Nvidia has quietly eliminated help for 32-bit PhysX {hardware} acceleration in its newest RTX 50 gaming GPUs, such because the Nvidia Geforce RTX 5090. This implies video games resembling Mirror’s Edge, Borderlands 2, and Batman: Arkham Asylum not have GPU-accelerated help for the impressively complicated physics simulations PhysX can present.
With the Nvidia RTX 5090 now the perfect graphics card you should purchase, you’d be forgiven for considering that in addition to supporting model new options resembling DLSS 4, it will additionally nonetheless convey full function help for outdated however nonetheless fashionable sport options. Nonetheless, this newest improvement means any avid gamers firing up older PhysX-supporting titles will discover PhysX calculations being run on the CPU, typically leading to big efficiency drops.
For a sure technology of gamer, PhysX was the massive new function in PC gaming. Overlook ray tracing or body technology, a PhysX card may present performance-boosted lifelike physics simulations to make for amazing-looking fog, particle results, material animation, destructible buildings, and extra. With Nvidia shopping for up PhysX and integrating these physics options into its GPUs, a lot of avid gamers have since had hardware-accelerated entry to PhysX results. That’s why there’s nonetheless a separate PhysX part if you set up Nvidia drivers. You may see what PhysX can do within the video beneath.
Nonetheless, with its newest RTX 50 GPUs, the corporate has eliminated this help, returning any such complicated PhysX results to being calculated on the CPU. Even with fashionable CPUs being a lot sooner than when PhysX first arrived again in 2005, the complexity of those calculations continues to be sufficient to choke efficiency, as you possibly can see within the video beneath. It reveals Batman: Arkham Asylum working with out PhysX results, with PhysX working on the CPU, and with it working on the GPU.
Not solely does the above video present that PhysX calculations being executed on a CPU completely tanks efficiency, with the body fee dropping from round 400fps with out PhysX to only 40fps with PhysX, but it surely additionally reveals that even with PhysX accelerated on the GPU, efficiency can take a large hit too. The body fee right here hovers round 200fps with PhysX being run on an RTX 4090 – round half the extent it was with out these results.
This hints at one of many causes PhysX has largely gone the best way of the dodo, as the flamboyant results it accelerates are simply devastating to efficiency, even when accelerated on a GPU. With such an affect, and given the quantity of additional effort required to implement these physics options effectively, many sport builders simply stopped that includes PhysX.
The opposite cause is that extra fashionable sport engines resembling Unreal Engine 5 embrace a lot of its personal equal physics results that aren’t so performance-reducing and are simpler for builders to implement.
As such, the latest sport that’s affected by this modification to the RTX 50 collection got here out in 2013, in accordance with this checklist of affected titles put collectively by resetera.com. That title is Murderer’s Creed: Black Flag, which continues to be revered as probably the greatest Murderer’s Creed video games ever.
Whereas Nvidia hasn’t hidden this drop in help, it solely actually got here to mild following one gamer’s discovery that enabling PhysX on Borderlands 2 tanked efficiency. Nvidia replied to the person’s query on its help web site saying “That is anticipated habits as 32-bit CUDA purposes are deprecated on GeForce RTX 50 collection GPUs.” The Nvidia consultant then linked to this Nvidia help discover describing the change.
There’s no particular point out of the standing of 64-bit help for PhysX on RTX 50 GPUs, so we consider any 64-bit variations of those video games ought to nonetheless run positive. Help stays for all older Nvidia GPUs too. It’s simply that from the RTX 50 collection onwards, help will finish.
For extra on what the RTX 50 collection can do, take a look at our RTX 5090 evaluation and RTX 5080 evaluation, the place we put to the check these monstrously highly effective new GPUs.
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