Will the next generation of Video Cards still support Windows 7?

ZodaEX

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What do you guys think? It feels to me like we'll probably at the least get 1-2 more generations of Video cards that support Win7. I say that because I feel that it would be leaving money on the table for Nvidia and AMD not to.
 
Steam hardware survey shows Windows 7 holding 36% of OS marketshare, and Win 7 is supported by Microsoft until 2020. I'd say it's extremely likely that the upcoming generation of cards will be supported on Windows 7.
 
Extended support for Win7 does last until 2020, but only until January 14th. You have at least until then, guaranteed. That's less than a year and a half away so really not that long from now, probably only one more generation.

Would Nvidia & AMD keep supporting Win7 after Microsoft stops supporting it? It's possible, depending on how many keep clinging onto it, and how popular DX12 gets (or doesn't get).
 
Well didn’t both colors only just recently drop XP from their unified driver stacks?

I think Kepler was the last XP supported architecture, which was a few years ago from where we stand now, but look at it from the other direction and XP was supported for as long as it held a large user base and long after upgraded versions were available.

I imagine Win7 will likely follow the same - if people keep using it, it will remain supported until people get drug away kicking and screaming.
 
Extended support for Win7 does last until 2020, but only until January 14th. You have at least until then, guaranteed. That's less than a year and a half away so really not that long from now, probably only one more generation.

Would Nvidia & AMD keep supporting Win7 after Microsoft stops supporting it? It's possible, depending on how many keep clinging onto it, and how popular DX12 gets (or doesn't get).

Don't forget that this support is only for maintenance drivers and does not mean Microsoft will support new features/hardware. Just look at Microsoft's non-support for the newest AMD/Intel CPUs in Windows 7. Sure, you can get Windows 7 to work with new chips but Microsoft doesn't officially support them. And it appears that both AMD/Intel tow the line by not officially supporting it either.
 
Steam hardware survey shows Windows 7 holding 36% of OS marketshare, and Win 7 is supported by Microsoft until 2020. I'd say it's extremely likely that the upcoming generation of cards will be supported on Windows 7.

Although the marketshare is large, the relevant statistic is how many modern systems use Windows 7. I would imagine that few people will buy a GTX 20xx card if they're running running some Core 2 Duo system (as an example, as I would imagine few people with bleeding edge hardware will want to voluntarily limit themselves). So an interesting infograph would be what is the median hardware level for Windows 10 and Windows 7 systems, which IIRC, is not public.

Well didn’t both colors only just recently drop XP from their unified driver stacks?

I think Kepler was the last XP supported architecture, which was a few years ago from where we stand now, but look at it from the other direction and XP was supported for as long as it held a large user base and long after upgraded versions were available.

I imagine Win7 will likely follow the same - if people keep using it, it will remain supported until people get drug away kicking and screaming.

There is no unified driver stack. It's altogether a different driver. Windows XP doesn't even use WDDM. It may be packed as one executable setup file, but that doesn't mean the code base is the same.

Technically, Maxwell was the last generation supported in Windows XP. But not ALL Maxwell's were supported in Windows XP (no GTX 980ti/980/970). I see the latest XP driver is from June 2016. Since XP went EoL in April 2014, one would extrapolate that Windows 7 driver support will maybe end in 2022?
 
I see the latest XP driver is from June 2016. Since XP went EoL in April 2014, one would extrapolate that Windows 7 driver support will maybe end in 2022?
I think this is a good place to start. You can even go back as far as w98 and then you have 2 data points. But you have to keep in mind the acceleration of computing, especially on the gaming side--it's really accelerated in the last few years. If it wasn't for the cryptobubble, things like 4k and vr would have a lot more market penetration at this point imo.
 
Extended support for Win7 does last until 2020, but only until January 14th. You have at least until then, guaranteed. That's less than a year and a half away so really not that long from now, probably only one more generation.

Would Nvidia & AMD keep supporting Win7 after Microsoft stops supporting it? It's possible, depending on how many keep clinging onto it, and how popular DX12 gets (or doesn't get).

Extended support just means you'll still get your critical security updates. It doesn't mean new products have to support it. Heck, aren't there already motherboard chipsets out there that require Windows 10?
 
Heck, aren't there already motherboard chipsets out there that require Windows 10?
I think this gives us an idea of what we could look for as an indicator. When did motherboard producers stop supporting xp and w9x? And when did the gpu makers? My guess is that these might have been within 6mo of each other. If so, then I think we've got an idea of the timeline by watching motherboard manufacturers as well. (y)
 
It doesn't matter.

Windows 7 is obsolete.
So are a lot of other things, but people still run them.

It would be interesting to put up a poll to see how many people either run or know someone running an lga775-based system. I've notice a lot more people running these than I would have thought--and they're almost a decade old.
 
Microsoft's [Extended] Windows XP support officially ended April 2014.
Nvidia driver support ended July 2016.

With the same trend, Nvidia will drop Win7 in 2022.

They recently ended 32-bit support a few weeks ago but it's unrelated to a specific OS.
 
I'm curious as to the intent behind the question. Why would someone spend $600+ on a new GPU with DirectX 12 features for DirectX 12 games and then run it on an operating system that doesn't support DirectX 12?

Is the theoretical scenario that everyone starts using Vulkan instead?
 
Sure, but these are old computers.

There aren't too many people rushing out to buy the $1200 Geforce RTX 2080 Ti so that they can run it on their old Windows 7 computers.
I'm curious as to the intent behind the question. Why would someone spend $600+ on a new GPU with DirectX 12 features for DirectX 12 games and then run it on an operating system that doesn't support DirectX 12?

Is the theoretical scenario that everyone starts using Vulkan instead?

I would buy one if the performance gains were huge. I still use 7 and haven't cared about DX12 and don't care about RTX either.
 
But, if you're limiting yourself to a "high CPU overhead" renderer in D3D 11, using an operating system where newer, faster, high core count processors aren't even supported, with terrible DPI scaling support for 4K screens, what are you playing (and at what settings) where you'd actually see a benefit?

Is this just one of those "I'm still using a CRT monitor" things?
 
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