
Well, 4 years ago is when I bought the card... BUT, it's a GTX 770, and after your post I went and looked a little harder, and I've found an error (I think.) I have an older installation of RedHat that I use on my main computer because it has a copy of Oracle tools that ... uh ... that I can't afford to replace ... that might have come from my last workplace ... 'cause Oracle is even more expensive than a new graphics card ... Anyway, I was using lspci+, and it's telling me it's a GF104, but it can't be, it should be at least a GK104. This all makes me wonder if this is why I've had so much trouble with Wine on this computer.

But now I can't even find lspci+, and this RedHat installation is at least 10 years old, so I'm wondering if it's looking at something from a config file, because I don't think NVIDIA puts architecture information in their BIOS.


P.S. But in any case, fuck NVIDIA! Those assholes can clean my weenie, if you know what I mean.

P.P.S. Thanks for ruining my Saturday, 'cause now I'm gonna fart around with this Linux installation until midnight, I'm already thinking I should order a clean hard disk and make a duplicate of this drive before I start, I've never liked the way that Windows 10 plays with Linux in the boot sequence.

P.P.P.S. I just reread my post, and I realized that it makes me sound like a fatheaded Linux pimp, which is AWESOME, 'cause I'm mostly just an idiot. I'm going to print out this post and use it in my .sig so that people will be impressed with my lin'fu.
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I mean, if you open up the case and physically look at the card, and it says GTX 770, it's either

A: GK104

Or B: Fake

And to figure out if it's A of B, run a quick benchmark. Maybe a VRAM speed test. And you'll know for sure, no matter what the software says the card is.
 
brucethemoose said:
I mean, if you open up the case and physically look at the card, and it says GTX 770 ...
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It's a GTX 770, I just happened to be booted into Linux when I was reading the article, and I ran lpsci(+) out of curiosity. It said I had a GF104, which is supposedly Fermi, and I immediately got a bunch of beach sand in my butt. It's my fault, I just can't be bothered to keep track of information like Fermi / Pascal / Milkshake / Gerbil Islands / Green River / Marmite Miner or whatever the companies decide to use as their process names.
 
Ho
seanreisk said:
Well, 4 years ago is when I bought the card... BUT, it's a GTX 770, and after your post I went and looked a little harder, and I've found an error (I think.) I have an older installation of RedHat that I use on my main computer because it has a copy of Oracle tools that ... uh ... that I can't afford to replace ... that might have come from my last workplace ... 'cause Oracle is even more expensive than a new graphics card ... Anyway, I was using lspci+, and it's telling me it's a GF104, but it can't be, it should be at least a GK104. This all makes me wonder if this is why I've had so much trouble with Wine on this computer.

But now I can't even find lspci+, and this RedHat installation is at least 10 years old, so I'm wondering if it's looking at something from a config file, because I don't think NVIDIA puts architecture information in their BIOS.


P.S. But in any case, fuck NVIDIA! Those assholes can clean my weenie, if you know what I mean.

P.P.S. Thanks for ruining my Saturday, 'cause now I'm gonna fart around with this Linux installation until midnight, I'm already thinking I should order a clean hard disk and make a duplicate of this drive before I start, I've never liked the way that Windows 10 plays with Linux in the boot sequence.

P.P.P.S. I just reread my post, and I realized that it makes me sound like a fatheaded Linux pimp, which is AWESOME, 'cause I'm mostly just an idiot. I'm going to print out this post and use it in my .sig so that people will be impressed with my lin'fu.
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Honestly that is all well and stuff. It seem you don't even need newer drivers for your usage. It is not like old drivers cease to exist.
 
I remember getting the 460 as a replacement for a 8800 GTS (I think, I know it had 320MB of memory and was assembled in 2007), and I did see a big improvement. Nowadays, a 1050Ti would be a better card than the 460.... once prices drop down to more reasonable levels. I know that I tore apart that 460 in order to replace the thermal compound, and the card ended up in a financially-challenged friend's machine.

