this time they couldn't use Plan A

Nvidia have a long history of releasing broken hardware+driver combinations and a history of simply disabling broken features instead of fixing them. Over the years I've seen sound,firewall and basic network acceleration disappear, features that never worked well and seemed more about brand promotion than any real effort to deliver working hardware. Right now I've just ended 16 months without graphics driver updates waiting for them to restore even basic functionality to that went MIA.

Nvidia seem totally isolated from end-users, they just dont feel any need to fix problems those users have or really support old hardware when shiny new toys come along for the engineers to play with.

This time they can't just disable features for a quick 'screw the punters' fix - though I bet they tried.