Nvidia Freezes Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta Support in CUDA

NVIDIA has started phasing out support Maxwell, Pascal and Volta GPUs, since the release of the CUDA library 12.8. The company announced that these architectures are now considered "frozen", which means there are no new features, although the basic functionality is still preserved.

CUDA 12.8 includes drivers version 571.96, which still support the Maxwell and Pascal architectures. This is confirmed by VideoCardz specialists who have studied the update. However, support in game drivers remains questionable, especially for older models. For the Volta architecture used in the video card TITAN Volta, the changes will be less significant, since this series has long been removed from mass consumption.

What this means for users:

• Architecture Maxwell is the basis of the GeForce GTX 700/900 video cards.
• Pascal — is the popular GTX 10-series lineup, including the GTX 1060 and 1050 Ti, which are still relevant today. According to Steam data for December 2021, the GTX 1060 ranks 12 place in popularity among users, and the GTX 1050 Ti is 16 place.
• Volta used exclusively in TITAN Volta.

The gradual reduction of support for these architectures in NVIDIA software has already begun. However, as the experience with Kepler shows, over time, support for game drivers for "pre-RTX" video cards may be completely discontinued.

NVIDIA has already abandoned updates for the Kepler architecture. Maxwell and Pascal are the next candidates. Users of older graphics cards should take these changes into account when updating drivers and switching to new versions of CUDA.