Some Games Run Better On Older GPUs Than On Nvidia's New 50-Series Cards

Nvidia's new 50-series graphics cards just aren't as good at running certain older games as previous hardware generations were, some PC gamers have discovered. With its latest generation of GPUs, Nvidia has quietly removed support for PhysX, a physics simulation technology that was used in a number of popular titles in the early 2010s.

In a Reddit post, as spotted by The Verge, one user questioned why PhysX was suddenly turned off by default, or when turned on was forced to run on the CPU--causing major performance issues in games designed for GPU-enhanced PhysX. Responding to a post on the Nvidia forums, the company confirmed that PhysX has effectively been discontinued, due to Nvidia ending support for 32-bit CUDA applications for 50-series graphics cards and future generations. While the end of support for 32-bit CUDA was noted in a brief support article, Nvidia never explicitly mentioned the impact to PhysX, or noted which games might be impacted with the sunsetting of this technology.

PhysX's GPU-accelerated physics tech was acquired by Nvidia in 2008, and its realistic simulation of moving cloth, liquids, smoke and fog, and shatter particle effects was implemented in a number of popular AAA games of the time--including Borderlands 2, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, the Batman: Arkham trilogy, and the first two Metro games.

While PhysX is now mostly defunct and hasn't been implemented in new games for some time, many gamers were still disappointed to discover it had been discontinued without warning. Users on the Resetera forums have since banded together to create a list of games that will be impacted by the end of PhysX support. The list also notes how well each game will run when using the CPU for PhysX, with users testing each game individually. The full list includes a little under 50 games, but include some popular titles from the period between 2007-2014.

Previous Nvidia generations, including the 40-, 30-, and 20- series will continue to support 32-bit CUDA applications, meaning gamers who play a lot of older games may be better to stick to an older graphics card for the time being. As is standard for a new generation of graphics cards, the new 50-series GPUs are pretty hard to find at the moment, anyway.

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