Nvidia has announced it has officially ended mainstream graphics driver support for its Fermi-based GeForce GPUs. The move is effective immediately and will see all Fermi products being moved to legacy support status. Additionally, the company said it would end GeForce support for 32-bit operating systems before the end of the month.

Fermi GPUs were part of Nvidia's GeForce 400 and 500 series lines, including the infamous GTX 480 and GTX 580; you can see the full list of cards here. The architecture has been around for about eight years---the same amount of time that Fermi's predecessor, Tesla, existed before being moved to legacy status in March 2014. Nvidia notes that critical security updates for Fermi will be available through to January 2019.

"Effective April 2018, Game Ready Driver upgrades, including performance enhancements, new features, and bug fixes, will be available only on Kepler, Maxwell, and Pascal series GPUs. Critical security updates will be available on Fermi series GPUs through January 2019," write the company.

Additionally, Nvidia is making good on a promise it made last year to stop releasing GeForce graphics card drivers for 32-bit operating systems. Support is also set to end this month.

"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."

Most people, especially gamers, are likely to be using 64-bit operating systems these days, but those that aren't might see this as another reason to consider upgrading.