Nvidia drops support for Windows 7 and 8.1 later this year (with one exception)

[harlan4096]

If you are a gamer and play games on a PC that runs Microsoft's Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 operating system, you will soon miss out on new Game Ready Drivers for Nvidia video cards, as the company revealed that it won't release Game Ready Driver upgrades anymore for these operating systems starting October 2021.

The only exception to the rule, according to Nvidia's support plan, is that it will continue to release critical security updates for the operating systems until September 2024.
 

Effective October 2021, Game Ready Driver upgrades, including performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes, will be exclusively available for systems utilizing Windows 10 as their operating system. Critical security updates will be available on systems utilizing Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 through September 2024.

Game Ready Drivers include security updates but also performance enhancements, optimizations for games, bug fixes that are not security related, and other improvements and changes.

The final Game Ready Driver supporting Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 will be released on August 31, 2021. The next driver, to be released on October 4, 2021, will only support Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system and not the older versions of the Windows operating system.

Nvidia explains that the majority of its customers have migrated to Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system already and that all mentioned versions of Windows, with the exception of Windows 8.1, are not supported by Microsoft anymore officially. Microsoft will end support for its Windows 8.1 operating system on October 1, 2023.

Nvidia wants to focus development on Windows 10 because of that.

In order to ensure GeForce owners experience the best possible security, support, and functionality, NVIDIA will now focus on Windows 10 operating system.

The effect on Nvidia gamers on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1

Gamers may not see much of a difference initially when support for the operating systems is dropped by Nvidia. The latest driver will continue to work on the devices and all the latest games will run. The games may not run as good as on Windows 10, because of missing performance improvements, bug fixes and feature updates, but they will run for the foreseeable future.

Nvidia has a dominant position on the PC video card market. On Steam, 75% of devices are powered by Nvidia hardware, and over 92% of devices run Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.

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