With NVIDIA’s RTX 50-series graphics cards, PhysX support was dropped. Recently, NVIDIA decided to bring PhysX support for select games back—but does it even matter?
HTG Wrapped 2025: 24 days of tech
24 days of our favorite hardware, gadgets, and tech
PhysX hasn’t been used actively since 2015—a decade ago
No modern game relies on this ancient tech.
PhysX was a huge feature of its time when it was announced back in 2005. I’d say PhysX was as revolutionary for its time as ray tracing is for modern gaming. However, it lasted about a decade and then was phased out.
The last mainstream AAA game to rely heavily on PhysX was Batman: Arkham Knight, which was released in 2015. This game was a rig-breaker for the time, and required some pretty hefty specs to run well. The problem is, the game is 10 years old at this point—and most PhysX games are much older than that.
Since no modern game relies on PhysX, why does NVIDIA still have to support it? I mean, they’ve supported it for the past 10 years when no PhysX games have been released in that same time frame.
NVIDIA RTX 50 Series Cards No Longer Support PhysX
32-bit PhysX is officially dead.
The average PC gamer likely doesn’t play any older PhysX games anymore
Only a handful of people still play those old games, anyway.
So PhysX games are old, what does that matter? There’s actually hardly anyone left playing PhysX games, at least according to SteamDB. When I checked SteamDB while writing this article (which was around Christmastime 2025, when more gamers are playing than normal), Batman: Arkham Knight only had an average of 2,000 players in a 24-hour period. That’s fewer than 100 people per hour playing the game worldwide.
How does that compare to other modern games? Counter-Strike 2 has over 1,000,000 active players online within a 24-hour period, Grand Theft Auto 5 has over 100,000, Battlefield 6 is over 85,000, and even Stardew Valley is over 50,000.
This data tells us that there are very few people playing even the last mainstream PhysX-based game, let alone the older, lesser played titles. Sure, there are still a few people playing those games, but should a few people dictate how an entire company is run?
This Is the Oldest GPU I’d Be Comfortable Using
It’s actually older than you think.
NVIDIA stopped releasing drivers for Maxwell and Pascal GPUs, so why keep PhysX up to date?
Supporting old drivers takes developers away from building new features.
Earlier this year, NVIDIA dropped support for both Maxwell and Pascal graphics cards. For reference, Maxwell GPUs came out in 2014, and Pascal came out in 2016. If NVIDIA can stop supporting older graphics cards, why can’t they stop supporting older game tech?
I know one of the tenets of PC gaming is being able to play any game released at any time, but NVIDIA no longer supporting PhysX on the RTX 50-series (and then brought back in limited fashion) should be no different than dropping support for older graphics cards.
NVIDIA dropping support for PhysX doesn’t mean PhysX games suddenly stop working—they just have to render on the processor instead of the GPU. This is just like when a graphics card is no longer supported in modern drivers. It doesn’t get new features or updates, but it still technically functions just fine, such as the time it was last updated.
I think requiring NVIDIA, or any company, to continue to support hardware and software indefinitely is a recipe for disaster. It pulls developers and teams away from working on modern functions or features, and requires them to work on features that only a handful of people actually use.
- Graphics RAM Size
-
12GB
- Brand
-
ASUS
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 12GB graphics card is designed to take your gaming setup to the next level. As the latest from NVIDIA, you’re getting PCIe 5.0 compatibility, HDMI and DisplayPort 2.1 ports, NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, and DLSS 4 technologies packed into this mid-range GPU.
NVIDIA supported PhysX for 10 years after the last mainstream AAA title release, and I think that’s more than generous enough for them. Sure, I’d love to see all games supported for all time, but that’s just not feasible, and I really shouldn’t expect it—and neither should you.
Hardly anyone plays PhysX games anymore, so support being returned to NVIDIA cards will satisfy the vocal few, but does it even matter in the first place? I think not.
