A Redditor has multiplied their RTX 5090 performance on old titles by using a cheaper RTX 3050 for PhysX acceleration. It’s an old trick which helped both Nvidia and AMD users in the past.
Following Nvidia’s removal of 32-bit CUDA application support from its latest RTX 50 Series GPUs, players were suddenly faced with poor performance in old games that featured PhysX. This meant that RTX 50 Series owners had a choice between either turning off PhysX in settings or installing a secondary Nvidia GPU dedicated to PhysX calculations. The latter was what a Reddit user chose to continue enjoying games like Batman Arkham Asylum and Mirror’s Edge as their developers intended.
The user shared some fps figures showcasing how PhysX destroyed frame rates when run on the CPU instead of RTX 5090, as well as just how much an RTX 3050 for PhysX helps.
| w/o RTX 3050 | w/ RTX 3050 | |
|---|---|---|
| Mafia 2 | 28.8fps | 157.1fps |
| Batman Arkham Asylum | 61fps | 390fps |
| Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag | 62fps | 62fps |
| Mirror’s Edge | 12fps | 171fps |
As you can see, the gains range from 445% in Mafia and 539% in Batman to a whopping 1,325% in Mirror’s Edge. A lot of performance is left on the table, albeit on old games that are no longer played by many. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a curious one, seeing absolutely no uplift, but this is likely to hard-locked fps.
Just to clarify, as long as the visual effects on-screen don’t require PhysX intervention, your fps will be fine. The moment PhysX enters the fray because you broke a window or something, performance will tank like you’re playing on a 20-year-old machine. VerbalSilence on YouTube has a great demonstration of exactly this.
We have come full circle from dedicated Ageia PhysX cards to integration on Nvidia GeForce GPUs, back to needing a secondary card to accelerate PhysX calculations. The only difference this time is that both cards are Nvidia branded.
Unfortunately, unless Nvidia changes its mind, PhysX is advancing towards retirement – at least for games. RTX 40 Series seems to be the last GeForce lineup to support PhysX on a hardware level, meaning the day it enters end-of-life, CPUs better be strong enough to handle PhysX alone. To be fair, many titles can already run PhysX at acceptable speeds on the CPU, it’s just a shame we see such a nice technology go away. Thankfully, developers have found alternatives that are just as good while being hardware agnostic.
