Nvidia is gearing up to launch its new RTX 50-series GPUs based on the Blackwell architecture, starting with the RTX 5090.
It also seems that the company is preparing to end support for some of its older GPU architectures.
As per recent CUDA release notes, Nvidia will soon freeze feature support for Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures.
This indicates that while these architectures are still supported by Nvidia’s December Game Ready driver package, they will not receive any new features or performance optimizations afterward. Instead, Nvidia will get security updates.
The Maxwell and Pascal architectures powered some notable graphics cards, including the Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 750 Ti and the Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1060.
The GTX 1060, in particular, was a favorite among gamers and held the top spot in the Steam Hardware Survey for over five years. As of now, it still ranks 12th on the list.
Nvidia hasn’t disclosed its strategy for these older GPUs just yet, so keep an eye out for future updates.