Or was it the 8600 GTS that I had. Awww, it's irrelevant compared to the 980 I have now.
 
damn, Fermi is that old already?...feels like yesterday I had my GTX 580...
 
seanreisk said:
Damn straight I'm bitching, I've been waiting for over a year to buy a new video card, but the prices are outrageous, and now they're ending support for the best card I own.
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Eh?

The Fermi cards were the 4xx and 5xx series of cards. The 4xx cards were released in 2010, and the 5xx cards were released in late 2010-2011. The 6xx series were introduced 2012.... over six years ago.

And.... and, quite frankly, the 1050Ti card has the equivalent performance of a 680 card, yet it's supposed to have a price of $150 or less. Yet, because of the CyberCurrency craze (which is finally ending), the price tag is more around $240.
 
Well that's 400 and 500 series cards, I believe. And of course they will still work. Maybe they've rung everything out of them they can anyway. In graphics cards terms those are getting pretty long in the tooth. As for 32 bit, well it's time to move on, I don't even have a 32 bit compiler installed anymore and I tend to hang onto things. My 770 will be next I suppose, but hell I'm using a two year old driver with it anyway and when I get my 980ti repaired it will go back to collecting dust (it's actually a pretty decent card with 3GB, and if I was building a simple system for playing older or graphically simpe games I'd be tempted to use it, though probably I'd get something new and "cheap" to keep power usage down).
 
I still have my EVGA GTX 480 with a lifetime warranty. I actually had two running in SLI, they really helped with the heat during the winter months. during the summer even with a fan and AC i would be sweating while gaming! LOL!!
 
b/w work and home I have all chips going back to Fermi on hand. TBH, I don't see any reason to keep Fermi support either, we've had so many generations of chips since and they are significant improvements in performance since that time.
 
I really liked my two GTX570s in the day. Oh well, goodbye old space heaters, even the A/C couldn't keep up with you!
 
seanreisk said:
Well, 4 years ago is when I bought the card... BUT, it's a GTX 770, and after your post I went and looked a little harder, and I've found an error (I think.) I have an older installation of RedHat that I use on my main computer because it has a copy of Oracle tools that ... uh ... that I can't afford to replace ... that might have come from my last workplace ... 'cause Oracle is even more expensive than a new graphics card ... Anyway, I was using lspci+, and it's telling me it's a GF104, but it can't be, it should be at least a GK104. This all makes me wonder if this is why I've had so much trouble with Wine on this computer.

But now I can't even find lspci+, and this RedHat installation is at least 10 years old, so I'm wondering if it's looking at something from a config file, because I don't think NVIDIA puts architecture information in their BIOS.


P.S. But in any case, fuck NVIDIA! Those assholes can clean my weenie, if you know what I mean.

P.P.S. Thanks for ruining my Saturday, 'cause now I'm gonna fart around with this Linux installation until midnight, I'm already thinking I should order a clean hard disk and make a duplicate of this drive before I start, I've never liked the way that Windows 10 plays with Linux in the boot sequence.

P.P.P.S. I just reread my post, and I realized that it makes me sound like a fatheaded Linux pimp, which is AWESOME, 'cause I'm mostly just an idiot. I'm going to print out this post and use it in my .sig so that people will be impressed with my lin'fu.
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Sir had a little bit too much coffee before posting this, didn't Sir?
 
Nobody like obsolescence. But I think it's a fair timeline.
 
I can't really complain about this much. I guess I'll need to replace the gtx 460 768 meg edition in my kids desktop though. lol
 
thecold said:
I can't really complain about this much. I guess I'll need to replace the gtx 460 768 meg edition in my kids desktop though. lol
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This is the kind of comment I just don't understand. Do the current drivers work for you? Nvidia isn't going to come to your house and uninstall the current drivers leaving you with no choice, nor are they no longer going to host drivers for this generation of cards. I can still download drivers for my TNT2 from their site.

