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