Nvidia 50-Series Cards: Older Games Lose PhysX Effects.

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Say Goodbye to Some PhysX Effects with Nvidia’s 50-Series

Planning to upgrade to Nvidia’s shiny new RTX 5080 or 5090? You’ll get a speed boost in most games. But a heads-up: some older titles relying on PhysX will actually take a performance hit.

Nvidia is phasing out PhysX on its 50-series cards. While the change was announced earlier, the impact on 32-bit, PhysX-enabled games is becoming clear. The affected games are mostly from 2013 or earlier.

What Was PhysX Anyway?

PhysX started as a way to make in-game physics more realistic. Think bouncing grenades in System Shock or destructible environments. It began as a separate engine, then became hardware, before Nvidia bought it in 2008.

Nvidia integrated PhysX into its GPUs, making it a selling point. Games like Mafia II and the Batman: Arkham series used it for cool effects like realistic particles and collision.

But PhysX, as part of Nvidia’s GameWorks, wasn’t always popular. It was even blamed for performance issues in games like The Witcher 3, where Geralt’s PhysX-powered hair slowed things down.

Why the Change?

PhysX became part of game engines like Unity and was eventually open-sourced.
But, it was built on Nvidia’s 32-bit CUDA platform, it had a limited lifespan.
Now, with the 50-series, that lifespan is ending.

The Impact on Gamers

32-bit apps, including those using PhysX, can’t be developed on the newest CUDA versions. If you run a 32-bit Phys