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE.
 
thecold said:
I can't really complain about this much. I guess I'll need to replace the gtx 460 768 meg edition in my kids desktop though. lol
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is not like you will be playing anything modern with that GPU anyway, any gameready driver will be completely useless for your kids lol.
 
Araxie said:
is not like you will be playing anything modern with that GPU anyway, any gameready driver will be completely useless for your kids lol.
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I'm not disagreeing, it's just a sign to finally upgrade the graphics card. They are getting older and want to expand the horizon beyond the trine series and minecraft.
 
I’m not even running 7xx series cards anymore. I do have a few around though.

As much hate as I’ve given nvidia for GPP, this is appropriate.
 
I was sad when my 2x Radeon 4870x2 setup stopped getting new drivers from AMD but even years later with existing drivers they still work quite well for the older games that they are still asked to play (World of Warcraft mostly). I can't imagine it being any worse for Nvidia Fermi cards. I actually still know someone using a GTX470 for World of Warcraft also.

It does make me very curious how much life my GTX680's have left though. I bought two of them after I built my 2500K setup in ~2012. I brought the two cards over to my new rig a few years ago when I built a 5820K setup, and also bought a 3rd matching card as a temporary upgrade. I didn't plan to use them this long, but i'm currently still using those 3x GTX680. I'm wondering if the Kepler support cycle will be based on the 6xx cards or the 7xx cards which were also Kepler.

Bigbacon said:
ok so what cards are Fermi cards? that would be a nice thing to know.
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Geforce 4xx and 5xx cards.
 
So I'm screwed when it comes to my old GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB? Well, that's just bullshit. I paid good money for my GPU back in 2006 and I expected it to be supported for at least 25 years.
 
Wyodiver said:
So I'm screwed when it comes to my old GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB? Well, that's just bullshit. I paid good money for my GPU back in 2006 and I expected it to be supported for at least 25 years.
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As long as the PCIe slot holds up OK, it's still 'supported' :)
 
focbde said:
So that's why RAM prices are so high, using it all up on sh*tty GT1030s! Bastards...
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Yeah, just learned about that yesterday from that Linus guy who doesn't seem too popular here.

The huge problem is that there isn't a unique SKU, and that the info about DDR4 and slower clocks isn't made obvious to buyers.
 
seanreisk said:
Damn straight I'm bitching, I've been waiting for over a year to buy a new video card, but the prices are outrageous, and now they're ending support for the best card I own. And this is happening while NVIDIA has been forced to slow their product cycle because the people in engineering and marketing are too busy wiping their ass on $100 bills to bring out a new platform. Is it too much to ask that they continue to support a 4-year old video card during the current mining madness?
Click to expand...

This, This is a blow to us budget gamers. Up until last year I was rocking a eVGA GTX560ti 448core and used a PNY 9800GT for years before that.

With the current costs and scarcity due to the miners, this action feels like a bit of planned obsolescence and an attempt to force upgrades to newer cards for more than MSRP.
 
Bigbacon said:
ok so what cards are Fermi cards? that would be a nice thing to know.
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400 and 500 series cards are Fermi, e.g. GTX 460 or GTX 570.
qb4ever said:
This, This is a blow to us budget gamers. Up until last year I was rocking a eVGA GTX560ti 448core and used a PNY 9800GT for years before that.

With the current costs and scarcity due to the miners, this action feels like a bit of planned obsolescence and an attempt to force upgrades to newer cards for more than MSRP.
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It's 8-year old hardware. Do you expect them to continue updating drivers for that old hardware forever? Tesla support for that 9800GT ended in 2014.

And has already been stated, it's not like the card will suddenly stop working just because you can't update to the newest driver. Security updates are continuing through January 2019, meaning you can get new drivers until then. There just won't be any further game optimizations. You could use that card for 8 more years, if you wanted to.
 
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