Farewell Maxwell (GTX 900) and Pascal (GTX 10)
NVIDIA has released its first 590-branch Game Ready driver for Windows. A few days ago the company introduced the same branch for Linux, which was the first to officially drop support for GeForce GTX 10 and GTX 900 series cards. The new Windows driver now does the same, formally ending Game Ready support for these architectures on this platform, with some caveats.
The changelog no longer lists any GeForce GTX 10 or GTX 900 models from the Pascal and Maxwell families. It also excludes the TITAN card based on the Volta architecture, the only desktop GPU of its kind.
This marks the end of regular Game Ready updates for these products, but not the end of support in general. NVIDIA will continue to provide quarterly security updates, so the drivers will still receive critical fixes. For gaming though, users sticking with GTX 900 or GTX 10 series should treat this as a clear sign to upgrade their hardware or consider switching to a Linux setup that still has active Game Ready support in the 590 branch.
| NVIDIA Architectures | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| VideoCardz | Release Year | Key Series (Desktop) | Game Ready Driver Support |
| Fermi | 2010 | GeForce 400, 500 | ❌ |
| Kepler | 2012 | GeForce 600, 700 | ❌ |
| Maxwell | 2014 | GeForce 700 (later), 900 | ❌ |
| Pascal | 2016 | GeForce 10 Series | ❌ |
| Volta | 2017 | TITAN V | ❌ |
| Turing | 2018 | GeForce 16 Series, RTX 20 | ✅ |
| Ampere | 2020 | GeForce RTX 30 Series | ✅ |
| Ada Lovelace | 2022 | GeForce RTX 40 Series | ✅ |
| Blackwell | 2025 | GeForce RTX 50 Series | ✅ |
Not all Pascal cards are discontinued
The full driver changelog confirms that not all Pascal cards are discontinued. There are still five GeForce MX series laptop GPUs based on Pascal, and they are still included in the support list.
The reason is unclear. NVIDIA may have committed to an extended support window for these mobile GPUs through agreements with specific laptop vendors. NVIDIA has effectively stopped updating the MX series for years, so this remaining support is likely narrow in scope and limited to critical updates.
PhysX for RTX 50 series
NVIDIA has also confirmed that 32-bit PhysX acceleration is coming back. Back in February, the company announced it would stop releasing 32-bit CUDA binaries, which meant modern GPUs such as the RTX 50 series could not use GPU-accelerated PhysX, while some older cards could still benefit and run certain games at higher frame rates. Restoring 32-bit PhysX support brings feature parity across product generations and closes that gap.
We heard the feedback from the community, and with the launch of our new driver today, we are adding custom support for GeForce gamers’ most played PhysX-accelerated games, enabling full performance on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, in line with our existing PhysX support on prior-generation GPUs.
NVIDIA confirmed that these games will benefit from this accelration:
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Borderlands 2
- Mafia II
- Metro 2033
- Metro: Last Light
- Mirror’s Edge
- Support for Batman: Arkham Asylum is planned to be added in the first part of 2026.
NVIDIA is also announcing a change to NVENC on 590 branch
Until now, drivers still supported applications built with older NVENC presets and older rate control modes. R580 is the last driver branch that will support them. From R590 (59x.xx) onward, these older presets and modes are no longer supported, so any application that still uses them will stop working after updating to R590 drivers. To avoid this, developers need to move to Video Codec SDK 10.0 or newer, switch to the new presets and rate control modes, and follow the migration guide included in the SDK.
Source: NVIDIA
