TL;DR: Nvidia has officially confirmed that it will no longer offer driver support for its Kepler-based graphics cards as of October 4, 2021. Additionally, team green is ending GeForce support for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 on the same day.

Last month, Nvidia appeared to reveal that it was the end of the line for Kepler when data center documents showed the R470 driver would be the last to support the architecture. But the company caused confusion by later removing the entry and listing Kepler's driver support as "ongoing."

Now, Nvidia has confirmed R470 will be the final Game Ready driver to support Kepler GPUs when it arrives on August 31. The following driver, R495 GA1, will land a few days later (October 4) without support for cards such as the first Titan series and the one-time flagship GTX 780 Ti. Here's the full list of impacted products:

  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Black
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Ti
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (192-bit)
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Ti OEM
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 740
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 730
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 720
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 710
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 640
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 635
  • NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

If you're wondering why the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, GeForce GTX 750, and GeForce GTX 745 (OEM) are absent, it's because they use the Maxwell-based GM107 GPU that succeeded Kepler. The GTX 750 Ti is the 23rd most popular card among Steam survey participants, while the highest Kepler card is the 39th-place GT 730, which is found in just 0.49% of respondents' PCs.

Remember this beast?

Additionally, Nvidia said the R470 GA5 driver would be the last to support Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 as "the vast majority of our GeForce customers have migrated to Windows 10."

While critical security updates will be available to Kepler-series GPUs through September 2024, owners will no longer receive performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes following the R470 driver. So you might want to avoid the GT 730 that MSI just brought back, not that it's aimed at gamers.