Nvidia ends support for Fermi GPUs and 32-bit drivers
Click here to post a comment for Nvidia ends support for Fermi GPUs and 32-bit drivers on our message forum
Venix
some people complaint about 32 bit end of support ? why ? are you still using a Pentium D or an Athlon xp ? those are the latest desktop cpus that do not support 64bit ...i hate to burst the bubble but you have no way in hell to run new games on those cpus with even remotely approaching double digit fps to say the least ,hell can those cpu's play even (1080p 60fps ) hd youtube ? my core i3 330m on my laptop is utilizing 60 to 90 % the cpu on that one and rarely spikes to 100% where i get a slight stutter .... but hey it is an 8 years old craptop that i use only as a video player on some long ship trips XD
user1
Its not really that crazy, can you imagine saying the samething about an ati radeon DDR in 2006, after a certain point its time to move on, support costs money, i dont see anyone forking out money every year for gpu driver support, 6 years is a long time to support something, especially when you don't even sell a product anymore. Thats not to say longer support isn't better, but you really cant be mad when the almost always cheaper brand offers less long term support.
nvidia did the exact same thing when they lost market leader position, the Fx 5000 series card got like 5 years.
pretty sure the pentium D supports 64bit 😀
ObscureangelPT
@user1 That's why I've said that they should at least release a driver or 2 a year to fix the most annoying bugs and stop supporting with regular drivers, features and stuff like that, I'm pretty sure the costs would drop a lot.
Clients would still be satisfied than feeling forced to throw the GPU to the gargage just because they cut 100% the support entirelly for gaming, application, security.. etc..
A Laptop with a GT 820M still uses fermi.
This GPUs were seen very often in laptops in 2014, 2015 and even 2016, because nvidia rebranded the hell out of it.
Same goes for AMD with their VLIWs APUs.
You guys need to understand that not all the people do use the cards for gaming, and some software can break down after their own updates because of conflicts, the most common is Adobe tools that it's quite often to conflict with certain GPU drivers.
As for the 64 bits stuff I couldn't care less.
Even my Sempron 3000+ single core had 64 bits support and it's a 2005 CPU (I guess)
I still have a netbook intel atom Single core 1.6GHZ that don't support 64 bit.
That thing is so slow, that my phone would kick it's ass, only use it for storage or small server stuff.
Linux flies in there.
Venix
I will be darned! Indeed they do! Well p4 then :P
Irenicus
Who the hell uses 32bit anything in this age anyway?
schmidtbag
Seeing as some of these GPUs are old enough that some people may have them in Windows XP or pre-SP1-but-still-running Windows 7 systems, I could see how some of them would still be using 32 bit. I overall am in-favor of dropping 32-bit. We need more companies to put their foot down on such matters.
Fermi is still a decent architecture, but the biggest problems with it were power consumption and low memory availability. I doubt Nvidia has made any optimizations to that hardware in years anyway, so I'm surprised they bothered to maintain the drivers for as long as they have.
I agree AMD dropped the HD 2000-6000 stuff too early, though at least (in my opinion anyway) what they left us with was still pretty usable. I had a Crossfire setup that I used for about a year after the support was dropped and I didn't really have any major problems. I had to make a lot of manual adjustments, but I had a usable system.
These older GPUs are still being updated in Linux though, and they're yielding more functionality and performance than they were ever meant to have. They don't have crossfire support, and OpenCL is a bit incomplete, but otherwise they're getting a decent amount of attention for obsoleted hardware.
D3M1G0D
Some businesses require a 32-bit OS since they need to run legacy 16-bit apps. 64-bit Windows can run 32-bit apps in WOW (Windows-on-Windows) but not 16-bit apps. This is why Microsoft continues to sell both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.
Basically:
Windows 64-bit can run 64-bit apps as well as 32-bit apps in WOW.
Windows 32-bit can run 32-bit apps as well as 16-bit apps in WOW.
