NVIDIA To Stop Offering 32-bit Driver Support

2017 could go down as the year that marked the descent of x86 32-bit support. Ubuntu 17.10 dropped their 32-bit desktop ISO, Ubuntu Server is now dropping their 32-bit installer, and more. Now NVIDIA Corp is announcing they are ending 32-bit support for their graphics driver.

NVIDIA will be ending 32-bit operating system support in its entirety following the upcoming Release 390 driver series. This affects all versions of Windows as well as Linux and FreeBSD.

The upcoming NVIDIA 390.xx drivers will be the last to offer 32-bit support, per this bulletin.

Bye bye old x86 32-bit!

It looks like the Release 390 stream will be a long-lived driver branch with NVIDIA planning to provide security fixes to their 32-bit driver until January 2019. This change is about 32-bit operating system support and almost certainly will continue bundling 32-bit libraries with their 64-bit drivers, but hey, hopefully this will finally motivate Valve in 2018 to finally move to going all 64-bit with Steam.

It looks like after the 390 series they are doing some house cleaning including dropping NVS product support and also dropping quad-buffered stereo functionality. No other major changes or dropping of hardware support has been announced at this time.