Nvidia "EOL" end of life Driver support..

I put this here for the DEV's to see also...since it affects a lot of people and future gaming.

I found this some what interesting... that 340.xx Driver is where the out with the old and in with the new starts to take place. A lot of people are going to be very unhappy about this.

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/NVIDIA-GPUs-pre-Fermi-Are-End-Life-After-340xx-Drivers

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3473

Don't assume that 2016 means they are going to support your card. They are referring to problems with windows... interface problems not games.

Seems like it hits notebook users more really - the oldest I see people running on desktops are 4xx cards which aren't in the EOL list. And those are already a couple of years old and probably due for an upgrade soon.

Well what this really implies is that anything older than GTX-400 series will not be supported after the 343.xx update. That will add a whole lot of machines to this current list...

That will wipe out about 3/4 of SOE machines that are able to play PS2.

Source for those number?

Also just because you will no longer receive driver support doesn't mean you can no longer play the game.

And as I've said in another thread: If people want to stick with their ancient hardware / software then they should be left behind. It's time to get modern stuff.

Well if you look up all the so called machines that PS2 can play everything from the green area down will be EOL. That is sort of about 3/4 of what SOE says can play PS2. 400,600,700 are all in the green. Any thing else is EOL...

And we are 3 updates away from 340.xx --- Need I say more... or do you need more prof.

Really, NO ONE seriously would be playing this game without a 400-series or newer Nvidia card. Relax. Its going to be ok.

P/S - Besides, its not like we can even upgrade to the newer drivers even with newer cards today.

From my experience of nvidia not getting regular driver updates is probably less bad in terms of stable performance and bug free gaming than getting them. These guys are not scared to break things in order to get better performance with the latest popular title and they don't care if you are not interested in it.

Wait, i'm confused... What does this mean?

I use to be playing this (just before December last year (so 1 year of PS2)) on a PC with these specs.

AMD A4 2core 3.5ghz APU
8gb ram (went from 4-8 when the game started).
Nividia 9600GT

BAH people whine too much... I started the game with a 0.4 KDR got better with the lag till I got 1.1 and then I upgraded (I needed to play other games).

This game just looks crap on MAX settings, I like certain settings down to high or even medium (motion blur off).
Also 24-30FPS is playable no matter what people say.

Considering neither of the driver versions they've released in the past year has managed to work with PS2 without crashes and blue screens on my machine, I'd say 'higby you too, NVIDIA'. And maybe 'hire better programmers, for higby's sake'.

So many people had 560 and 560 Ti issues (posts on Nvidia forum) and some older cards with some of the new drivers. Even going back to old drivers didn't help. My perfectly stable card started crashing for months after an update from Geforce Experience. I never would have figured a new driver (other than Beta ones) would have left me worse off. From reading a bunch, it made me feel like Nvidia purposefully damaged these older cards, possibly by overvolting, just to make people buy the 600 series, 700 series and now upcoming 800 series instead of sticking with old ones. Conspiracy theory yeah, but man, I finally gave in and bought a 600 series. I couldn't even browse the web! The drivers would crash even on Desktop! I literally tried everything and eventually just gave in. Zero issues now; same drivers.


Also, just to clear up info about the 400 series cards. They're actually really good even if old because you get a lot of CUDA cores for the price and their IPS is actually faster. Not that long ago, I forget which 400 but one of them was more expensive than even newer cards in the same range. There are a lot of video editors out there that use them actually. Even some 500 series cards are actually beefier than 600 and 700.

Not saying gamers shouldn't upgrade though. Just pointing that out.

Just like XP the end of the 32 bit driver is here... 340.xx will be the last 32 bit driver for Nvidia... not that they will not fix stuff in the future aka 2015 but that's it for 32 bits. Can't say I did not see it coming. ...! And anything that ran on 32 bits well too bad "EOL".

So anything that does not support DX11 is left out... that is why SOE is updating.

If any one thinks that PS2 has problems with black screens and freezing they should read the nvidia driver forums this happen in lots of games not just PS2.

