🤯 Surprise! Nvidia Brings PhysX Back to GeForce RTX 50 GPUs (Kind Of)

Nvidia is reversing course on a major decision for its newest hardware. The latest Game Ready driver quietly restores GPU-accelerated PhysX effects for a selection of beloved classic PC games running on the GeForce RTX 50 series.

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This is a welcome and highly relevant change for owners of an RTX 50 graphics card who still enjoy legacy titles. For months, these gamers faced a frustrating dilemma, but a new driver has arrived to bring back the physics flair.

⚙️ The Problem: Why PhysX Vanished on RTX 50

PhysX has been a staple in PC gaming for years, powering realistic effects like flowing capes, swirling smoke, and dynamic debris in titles like Borderlands 2 and Batman: Arkham City.

The issue arose earlier this year when Nvidia essentially canceled acceleration support for PhysX calculations in 32-bit games on the new RTX 50-series hardware.

The result was brutal:

1. ❌ PhysX calculations were offloaded entirely to the CPU.
2. 📉 This caused massive performance losses compared to previous GeForce generations.
3. 💡 Some dedicated players even resorted to a "hilarious, yet totally functional workaround": plugging an older, secondary Nvidia card into their system just to handle the PhysX workload.

🎉 The Comeback: Introducing "Custom Support"

With the release of the Game Ready driver 591.44, Nvidia has introduced a solution. This is not a complete restoration of the old 32-bit support, but rather a surgical approach dubbed "Custom Support."

Nvidia has focused on creating individually optimized profiles for a hand-picked list of the most popular and frequently played PhysX classics. This custom acceleration bypasses the previous limitations, ensuring the effects are rendered by the powerful RTX 50 GPU cores as intended.

The benefit for users? Significantly higher frame rates and the glorious return of those detailed, realistic physics effects.

🎮 The Beneficiaries: 9 Classic Games Get the Fix

Thanks to the new driver profiles, these nine iconic games now once again benefit from GPU acceleration for their signature PhysX effects:

1. Alice: Madness Returns
2. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
3. Batman: Arkham City
4. Batman: Arkham Origins
5. Borderlands 2
6. Mafia II
7. Metro 2033
8. Metro: Last Light
9. Mirror's Edge

Nvidia has also promised that support for the original Batman: Arkham Asylum is in the works and expected to arrive in the first half of 2026.

🔧 Beyond PhysX: Driver Optimizations

While the return of PhysX is the headlining surprise, the Game Ready driver 591.44 also brings standard performance improvements and fixes for modern titles and professional software:

• Optimizations: Enhanced performance for titles like Battlefield 6: Winter Offensive and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, particularly when utilizing DLSS 4.
• Fixes: Resolution of graphics artifacts in The Witcher 3 and stability improvements for Adobe Premiere Pro.

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➡️ Final Takeaway: If you own an RTX 50 series card and love these classic titles, the driver 591.44 update is a must-download. For everyone else, the general optimizations and bug fixes make it a worthwhile update nonetheless.