NVIDIA's 32-Bit PhysX Waves Goodbye with GeForce RTX 50 Series Ending 32-Bit CUDA Software Support

[Caring1]

i remember even hardcore AMD fanboys buying a geforce to play with physx, what killed it was nvidia making it incompatible with radeons.

I think you mean this PhysX card prior to Nvidia buying the company. It wasn't a Geforce card back then.

BFG Ageia PhysX Card Review

BFG is one of two companies offering the Ageia PhysX card in form of a retail product. The PPU - physics proccesing unit - is an additioal processor to the GPU and CPU. It enables real life physics and interactivity within supporting games. While the first games and a high price tag upon launch...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[remekra]

I think you mean this PhysX card prior to Nvidia buying the company. It wasn't a Geforce card back then.

BFG Ageia PhysX Card Review

BFG is one of two companies offering the Ageia PhysX card in form of a retail product. The PPU - physics proccesing unit - is an additioal processor to the GPU and CPU. It enables real life physics and interactivity within supporting games. While the first games and a high price tag upon launch...

www.techpowerup.com

There was a short time where you could have Radeon as your main GPU and add GeForce card as a Physx card and it would work. Then nvidia blocked it.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

The games that used it, still has some of the most stunning effects because of it, Assassins Creed IV - Black Flag, or Metro 2033 / Last light.

It is Open Source though, so I am sure we can just mod it in. That being said, to me it's a very stupid move on nVidias part, as many gamers still play those older titles and buy their GPUs for PhysX, me being one of them.

This is incorrect.

Physx CPU was open sourced, not the GPU implementation. The CPU implementation is very performance heavy and limits the effects, the heavier physx effects are only available to GPUs, which is still proprietary. "physx is totally open source" is an nvidia lie to make them look better.

Besides which, even if you wanted to, taking the 32 bit GPU physX libraries and modding them to run on the CPU would be a massive endeavor, who knows what you would break in the process. Without the source code and some serious dedication I dont see this happening.

Anyways, curious to see what really happens, perhaps this is what is causing all the drive issues and they just temporarily removed it, but they really need to find a way to re-enable it, when there is a will, there is a way, people aren't happy about this at all,

What will happen, if the other thread is any indication, is that you will have waves of people either arguing that 32 bit is obsolete (not understanding the difference between a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit library) or saying it doesnt affect you, just buy a 4000 and be happy, because apparently we all have secondary PCs just to maintain oldersoftware, and we havent spent the last decade+ trying to maintain compatibility moving forward because these are not MACs, we are not OK with leaving everything behind and purchasing new stuff because some software dev decided so.

 

[Rightness_1]

There is no technical reason NV has had to do this. It's fine they no longer develop the 32bit version, but they should include the runtimes and libraries for it in their driver and take away the artificial block preventing it from running in a simple refresh of an existing chip.

I could understand it if Blackwell were a new architecture, but let's not kid ourselves, it's not.

 

[mrnagant]

Man that is crazy. I know the CPU PhysX typically still has lesser quality than what the GPU PhysX will run, but I was thinking "oh no big deal". Dang, CPUs still getting hammered in older titles running PhysX! That's crazy. CPU PhysX still mostly single threaded? If it isn't it still won't scale well with modern 8+ core processors.

 

[hsew]

I read an article a long time ago suggesting that the reason PhysX on CPU struggled was because the code was compiled with x87 instructions.

I’m sure some modder will figure out a way to put out a 64-bit PhysX patch for these games. Especially since DLSS on older games can be forced into newer versions using DLL swaps.

 

[Onasi]

That's all games i'd loose access if i had a 50x :

Arkham Asylum
Arkham City
Arkham Origins
Alice: Madness Returns
Unreal Tournament 3

Not that much.

You don’t lose access to the games. Just one unimportant graphical feature. It’s overall irrelevant.

