Nvidia made a surprising U-turn on December 3, 2025, when it announced that 32-bit PhysX support is coming back to RTX 50-series graphics cards through the GeForce Game Ready 591.44 WHQL driver. The company quietly dropped PhysX support when it launched the RTX 50-series Blackwell GPUs in January 2025, a decision that caused classic games like Borderlands 2 and Batman: Arkham City to run terribly on $2,000 flagship cards. After months of complaints, Nvidia finally listened and restored support for nine titles, with more coming in 2026.
What Actually Happened
When Nvidia launched the RTX 50-series in January 2025, the company discontinued 32-bit CUDA support as part of the Blackwell architecture transition. PhysX relied on 32-bit CUDA for GPU acceleration, so removing CUDA support meant PhysX calculations suddenly got dumped onto the CPU instead. The result was catastrophic for older games built around GPU-accelerated physics. Benchmarks showed an RTX 5090 struggling to maintain 60 fps in Borderlands 2 at 4K with PhysX enabled, while an RTX 4090 easily pushed over 120 fps in the same scenario.
The community reaction was swift and loud. Reddit threads, Nvidia forums, and tech outlets covered the issue extensively. Users complained that a $1,999 flagship GPU from 2025 performed worse than a GTX 980 Ti from 2015 in certain scenarios. The problem wasn’t just performance either. Many of these PhysX-accelerated games are beloved classics that people still play regularly. Removing support essentially meant RTX 50-series owners couldn’t properly experience games they’d already purchased.
The Nine Games That Work Now
Nvidia’s solution wasn’t to restore full 32-bit CUDA support. Instead, the company is adding custom PhysX support on a game-by-game basis. The December 3 driver update includes support for nine titles, chosen based on what Nvidia says are the “most played PhysX-accelerated games” according to their data. Here’s the list of games that now work properly on RTX 50-series cards:
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Borderlands 2
- Metro 2033
- Metro: Last Light
- Metro Exodus
- Mirror’s Edge
Batman: Arkham Asylum, another heavily requested title, will receive support in early 2026. Nvidia hasn’t specified exactly when in early 2026, just that it’s coming. The company also hasn’t committed to adding more games beyond these ten, though community feedback suggests strong demand for titles like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Batman: Arkham Knight.
What Is PhysX Anyway
PhysX is a physics simulation engine that Nvidia acquired when it bought Ageia in 2008. The technology handles realistic physics calculations for things like ragdoll effects, cloth simulation, destructible environments, particle systems, and fluid dynamics. Before PhysX, most games handled physics calculations entirely on the CPU, which limited how complex or numerous physics interactions could be without tanking performance.
PhysX’s killer feature was offloading these calculations to the GPU, which has thousands of parallel processing cores perfect for handling physics simulations. This allowed developers to create dramatically more impressive effects. In Batman: Arkham Asylum, PhysX enabled volumetric fog that characters pushed through realistically, paper debris that scattered dynamically, and destructible walls that exploded into hundreds of individual bricks. Without PhysX, those effects either didn’t exist or got replaced with simple pre-baked animations.
| GPU Generation | 32-bit PhysX Support | Performance in PhysX Games |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 40-series | Full support | High frame rates |
| RTX 50-series (launch) | No support | CPU bottlenecked, terrible fps |
| RTX 50-series (Dec 2025) | Custom support (9 games) | Restored to RTX 40-level performance |
Why This Matters
PhysX peaked in popularity between 2009 and 2015. Games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Metro 2033, and Borderlands 2 used it heavily as a visual showcase feature that separated PC versions from console ports. The technology gradually fell out of favor as middleware physics solutions like Havok became more common and console hardware got powerful enough to handle complex physics without dedicated GPU acceleration. Most modern games don’t use PhysX at all, relying instead on engine-native physics or other cross-platform solutions.
