<ul><li>Nvidia released a driver update allowing compatibility of RTX 50-series GPUs with older Intel Core 2 family CPUs by removing the POPCNT instruction requirement.</li><li>Testing showed success in booting into Windows 11 with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 and an RTX 5060 Ti, but real-world gaming performance suffered, especially in ray-traced games.</li><li>The lack of certain instruction sets in the older CPUs hinders the majority of games using ray tracing from running smoothly, despite the driver update.</li><li>While pairing a modern GPU with an older CPU may be suitable for classic or mid-tier games, limitations persist in running demanding, ray-traced titles due to necessary instruction sets.</li></ul>

Nvidia driver enables RTX 5000 GPU support on Intel Core 2 CPUs – with a catch

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