 

[maxli86]

Mafia II

Yet irony Steam cease Windows 7/8.1 support while majority of these old games were from those Windows era.
Now Physx system software is phasing out that means newer generation of graphic card won't be able to run retro/old games.
However it has already started with certain generation of gpu.
Which is why I still have a old Win 7 Intel i7 3770k GTX 770 for old games but since steam has block/stop working.
So the only way is update to Win 10 which I don't really like to install Win 10 on older PCs especially mainly to run retro/old games.
I wish Steam can release a legacy/retro version for older Windows, remove the ability to purchase games/add-on on unsupported Windows.
Rather than completely cease Steam which in fact most of the old game support older Windows and older hardware.

 

[Klemc]

Yet irony Steam cease Windows 7/8.1 support while majority of these old games were from those Windows era.
Now Physx system software is phasing out that means newer generation of graphic card won't be able to run retro/old games.
However it has already started with certain generation of gpu.
Which is why I still have a old Win 7 Intel i7 3770k GTX 770 for old games but since steam has block/stop working.
So the only way is update to Win 10 which I don't really like to install Win 10 on older PCs especially mainly to run retro/old games.
I wish Steam can release a legacy/retro version for older Windows, remove the ability to purchase games/add-on on unsupported Windows.
Rather than completely cease Steam which in fact most of the old game support older Windows and older hardware.

Is there games that run not on Win10 but run on Win7 ?.. Steam dropping Win7 support looks weird, they sell games from 200x.

 

[Assimilator]

the artificial block

How do you know it's artificial?

 

[TheDeeGee]

You don’t lose access to the games. Just one unimportant graphical feature. It’s overall irrelevant.

I've read some games straight up refuse to run because the 50-series no longer supports it.

 

[ZoneDymo]

gotta love proprietary tech right guys?

 

[Onasi]

I've read some games straight up refuse to run because the 50-series no longer supports it.

That obviously should not be the case since said games ran perfectly fine for years on AMD and Intel GPUs and iGPUs which don’t and never did support it.

 

[unwind-protect]

So, has it been confirmed whether it has been removed altogether in the current drivers (the ones released for the 5000 cards), or does a 4090 with current drivers still provide it?

it == 32 bit PysX

 

[Onasi]

@unwind-protect
It’s not a driver thing, it’s an architectural thing. Anything pre-Blackwell will keep the support. It’s not like drivers even matter there - the functionality is provided by the PhysX distributable which is separate and hasn’t been updated for ages as is.

The OP is also worded poorly - it says that games will “run slower” which isn’t really the case. They will only run slower when PhysX effects are enabled since the CPU will handle them. If they are not enabled the game will run just fine. And I reiterate - it’s an OPTIONAL effect lack of which does in no way compromise the game itself since they were PC exclusive and the games weren’t really made with these effects as a baseline.

 

[TheDeeGee]

So, has it been confirmed whether it has been removed altogether in the current drivers (the ones released for the 5000 cards), or does a 4090 with current drivers still provide it?

it == 32 bit PysX

It's not a driver issue, it's removed from the 50-series hardware.

The OP is also worded poorly - it says that games will “run slower” which isn’t really the case. They will only run slower when PhysX effects are enabled since the CPU will handle them. If they are not enabled the game will run just fine. And I reiterate - it’s an OPTIONAL effect lack of which does in no way compromise the game itself since they were PC exclusive and the games weren’t really made with these effects as a baseline.

Yeah, same performance right? No difference at all.

As for the effects, i guess you've never ever played a game with PhysX, and how much more alive it becomes with it enabled.

 

[Shihab]

Granted, it could be argued that doing it via complex simulations like NV did is actually very inefficient and outdated, if we talk smoke. After seeing Valves volumetric based approach in Source 2 that seems like a better way forward.

Calling CFD outdated is... bold...

Seriously tho, CS2's implementation was interesting, but it's very limited compared to PhysX's. And it's also most likely GPU-accelerated (though I need to research this further), which returns us to the reall issue with PhysX: platform locks.
PhysX in general had some extremely advanced and impressive tech, but it was kept back by Nvidia being Nvidia. RTRT would've fared the same if it wasn't for Microsoft and Khronos standardizing it.

