Nvidia became the center of attention when they dropped a worrisome news for its graphics card customers: The GPU giant announced about dropping GPU support for 32 bit operating systems. The news came out at the end of 2017, and now it seems Nvidia has finalized things and is going to implement what they said soon.
It should be noted that those with a 32 bit operating system had a fair chance to upgrade their OS, even if they wanted to stick with their OS release. This is because even the good old, Windows XP had its 64 bit version released around April of 2005. This means, Nvidia had been supporting the 32 bit architecture for more than 13 years and it is not surprising that they have finally decided to move on.
All the details are now on Nvidia’s support website. From this month immediately all the graphics card on the 32 bit version of Operating Systems wouldn’t be provided driver support. This drop in support would be for the Nvidia’s GeForce series GPUs. Though, there is still a shimmer of hope left for these people, since Security Updates wouldn’t cease immediately but would be followed up until the first month of 2019.
Though, there is still some bad news, since because of the support drop, people wouldn’t be able to get Game Ready updates. They would also be losing out on any additions to GeForce experience which could be there in the coming time.
If you happen to still be running a 32 bit version of operating system, then there can be two reasons for this. Either you have a system which doesn’t support 64 bit version of OS, or that you bought a PC which came pre installed with a 32 bit version and you were too lazy to update. If the case is the former one, then you are out of luck, but those belonging to the second case, there is a chance for you to update your systems right away to 64 bit versions of the operating system before Nvidia drops support on you.
Not only this, but support is also going to be dropped for the Fermi based GPUs as well. The notorious GTX 480 and the GTX 580 fall under this category. Though it was time that these noisy GPUs were given a silent death. It would also be affecting the old lower end notebooks. If you want to have a look over at the whole list of GPUs you can do so over here.
To be honest, one doesn’t really feel sorry for this move and if you happen to be affected, you shouldn’t too. At least Nvidia did the courtesy of providing support for more than a decade. Though the Fermi based GPU support may seem to retire a bit early, it is alright considering the fact that it has been 7 years since those GPUs were released. Besides, it was now time that you finally upgraded your PC if you hadn’t for a decade or so.