With RTX 50 series cards not supporting 32-bit PhysX, some owners are taking to shoving a secondary card into their rig just to run older games better
Just last week, it was discovered that Nvidia's shiny new RTX 50 series cards had axed support entirely for 32-bit software, which hit old-school physics engine software PhysX. Now, in order to run some games better, gamers are taking to installing secondary graphics cards to get a healthy fps boost (and in one case, just to run a game with PhysX).
One user posted to Reddit (via Wccftech) that they had purchased a dedicated RTX 3050 to run a handful of games alongside their RTX 5090 and the results feel like they may actually justify the second card if you have one already hanging around.
RTX 5090 and CPU-enabled PhysX average fps
RTX 5090 and dedicated PhysX RTX 3050 average fps
Mafia II classic
28.8 fps
157.1 fps
Batman Arkham Asylum
61 fps
390 fps
Borderlands 2
N/A (can't enable PhysX)
122 fps
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
62 fps
62 fps
Mirror's Edge
12 fps
171 fps
It's worth noting that, if you want to run these games and get a better average fps on an RTX 5090, you can opt to turn off PhysX entirely, but PhysX is used for cloth and particle effects so PhysX does make a lot of compatible games look better and more lively. We have tested Borderlands 2 (a game some believed wouldn't function) on our own RTX 5090 FE rig and it will boot and play fine.
If you don't fancy committing to a full-on RTX 30 series card, alongside your brand new $2,000 GPU, one user then went on to test a GT 1030, a budget card from 2017 in their rig. Interestingly, this user doesn't even have an RTX 50 series card and instead uses an RTX 3080 Ti. Despite this, they found substantial increases, especially when compared to CPU-enabled PhysX support.
Perhaps the most notable difference is a 170 fps jump between the RTX 3080 Ti + GT 1030 test and the RTX 3080 Ti with CPU-enabled PhysX in Mirror's Edge.
RTX 3080 Ti with PhysX via CPU
RTX 3080 Ti
RTX 3080 Ti + GT 1030
Mafia II classic
18.9 fps
69.9 fps
107.1 fps
Mirror's Edge
132 fps
187 fps
302 fps
Batman: Arkham City
35-45 fps
50-60 fps
55-
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