Nvidia ends support for 32-bit operating system drivers

Nvidia announced yesterday plans to end Nvidia graphics driver support for 32-bit operating systems on the official Nvidia Support website.

Current Nvidia graphic cards drivers install on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.

This changes after the release of the upcoming 390.x version of the GeForce Game Ready Driver for all supported operating systems. Nvidia won't release drivers for 32-bit operating systems anymore regardless of GPU that is used.

The company notes that drivers won't install or operate on 32-bit operating systems anymore, and that new features and improvements won't be backported to the GeForce Game Ready Driver 390 or earlier versions.

After Release 390, NVIDIA will no longer release drivers for 32-bit operating systems for any GPU architecture. Later driver release versions will not operate, nor install, on 32-bit operating systems. Driver enhancements, driver optimizations, and operating system features in driver versions after Release 390 will not be incorporated back into Release 390 or earlier versions.

This decision affects all supported versions of Microsoft Windows -- Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 -- as well as Linux and FreeBSD.

Nvidia will release critical security updates for drivers until January 2019 however.

Nvidia announced the end of support for NVS 310 and NVS 315 furthermore after the release of the GeForce Game Ready driver 390.  These products won't be supported anymore after the release of the driver on all supported operating systems.

Nvidia will release security updates for the products until December 2019 (low to critical) and December 2012 (critical only)

Nvidia NVS graphics boards are designed for multi-display installations. Nvidia maintains two NVS products other than NVS 310 and 315 right now. NVS 510 comes with 2GB onboard memory and support for up to four displays. It supports 4K and DP 1.2.

NVS 810 is the top of the line product at this time. It comes with 4GB of memory, and eight display connectors.

Last but not least, Nvidia announced the end of support for select Nvidia quad-buffered Stereo features.

Beginning with release 396, Nvidia professional drivers for Windows won't support the following features:

• 3D DLP and Tridelity stereo display modes User interface and NVAPI access will be removed.
• NVAPI-based DirectX Stereo on Windows 10
• The following APIs will be deprecated: NvAPI_D3D1x_CreateSwapChain () and NvAPI_D3D9_CreateSwapChain ()

Developers are asked to use Microsoft native DXGI stereo APIs to continue using quad-buffered stereo on Windows.

Nvidia will release security fixes until 2021 though. Nvidia plans to release driver 390 in December 2017.

Closing Words

Nvidia ends graphics driver support for 32-bit operating systems. While graphics drivers will remain available for the foreseeable future on these systems, Nvidia won't release new features, improvements or bug fixes for 32-bit systems anymore after the release of driver 390.

A quick check on Steam reveals that most systems there are 64-bit systems already. All 32-bit systems combined make up less than 2% of the Steam population at this point in time.