Wednesday, February 19th 2025
NVIDIA's 32-Bit PhysX Waves Goodbye with GeForce RTX 50 Series Ending 32-Bit CUDA Software Support
The days of 32-bit software support in NVIDIA's drivers are coming to an end, and with that, so does the support for the once iconic PhysX real-time physics engine. According to NVIDIA's engineers on GeForce forums, the lack of PhysX support has been quietly acknowledged, as NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 50 series of GPUs are phasing out support for 32-bit CUDA software, slowly transitioning the gaming world to the 64-bit software entirely. While older NVIDIA GPUs from the Maxwell through Ada generations will maintain 32-bit CUDA support, this update breaks backward compatibility for physics acceleration in legacy PC games on new GPUs. Users running these titles on RTX 50 series cards may need to rely on CPU-based PhysX processing, which could result in suboptimal performance compared to previous GPU generations.
A Reddit user reported frame rates dropping below 60 FPS in Borderlands 2 while using basic game mechanics with a 9800X3D CPU and RTX 5090 GPU, all because 32-bit CUDA application support on Blackwell architecture is depreciated. When another user booted up a 64-bit PhysX application, Batman Arkham Knight, PhysX worked perfectly, as expected. It is just that a massive list of older games, which gamers would sometimes prefer to play, is now running a lot slower on the most powerful consumer GPU due to the phase-out of 32-bit CUDA app support.
Here is a comprehensive list of games that use 32-bit PhysX, which will be runnin slower if the latest GeForce RTX 50 series is used, nicely compiled by a Resetera forum user: Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Crazy Machines 2, Unreal Tournament 3, Warmonger: Operation Downtown Destruction, Hot Dance Party, QQ Dance, Hot Dance Party II, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason, Mirror's Edge, Armageddon Riders, Darkest of Days, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Sacred 2: Ice & Blood, Shattered Horizon, Star Trek DAC, Metro 2033, Dark Void, Blur, Mafia II, Hydrophobia: Prophecy, Jianxia 3, Alice: Madness Returns, MStar, Batman: Arkham City, 7554, Depth Hunter, Deep Black, Gas Guzzlers: Combat Carnage, The Secret World, Continent of the Ninth (C9), Borderlands 2, Passion Leads Army, QQ Dance 2, Star Trek, Mars: War Logs, Metro: Last Light, Rise of the Triad, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.
Sources:
Reddit, Resetera Forums
A Reddit user reported frame rates dropping below 60 FPS in Borderlands 2 while using basic game mechanics with a 9800X3D CPU and RTX 5090 GPU, all because 32-bit CUDA application support on Blackwell architecture is depreciated. When another user booted up a 64-bit PhysX application, Batman Arkham Knight, PhysX worked perfectly, as expected. It is just that a massive list of older games, which gamers would sometimes prefer to play, is now running a lot slower on the most powerful consumer GPU due to the phase-out of 32-bit CUDA app support.
64 Comments on NVIDIA's 32-Bit PhysX Waves Goodbye with GeForce RTX 50 Series Ending 32-Bit CUDA Software Support
sure, you will lose the proprietary physX additions, but, tbh, they never were a game changer, which is why many AMD & Intel gamers could play the same gave just fine just with a bit less eye candy
If Nvidia really wanted to help, they would fully open source the GPU physX implementation, and then people could make wrappers that convert the physX calls to something else. Pretty much how they did it with GLide wrappers, and some other APIs as well
but, they won't since, they are Nvidia
You have to explain that logic to me.
Unless you uninstall it than install concurrent version than it won't be able to launch.
An interesting thing about 2nd GPUs for PhysX are not the better frame rates but the much better frame times. Running on a single card was basically as stuttery as bad SLI implementation.
I mean they could but I bet they don't.
Especially Sound Blaster support which in modern times many games have drop support.
Which is why I still have a old Win 7 PC solely for retro but sadly Steam won't work anymore.
Probably have to find other ways to play these old games like through CD.
Haven't test EAX for so long maybe once I sought out how to access these old games.
I will try again cuz I still have a old Creative sound blaster Recon3d with EAX support.
We got off topic here, but I would retain old hardware with appropriate driver to run these games at their best IMO.