Nvidia dropping 32-bit PhysX from the RTX 50-series’ CUDA infrastructure is another sign that game preservation can’t depend on those making gaming hardware.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti are some of the most in-demand GPUs today, but if you think they’ll help you play your Steam account’s back catalog at blistering FPS, you may be better sticking with your old RTX 30- or 40-series. Nvidia dropped its hardware-accelerated physics system support for some of the best games from the early 2010s. It’s just another way modern hardware developers are failing to preserve past titles in their prime.
Earlier this week, Nvidia confirmed in its official forums that “32-bit CUDA applications are deprecated on GeForce RTX 50 series GPUS.” The company’s support page for its “Support plan for 32-bit CUDA” notes that some 32-bit capabilities were removed from CUDA 12.0 but does not mention PhysX. Effectively, the 50 series cards cannot run any game with PhysX as developers originally intended. That’s ironic, considering Nvidia originally pushed this tech back in the early 2010s to sell its GTX range of GPUs.
PhysX is a GPU-accelerated physics system that allows for more realistic physics simulations in games without putting pressure on the CPU. This included small particle effects like fog or smoke and cloth movement. Nvidia developed it and promoted 32-bit PhysX as a physics engine, though they only managed to deploy 32-bit PhysX in a few dozen games in engines ranging from Unreal to Unity and Gamebryo. These relied on the CUDA cores for GeForce graphics cards, which is why it’s so strange to see the capabilities deprecated now with the enormous core counts on the RTX 50-series.
Modern games rely on a range of physics systems that don’t depend on CUDA. Now, today’s PC gamers can feel the same feeling of being left out as AMD buyers from a decade ago. Users on the Resetera forums compiled a list of all games that won’t work with GPU-accelerated PhysX, including classics like Borderlands 2, Mirror’s Edge, Batman: Arkham City, Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. These games may be playable with the physics enabled, but you’ll suffer from massive framerate drops. Gizmodo tested some games and found that the performance impact can be significant.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 can push a massive number of frames. As an experiment, I loaded up Deep Rock Galactic and pushed enough settings to achieve over 800 FPS with 4x frame gen. It’s silly and pointless, but in many ways, so is any FPS count above 240 (especially when there’s little point in owning a display above 240 Hz refresh rates).
But compare that to a game like Batman: Arkham City. Rocksteady released its semi-open world Dark Knight simulator in 2011, and in many ways, it’s a modern classic. Still, you won’t find it on Microsoft’s Game Pass or any other modern system except the Nintendo Switch. The best way to play it is on PC, or it would be if you’re using a non-50-series RTX graphics card. I loaded it up on a system with an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti, and when you try to enable hardware-accelerated physics in settings, you’ll receive a note reading, “Your hardware does not support Nvidia Hardware Accelerated PhysX. Performance will be reduced without dedicated hardware.”
The above image shows Batman: Arkham Asylum running with PhysX, left, and without PhysX, right, on a system with an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti. Image: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
The in-game benchmark shows that with the hardware accelerated physics setting enabled on the RTX 5070 Ti, I saw a hit of 65 average FPS compared to the setting off, from 164 to 99. The difference is striking. In the section where you battle Mr. Freeze, ice crystals no longer shower the floor as they do with the setting enabled. Smoke no longer pools on the ground, and banners no longer flutter in the breeze. These are still playable framerates, but the CPU must do a lot more work than it should to handle the physics effects, leading to stuttering and dips that make it a pain to play. My PC included an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, which—while notoriously not as capable as the 14th-gen high-end Intel chip—may be higher-end than gamers who angle toward the mid-range RTX GPUS. I imagine some players may experience even worse framerates than I did when trying to force PhysX to work.
In other games, like Borderlands 2, the game simply refuses to allow the PhysX option. As one Reddit user found, you can force it through editing the game files, but that will result in horrible framerate drops. It’s not what the game makers intended. The best option is to plug a separate, older GeForce GPU into the system and run 32-bit PhysX games exclusively on that card.
When gaming console makers move on, publishers are too keen to forget about games from yesteryear. PC gaming is where most people land if they want to try to get older titles running, but even then, it’s never easy. Hardware has to change, yes, but there is some legacy software that should remain enabled for the sake of game preservation. With its latest RTX 50-series cards, Nvidia has failed to preserve games in a way that would help them run as well today as they did back then.
When we see Nvidia deprecating its own hardware capabilities, hurting games that are little more than a decade old, we’re reminded just how difficult a task is game preservation. There’s only so much companies like GOG can do to make games run as they were intended. Mirror’s Edge used PhysX to create more exciting moments, such as in its helicopter chase scene. Batman: Arkham City used it for the sake of ambiance for its most memorable fights and sections. You may need an RTX 50-series card to get multi-frame gen and over 200 FPS on Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing, but you’ll want a 40-series card if you want to play the most beautiful games from 2011.