It's fine they no longer develop the 32bit version, but they should include the runtimes and libraries for it in their driver and take away the artificial block preventing it from running in a simple refresh of an existing chip.

Companies don't simply ship binaries with components they are not going to maintain (or outsource said maintenance).

 

[Onasi]

Yeah, same performance right? No difference at all

With it Off? Yeah. Obviously.

As for the effects, i guess you've never ever played a game with PhysX, and how much more alive it becomes with it enabled

Sure, let’s go with that.

Calling CFD outdated is... bold...

I was talking in the context of video game usage in the way implemented by NV.

Seriously tho, CS2's implementation was interesting, but it's very limited compared to PhysX's. And it's also most likely GPU-accelerated (though I need to research this further), which returns us to the reall issue with PhysX: platform locks.
PhysX in general had some extremely advanced and impressive tech, but it was kept back by Nvidia being Nvidia. RTRT would've fared the same if it wasn't for Microsoft and Khronos standardizing it.

Yeah, I would agree here. It could have developed further and potentially even got a performance boost, made more efficient. NV essentially killed it with their obsession with black boxes and a closed ecosystem.
And yeah, CS2 smoke is GPU accelerated from my knowledge. It’s obviously limited, but I think the limitations have more to do with what is actually necessary for the application and a need to conserve the performance budget, since it’s CS and people want a bajillion FPS. I would be very interested to see what Valve can do in a less restrictive application with this tech, as well as whatever else they are cooking, including fluid physics and material interactions judging by the SteamDB dev leaks. We’ll have to wait for HLX… whenever that comes in 25 years.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Wait, how about AMD cards on those games?? Don't tell me they've got shitty fps when Physx was on???

 

[Wasteland]

Wait, how about AMD cards on those games?? Don't tell me they've got shitty fps when Physx was on???

The games play just fine without PhysX enabled. I enjoyed the heck out of Batman on an AMD card back in 2012 or whenever it was. (Good grief, time flies.) It's a pretty small issue in the grand scheme, though this news story does serve as a reminder of the downside of closed ecosystems--the extra challenge they pose to the already difficult task of maintaining compatibility with older software.

 

[cal5582]

wonder how hard would it be to do a physx to opencl wrapper?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Gonna go fire up Batman Arkham Asylum on my old 980Ti in honor of this red letter day!

Shame NV wouldn't release something to open up old GPU PhysX on existing titles for game preservation sake.

Oh well, publishers have to pitch those "if you've never played it, its new to you" $50 remasters on 10 year old games somehow...

Edit: IMO PhysX is where NV really learned the power of FOMO on selling GPUs on niche/edge case features. Funny how it's come back full circle at a time when people won't even consider AMD cards because they lack whatever IQ mangling performance tanking feature NV is marginally ahead on at the time.

 

[unwind-protect]

wonder how hard would it be to do a physx to opencl wrapper?

Is 32 bit opencl still possible on 5xxx cards? CUDA is not.

 

[maxli86]

Is there games that run not on Win10 but run on Win7 ?.. Steam dropping Win7 support looks weird, they sell games from 200x.

Most games can run on Win 10 but some will have bugs/issues on newer OS like crashing.
Unfornuately Steam is no longer able to run on Win 7/8.1, my old rig has this error which says.
"Steam is no longer supported on your operating system."
Very irony some of the games come from that era, no workaround for this.
Unless Steam release a legacy/retro client version for older Windows so people can play retro games on older hardware.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Wait, how about AMD cards on those games?? Don't tell me they've got shitty fps when Physx was on???

They did, but lets be honest, because Nvidia is a dumbass and made it proprietary, we never actually got games that really were build around physics.... it was just effects (sometimes ugly as hell) that were added on top, but nothing fundamental, no game needed it to function.