With its next-generation "Maxwell" GPUs on the horizon, NVIDIA is preparing plans to gradually retire the GeForce 8 series, 9 series, and 200 series from its mainline driver support model. The GPUs make up NVIDIA's DirectX 10 generation, and include some iconic models, such as the 8800 GTX, the 8800 GT, the 9600 GT, and the GTX 260. The upcoming GeForce Release 340 driver will be the last to support these GPU series alongside its newer DirectX 11 generations, such as "Fermi," "Kepler," and "Maxwell." The driver that succeeds it, R343, will drop support for the older DirectX 10 generation.

With the R340 release, the DirectX 10 generation will be market "legacy." The lot will see continued support under R340 till April 2016. Whenever there's a glaring bug or security hole to address for the older GPUs, NVIDIA may ship out an R340 version (340.xx), but the GPUs will not get planned driver updates, unlike the "current" DirectX 11 generation. Support cycles are hence different from production cycle. A GeForce GTX 480, for example, may be "EOL" (end of life) in terms of its production cycle, but is still "current" in terms of its support cycle.

Following our article yesterday about AMD using new high performance liquid cooling technology for their upcoming 7900-series graphic cards, TechPowerUp can now bring you a detailed insight into how this technology works, which has been developed by Vapro Inc. The following slides will help to explain this technology.

By using liquid cooling based heatsinks, the following performance advantages are achieved: improvement of thermal resistance, handling of high heat flux and power and easy to manufacture.