From hotfix to game-ready driver, NVIDIA is hitting it out of the ballpark by improving performance and restoring support for older games. A couple of weeks ago, NVIDIA rolled out hotfix driver 581.57 to address issues introduced by the now infamous Windows update KB5066835. That Windows update was known to break several OS features, but it was also discovered to have significant impacts on gaming performance, which drew the attention of NVIDIA’s engineers, who subsequently pushed out a hotfix. However, it seems as though they worked on another issue while checking off their lists, namely restoring 32-bit GPU-accelerated PhysX support for select games.
It’s been nearly a year since NVIDIA removed support for hardware-accelerated 32-bit PhysX on its Blackwell-based GPUs, leaving roughly three dozen games (Resetera user RandomlyRandom67 has a list here) abandoned. NVIDIA had posted the following statement in January, clarifying why support was ended.
“CUDA Driver will continue to support running 32-bit application binaries on GeForce RTX 40 (Ada), GeForce RTX 30 series (Ampere), GeForce RTX 20/GTX 16 series (Turing), GeForce GTX 10 series (Pascal) and GeForce GTX 9 series (Maxwell) GPUs. CUDA Driver will not support 32-bit CUDA applications on GeForce RTX 50 series (Blackwell) and newer architectures.”
-NVIDIA
Well, evidently, there must’ve been a change of heart following outcries from the PC community to bring back support for 32-bit PhysX because the latest game-ready driver 591.44 has begun doing just that.
“We heard the feedback from the community, and with the launch of our new driver today, we are adding custom support for GeForce gamers’ most played PhysX-accelerated games, enabling full performance on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, in line with our existing PhysX support on prior-generation GPUs.”
List of games that now support 32-bit PhysX on GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs
- Alice: Madness Returns
- Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
- Batman: Arkham City
- Batman: Arkham Origins
- Borderlands 2
- Mafia II
- Metro 2033
- Metro: Last Light
- Mirror’s Edge
NVIDIA has stated that support for Batman: Arkham Asylum will be available in 2026, but has not indicated whether any other games will be added to this list.
Some other notable titles still awaiting support are:
- Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Sacred 2: Ice & Blood
- Star Trek DAC
- Blur
- Dark Void
- The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
- 7554
and about a dozen more.