Are nvidia driver updates necessary for a 5 year old graphics card

English Hardware
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I have an nvidia geforce gtx 1050 ti graphics card that is by now considered old. In opensuse software it is considered a g05 software level. I keep nvidia repo enabled and get periodic updates to the g05 driver packages. I never notice any difference after the update. I don’t game or do anything graphically intensive.

My question is are there ever any nvidia updates that would improve performance on an older card? I suspect that updates only include software affecting the latest cards. I have been bitten in the rear several times in the past by nvidia updates and have had to do system reinstalls as a result. Thus, I tremble whenever I see an nvidia update.

If updates won’t improve anything on my older card, I would just as soon disable the nvidia repo and “freeze” my card as it now stands rather than risk a reinstall.

Any info regarding the relevance of nvidia updates to older cards?

thanks, tom kosvic

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inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 6GB] driver: nouveau v: kernel
  Device-2: WaveRider USB Live camera type: USB
    driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.20.3 with: Xwayland v: 21.1.4 driver: X:
    loaded: nouveau unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: nouveau gpu: nouveau
    resolution: 1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 Mesa 21.2.4 renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1 256 bits)

Working in Leap 15.4 but with kernel:stable:backport

uname -a
Linux linux64 6.0.10-lp153.2.g582305b-default #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sat Nov 26 17:59:17 UTC 2022 (582305b) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
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Nvidia driver updates contains stability fixes, feature updates and security updates. This can easily be found by using a search machine. To give you a understanding what kind of security issues get fixed:

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Hi Tom
Nah, 10 years of support… your card is supported with the G06 driver… you will need to consider move as the G05 is considered Legacy, I had a GT1030 (Pascal) running fine and now have a Tesla P4 (Pascal) running on the 525.60.11 driver.

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I have a GTX 1650 super running G06 locked at version 515.57 in yast updater, while current version is 525.60.

After a not irrelevant number of broken updates, now I’ve only updated the driver together with a new install, always using yast on Leap, and only update again if I have problems (if i had, it was only once, I think). That may have security implications, but I don’t have any noticeable security or performance problems. AFAIR I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, at least. YMMV.

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Except in such cases: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/578932-NVIDIA-warns-to-all-users-Linux-and-Windows-to-upgrade-driver-now