NVIDIA Discontinues Game Ready Drivers for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 Graphics Cards

NVIDIA has announced bad news for gamers using computers running Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. The graphics card manufacturer will no longer release Game Ready driver updates for these systems from October this year. The exception is critical security updates, which, according to the company’s schedule, will be released until September 2024.

“From October 2021, Game Ready driver updates, including performance improvements, new features and bug fixes, will be available exclusively for systems running Windows 10,” NVIDIA said in a statement.

The latest Game Ready driver (GeForce R470) with support for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 will be released on August 31, 2021. The next version, the release of which is scheduled for October 4, 2021, will only support Windows 10. The company explains its decision by the fact that most users have already switched to the Windows 10 operating system, and all the mentioned versions of the system, with the exception of Windows 8.1, are no longer officially supported. Microsoft (Windows 8.1 support will end on October 1, 2023).

NVIDIA wants to focus on developing drivers for the latest version of Windows so that GeForce owners can get the best performance, security, support, and functionality. At first, users won’t notice the difference when NVIDIA drops support for older versions of Windows, but over time, Game Ready will add new features, bug fixes, and other optimizations that should improve gaming performance and overall GPU performance.

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