14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA has recently announced that starting April 2018 the company would no longer develop new features and performance improvements for 32-bit operating system drivers, choosing instead to focus entirely on 64-bit platforms.
An announcement published earlier this month indicates that 32-bit operating systems, including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Linux, and FreeBSD, would only get critical security updates until January next year. For full functionality, users will have to upgrade to 64-bit platforms.
“Game Ready Driver upgrades, including performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes, will be available only on 64-bit operating systems. Critical security updates will be provided for 32-bit operating systems through January 2019,” NVIDIA said.
The Geforce Experience will also be part of the updated policy as well, and “software upgrades with new features, security updates, and bug fixes will be available only on Windows 64-bit operating systems. Existing features and services such as optimal game settings will continue to work on Windows 32-bit operating systems.”
32-bit operating systems losing ground
NVIDIA’s decision to abandon 32-bit operating systems is not at all surprising. The company decided in December 2017 to stop offering driver support for NVS products, with Release 390 the last that brought driver enhancements, optimizations and new features for these platforms.
In the case of NVS products, however, NVIDIA said it would deliver low to critical security patches until December 2019 and critical-only fixes until December 2021.
32-bit operating systems have gradually lost market share in the last few years and NVIDIA’s decision to drop support certainly makes sense. Data provided by Valve’s gaming platform Steam, which is currently the largest, shows that the 32-bit version of Windows 7 runs on just 1.40% of the systems connected to the service, while 32-bit Windows 10 is even behind with 0.27%.
For the sake of comparison, the 64-bit version of Windows 7 is the leading choice for Steam gamers with a share of no less than 57.05%.