Of course those businesses could always upgrade their apps to 32 or 64-bit, but there are risks to doing so. As any programmer knows, migrating old apps is risky (even a direct port can screw something up, based on how those apps were coded), and businesses mostly just want to keep working apps running the way they are.
cryohellinc
Personally, good riddance. However, those that have hardware that needs 32bit drivers, what stops you from using the latest version of existing driver.
0blivious
Anyone running hardware/OS this old as their daily driver is already dealing with issues. This is just the next potential hurdle.
The oldest cards I still have in service (amongst our many PCs) is a GTX260 and an HD 5770. They just won't die and still deliver decent performance for people who don't really game. I cannot remember the last time I used a 32 bit CPU. Some old laptop...
anthos
I doubt such companies care to have the latest nvidia drivers.. (or any)
droopy_ro
At least as of a few months ago, got a cheap RX560 that i wanted to use in an older relative PC. Got a big surprise after installing it and booted Windows 10 (x86 for compatibility with older software) that there are no 32 bit drivers for RX560 series.
NGGJimmy
I still keep one GTX460 in my old PC. How the time flies. I still remember they promoting 400 Series with Just Cause 2
icedman
well this news kinda stinks i still have quite a few old firmi based parts that i regularly use around the house as backups and for light gaming old quadros from work and even my laptop uses the nvs 5200m (gt 540)
386SX
I owned a Pentium D805, it ran WIndows 7 x64 flawlessly. So YES, it does. 🙂
As my name might suggest a bit: ME! 🙂
But to be honest I prefer 8 or 16 bit with CLI like DOS, BUFFERS on 30 and everything else either DEVICEHIGHed or LHed. Oh, with 850's keyb.sys please! ;-)
But to be honest:
Anyone with a reason "still" uses 32bit software. Those reasons might be old software without updates for current versions OR selfmade software of a company where the employees left some time ago OR if you like to play old games OR if you are nostalgic (what is NOT meant as a bad thing by me!).
My own "hardcore experience" there was when I worked as an IT Manager for a company who made theirt own software 30 years ago in DOS. The software was essentially needed by a few departments and there was no other software with the same options around, so they kept it. That wasn't a big deal until Windows XP (w/ 16bit compatibility) ran out of support and was exchanged for Windows 7 x64. My only solution was some kind of selfmade DOS-VM to run it with Win7.
So there may be a lot of reasons why even today someone still uses "old" systems / software / else.
vbetts
Moderator
Aww, Fermi was the longest supported architecture from either Nvidia or AMD from these few past series...
Well at least they gave Fermi DX12 support like they said they would!
nosirrahx
Just refurbished an ancient AMD laptop that came with Vista 32 bit. Windows 10 64 bit was 100% compatible and runs great.
I have a bunch of old 7 keys and 7200 RPM laptop HDDs from SSD upgrades. I use my spare parts and keys from dead systems to make usable systems for charity.
Did the same for 6 RP5700 SFF systems that came with XP. They run flawlessly on Windows 10 64 bit.
Its not that hard to hit up a local junk yard to grab a (or a bunch of) Windows 7 key(s), which are 64 bit 99% of the time. You can use these to install Windows 10, for free, on just about anything with a 64 bit processor.
If you are running an authentic retro gaming system then your ancient hardware hasn't had support for ages anyway so this move does not change anything.
Netherwind
Stop living in the past and embrace the 64-bit future!
warlord
If you love killing all things past related, enjoy that grayish future. I won't take that idiotic trendy bus. Every device since 00s or even 90s working, I still use them or at least have them plugged, I don't like recycling/dropping out anything that works.
Netherwind
I remember my old 286 being gray and my CRT monitor even more so 🙂 But everyone to their own taste.
I understand nostalgic reasons though but not much more, but from a business perspective it's simply not worth putting money into something that a fraction still uses.
anthos
Nothing more grayish than expecting companies to support something you bought a few decades ago until the ends of time.