But that doesn’t mean PhysX games disappeared. Many of these titles remain popular, especially in the Steam library where backwards compatibility matters. Batman: Arkham City still has thousands of concurrent players. Borderlands 2 maintains an active community. Metro Exodus launched in 2019 and remains relevant. When Nvidia removed PhysX support, it effectively broke a feature that players had specifically purchased Nvidia cards to access years ago.
The Workaround That Existed
Before Nvidia restored official support, dedicated players found a janky workaround. If you had a second PCIe slot and an older Nvidia GPU sitting around (like a GTX 1060 or similar), you could install that second card and use the Nvidia Control Panel to force PhysX calculations onto the older GPU while the RTX 50-series card handled everything else. This dual-GPU setup worked but required extra hardware, additional power consumption, and manual configuration that most users wouldn’t bother with.
Some users also kept an RTX 40-series card specifically for playing PhysX games, which is absurd when you think about it. Imagine buying a $1,999 RTX 5090 and still needing to swap back to your old card to play Borderlands 2 properly. The community sentiment was clear: this was unacceptable for a premium product line.
FAQs
Do I need to do anything to enable PhysX support?
Just update to the GeForce Game Ready 591.44 WHQL driver or newer. Once installed, the nine supported games will automatically use GPU-accelerated PhysX on RTX 50-series cards without any additional configuration. The driver handles everything behind the scenes through custom support profiles.
Will Nvidia add more games to the supported list?
Nvidia hasn’t committed to adding more titles beyond the confirmed ten (nine available now, plus Batman: Arkham Asylum in early 2026). The company stated they focused on the most-played PhysX games based on their data. Community feedback might convince them to expand the list, but nothing is officially confirmed yet.
Why didn’t Nvidia just restore full 32-bit CUDA support?
Nvidia removed 32-bit CUDA support as part of the Blackwell architecture design decisions. Restoring it would likely require significant engineering work and potentially compromise other aspects of the architecture. The game-by-game approach lets Nvidia support legacy titles without reverting architectural changes.
What about PhysX games not on the official list?
Games not on Nvidia’s official support list will still run, but PhysX effects will be calculated on the CPU instead of the GPU. This causes severe performance problems depending on how heavily the game uses PhysX. Your options are using the dual-GPU workaround or just playing with PhysX effects disabled.
Do AMD or Intel cards support PhysX?
No. PhysX is Nvidia proprietary technology. AMD and Intel GPUs have never supported GPU-accelerated PhysX. When playing PhysX games on non-Nvidia hardware, physics calculations always run on the CPU, resulting in lower performance with PhysX effects enabled.
Is PhysX still used in modern games?
Rarely. Most modern games use engine-native physics systems or cross-platform middleware like Havok. PhysX was most popular from 2009-2015. Nvidia made the PhysX SDK open source in 2018, and it’s occasionally used in newer titles, but GPU-accelerated PhysX effects specifically are mostly a legacy feature at this point.
When does Batman: Arkham Asylum get support?
Nvidia stated Batman: Arkham Asylum will receive PhysX support in early 2026. The company hasn’t provided a specific month or driver version number. Based on the vague wording, expect it sometime between January and March 2026.
What is the RTX 50-series launch date?
The RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 launched on January 30, 2025, at $1,999 and $999 respectively. The RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 launched in February 2025 at $749 and $549. These are the Blackwell architecture GPUs where the PhysX issue first appeared.
The Bigger Picture
This situation highlights the tension between backwards compatibility and technological progress. Nvidia wanted to move forward with a modern architecture that dropped legacy 32-bit support. But the gaming community expects backwards compatibility, especially for purchased content. When you spend $2,000 on a GPU, you reasonably expect it to play everything your $600 GPU from 2020 could handle.
The compromise solution – adding custom support for specific popular titles – is pragmatic but imperfect. It fixes the problem for the games most people actually play while avoiding the engineering cost of full 32-bit CUDA restoration. But it also creates a tiered system where some legacy games work great and others are left behind. Whether Nvidia expands the supported game list based on continued feedback remains to be seen. For now, at least the most popular PhysX classics work properly again on Blackwell cards.