Nvidia is coming out with new hardware later this year 2014 with new architecture --- yet another block busting software driver update that well be needed that will not work...! Faster maybe...????

If I got this right, driver 341.xx and on - will only support DX11 & 12 ... and will only be in 64 bits.

They can't actively support things forever, unfortunately, but usually legacy drivers are fine (sometimes even better given Nvidias recent driver shenanigans).


In all honesty the new Nvidia stuff looks interesting, not because the performance will be better, but because the power used will hopefully be dramatically slashed (if the GTX 750 ti is anything to go by), I can certainly put up with them legacying some older stuff if that is the case.

Meanwhile, Planetside 2 still can't run on the latest Nvidia drivers - which don't seem to have a problem with any other popular game.

Yes, you do. What are you trying to tell us? That it is somehow SOE's fault that NVidia is discontinuing support for their ancient hardware? What are they supposed to do about that?

Upgrade your hardware.

I don't have the problem my hardware is fine.....!

The point here is PS2 has to be calling and running DX11 or DX12 by the time we get to 341.xx or PS2 will crash... at a 2 month update cycle that is 6 months away - 4 updates away. Any PS2 calls to a DX9 lib, 10 lib will crash PS2 when it gets to 341.xx assuming they call a DX9 or DX10 dll file.

SOE is sort of slow jumping on the stick if you know what I mean...!

I already asked SOE when DX11 was going to be done in PS2 --- NO one knows...!!!

Indeed the games stability with current drivers (and recent driver) is much more of a worry.

That shouldn't be the case, removing older GPUs from new driver support shouldn't mean the drivers themselves lose all backward compatability to older games.

Well I am not the one that wrote the report on this.. Nivida say they will only support DX11 after 341.xx that means DX9 & dx10 are out and all new drivers only support DX11.. that's the point. If you want to use an older driver the DX9 & 10 will work with the new hardware for now. But next generation Nvidia stuff will not.

But that's not what people do is it. People always use the latest driver. Look at it this way Nvidia is just cutting its work load... old is old - DX9 & DX10 had there day. Time to move on...! And dump the 32 bit stuff.

You know user101, for someone who claims to be some kind of "software engineer" you sure do spew a lot of nonsense, case in point this thread.

Tell me, will DX9 and DX10 games all of a sudden stop working after R340 driver branch? Cause my 7800 GT still runs every DX9 game just fine despite driver support for it being cut off 1.5 years ago.

No the problem will be that SOE will have to do all DX11 calls starting with 341.xx... so any hardware/software that uses DX11 will be ok..!

I assume if the 32 bit SOE stuff is still running it will use DX9 &10..!


It will just work fine for you... because according to these guys there will be no drivers for you after 340.xx http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/NVIDIA-GPUs-pre-Fermi-Are-End-Life-After-340xx-Drivers
The way this sore of reads is that all 400 series and newer will be the only things that NV supports. I know it says 2016 but that is for integration of windows in older machines. I went digging around about this at Nvidia... trying to figure out what they were doing. When I ran across this DX11 stuff and the drivers. If they are dumping anything earlier than 400 stuff and only supporting DX11 & 12 and on .. then you have to come to the conclusion that from 340.xx that the last of 32 bits and that is the last of DX9 & 10.

These PCPER.com people wrote this in a very vague way... trying to obscure the truth in a manner that focuses on GPU stuff . But if it is true for the GPU then it is true for the general hardware to. If NV does not driver support GPU DX9 then they don't support the rest of the graphics either.

". If you do have the GeForce 405, or anything 300-series and prior, then GeForce Release 340.xx drivers will be the end of the line for you." This is there quote. The reason for this quote is NV is dumping DX9 & 10...! 400 500 600 700 and titans will only have DX11 support. NV new hardware coming out later this year 2014 is different in how it process GPU stuff... and the new hardware only supports DX11.

Wait for NV new stuff to come out late this year... to buy a new Vcard...!