Redditor improves NVIDIA PhysX games' performance by several folds by adding an RTX 3050 to his setup that is powered primarily by an RTX 50 GPU.
User Shows You Can Still Play PhysX-Dependent Games on NVIDIA's RTX 50 GPUs, But Only if You Own an Older GPU Like RTX 3050
Since NVIDIA has removed PhysX support on GeForce RTX 50 series cards, many older PhysX-based games struggle to run at playable frame rates, even on flagship GPUs like the GeForce RTX 5090. This isn't normal, and it's astounding to see that RTX 50 owners can't play iconic games like Batman Arkham Asylum, Borderlands 2, or Mirror's Edge that I enjoyed to the core a decade ago.
With the dropping of support for 32-bit PhysX in the Blackwell series, a user tried to fix the performance problem by adding another NVIDIA GPU that comes with PhysX support. The Redditor u/jerubedo tried adding a GeForce RTX 3050 to his gaming PC alongside the GeForce RTX 5090 (this isn't SLI) and dedicated the RTX 3050 strictly for PhysX processes in the NVIDIA Control Panel.
He then ran and benchmarked a couple of PhysX-based games, including Mafia II Classic, Batman Arkham Asylum, Borderlands 2, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and Mirror's Edge. The final results show an improvement of up to 1425%.
| Games | RTX 5080 Without RTX 3050 | RTX 5080 With RTX 3050 | Perf. Difference |
| Mafia II Classic | 28.8 Fps | 157.1 Fps | +545% |
| Batman Arkham Asylum | 61 Fps | 390 Fps | +639% |
| AC IV: Black Flag | 62 Fps | 62 Fps | 0% |
| Borderlands 2 | N/A | 122 Fps | N/A |
| Mirror's Edge | 12 Fps | 171 Fps | +1425% |
In Borderlands 2, the user reports that the game wasn't able to enable PhysX without RTX 3050 and, in the case of AC IV: Black Flag, the CPU was able to take care of the PhysX alone, which is why the RTX 3050 made no difference. But in other titles, the difference was day and night, particularly Mirror's Edge, which isn't even playable on RTX 5090.
It's a great hack when you can install an older GPU below your main one if you want to play older titles like these. Even GPUs much older than RTX 3050 support PhysX, allowing you to add them to the second PCI-E slot to enhance the performance of these titles significantly. Does that mean when Jensen said, "the more you buy, the more you save" was referring to this?
Nonetheless, even though NVIDIA specified that the series won't support 32-bit CUDA applications, it didn't explicitly state that they are dropping the PhysX support on the RTX 50 series.
News Source: Reddit
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