NVIDIA releases driver update for Maxwell and Pascal GPUs — it focuses only on security fixes, but it's still crucial for the older cards

NVIDIA's Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta series GPUs no longer receive Game Ready Driver updates as of last year, but that doesn't mean they're being entirely ignored by the company. That's good news since a lot of these cards are still faithfully serving PC gamers and developers.

On January 28, 2026, NVIDIA released a security-focused driver update (version 582.28 WQHL) for its legacy cards with a focus on eliminating five vulnerabilities. The driver release notes oddly don't list the vulnerabilities it fixes, but you can read, in detail, on NVIDIA's Security Bulletin page.

I've listed the descriptions here:

• CVE-2025-33217: NVIDIA Display Driver for Windows contains a vulnerability where an attacker could trigger a use after free. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, and information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33218: NVIDIA GPU Display Driver for Windows contains a vulnerability in the kernel mode layer (nvlddmkm.sys), where an attacker could cause an integer overflow. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, or information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33219: NVIDIA Display Driver for Linux contains a vulnerability in the NVIDIA kernel module where an attacker could cause an integer overflow or wraparound. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, or information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33220: NVIDIA vGPU software contains a vulnerability in the Virtual GPU Manager, where a malicious guest could cause heap memory access after the memory is freed. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to code execution, escalation of privileges, data tampering, denial of service, or information disclosure.
• CVE-2025-33237: NVIDIA HD Audio Driver for Windows contains a vulnerability where an attacker could exploit a NULL pointer dereference issue. A successful exploit of this vulnerability might lead to a denial of service.

If you were hoping for something other than security patches, I'm afraid you're out of luck. A bug causing distorted text in Counter-Strike 2 when the in-game resolution is lower than a monitor's native resolution persists, as does flickering on some systems running Dragon: Infinite Wealth.

This security update targets NVIDIA's GeForce 10-series, 900-series, 700-series, and Titan-series GPUs. If your hardware is on that list, you can download the security update driver 582.28 directly from NVIDIA's website.

Does this security patch affect your PC? What GPU are you running? Let me know in the comments section!

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