With its RTX 50s, NVIDIA dropped support for 32-Bit PhysX. So if you have an RTX 5090/5080/5070 Ti, playing compatible games such as Borderlands 2 or Mirror’s Edge could prove complicated or even impossible! One redditor has come up with a solution: add an older-generation graphics card to your PC. The latter will be designed to handle only the technology’s calculations, while the RTX 50 will do the rest. We’re not far from taking a leap 20 years into the past, when AGEIA announced its cards dedicated to the engine.
An RTX 3050 dedicated to PhysX calculations!
No, just because you install two graphics cards in a PC doesn’t necessarily mean it’s SLI. This is clearly not the case here, as the RTX 3050 and RTX 50 do not support this technology. However, this solution allows the RTX 3050 to be dedicated solely to PhysX calculations in order to boost performance. After setting up his installation and running a few benchmarks, user jerubedo saw performance gains of up to 1425%!
Without the RTX 3050, he says Borderlands 2 wouldn’t even launch with NVIDIA’s technology enabled. On the other hand, on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag there was no difference in performance since the CPU is capable of handling the calculations linked to the technology. However, Mirror’s Edge, without an additional card, was simply unplayable without the RTX 3050 with its 12 FPS. By adding the 3050, the game increases to 171 FPS, i.e. a 1425% increase in performance. The same goes for Mafia II Classic, which wasn’t even running at 30 FPS without an extra GPU, and which goes up to 157.1 FPS, or 545% !
Of course, if you’re tempted by this solution, don’t think big, opt for a low-cost card. If possible, choose a compact card, as short as possible. A two-GPU configuration may not seem like much, but it does mean making a few concessions, particularly in terms of airflow. So be careful.