Surprise! Nvidia brings PhysX back to GeForce RTX 50 GPUs, kind of
Nvidia is bringing back a feature that many of you may have already written off: the new Game Ready 591.44 driver brings back PhysX support for a selection of older games.
For owners of a GeForce RTX 50 graphics card, this is a very relevant change, especially if you like playing classic games with elaborate physics effects.
Why PhysX matters – and why it was removed
PhysX has been a mainstay of PC gaming for many years, creating realistic effects for cloth, smoke and particles in titles such as “Borderlands 2” and “Batman: Arkham City.” But Nvidia canceled PhysX support in early 2025: new RTX-50 series graphics cards could no longer accelerate PhysX calculations in 32-bit games via GPU. As a result, calculations relied entirely on the CPU, with significant performance losses compared to previous generation GeForce cards.
Some players responded with a hilarious, but totally working workaround: They plugged an old Nvidia card into their computer just so they could continue using PhysX effects.
Driver 591.44: PhysX returns – but only for certain games
With the current pilot, there is now a turnaround. Nvidia is introducing a so-called “custom support” level. This isn’t a complete return of the old 32-bit support, but rather individually created profiles for a hand-picked selection of particularly popular PhysX titles.
These nine games now benefit from GPU acceleration again:
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Borderlands 2
- Mafia II
- Metro 2033
- Metro: Last Light
- The edge of the mirror
Nvidia has announced additional support for “Batman: Arkham Asylum” for the first half of 2026.
It remains to be seen whether other games will follow. Nvidia writes that it initially focused on the most popular classics that are still frequently played today.
PhysX technology originally comes from Ageia, which developed its own physical processor unit (PPU) around 20 years ago. Nvidia bought Ageia in 2008 and integrated PhysX calculations directly into the CUDA cores of its own GeForce graphics cards. This made the additional PPU card superfluous, but also tied the effects firmly to the Nvidia hardware.
The driver also brings optimizations and bug fixes
In addition to the return of PhysX, Nvidia’s new Game Ready driver offers other improvements:
- Optimizations for “Battlefield 6: Winter Offensive” and “Call of Duty: Black Ops 7”, especially in conjunction with DLSS 4.
- Fixed graphical artifacts in “The Witcher 3”.
- Stability fixes for Adobe Premiere Pro.
The 591.44 driver is available for download as usual via the Nvidia app or the Nvidia website.
If you play classic games with PhysX effects, the update should bring noticeable improvements – often significantly higher frame rates and re-enabled graphical effects. If, on the other hand, you only play modern titles, you will benefit above all from general optimizations and bug fixes.
