RTX 50-Series Cards Suffer Performance Hits as Nvidia Cuts PhysX Support
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- Nvidia’s 50-series GPUs are having issues running older games with PhysX due to discontinued support for 32-bit CUDA applications.
- Popular titles from the 2010s that relied on PhysX are struggling with performance when the technology is forced to run through the CPU.
- Nvidia announced that the new 50-series GPUs no longer support 32-bit CUDA applications in January via a post on the company’s knowledgebase.
Nvidia caused significant performance issues on 50-series cards by its decision to discontinue support of 32-bit CUDA applications that force PhysX to run on the CPU instead of the GPU.
PhysX, acquired by Nvidia back in 2008, simulates complex in-game physics like moving cloth, shattering glass, and liquid effects, making for a more immersive experience. Popular titles like Mirror’s Edge, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and Metro 2033 leveraged PhysX to showcase cutting-edge PC gaming capabilities in the early 2010s.
But gamers with the latest RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti cards began noticing that games designed to run PhysX effects on the GPU were suddenly struggling. Via the January announcement of a Support plan for 32-bit CUDA buried in the company’s knowledgebase, Nvidia confirmed that the new 50-series GPUs no longer support 32-bit CUDA applications, which includes PhysX. Nvidia didn’t bother explicitly addressing how this would affect games that depended on the technology.
One of the Reddit users reported serious frame rate drops to below 60 FPS despite top-tier components, testing Borderlands 2 with an RTX 5090 and an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Meanwhile, older Nvidia cards, such as the RTX 4090, continued to perform smoothly in the same situation.
As users of the ResetEra forum have pointed out, the problem isn’t just limited to Borderlands 2, as other popular titles such as Metro: Last Light and Cryostasis are suffering similarly.
