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Nvidia video card owners: Do you have Nvidia PhysX installed?

Do you have Nvidia PhysX installed?

  • Yes

    Votes: 329 87.7%

  • No

    Votes: 46 12.3%
  • Total voters
    375
chaobreaker

chaobreaker

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,797
GeForce Experience packs it (And HD Audio drivers) with every graphics driver update to this day but I see no point in installing it. There's like two dozen games that officially implemented it and the wikipedia page listing them hasn't updated its list in over a decade. I uncheck the option every time I update my video card.

Seems like Nvidia is still updating it regularly too. Just a strange relic of early 2010s 3D physics technology that I'm constantly reminded of its existence.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x9B_4qBAkk

Every game engine can do this stuff easy.
 
Patitoloco

Patitoloco

Member
Oct 27, 2017
24,621
They don't update in anymore. If you see the update versions when updating drivers it's been the same for the last like 5 years.

EDIT: ahh didn't see the link in the OP. I'm sure the Physx drivers are not updated anymore though, or at least not bundled with the GFE updates.
 
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Rizific

Rizific

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,042
I don't think so? Unless it's installed automatically. I don't even install gfe, fuck that noise.
 
Faces of Death

Faces of Death

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,539
I have a soft spot for PhysX. I remember when this video came out, and made me upgrade from a 7850 (i think?) to the MSI 680 Lightning. Damn, that was a monster card back then.

www.youtube.com

Borderlands 2 PhysX Comparision

A look at the NVIDIA PhysX effects in Borderlands 2!
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

The cloth physics still look really good there, too. The Vertex grenade comparison still looks awesome.
 
Cats_Schrodinger

Cats_Schrodinger

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,396
Umm PhysX isn't just the fancy hardware accelerated eye-candy from 15 years ago. It's one of the most prominent physics engines.

Unity and Unreal supports it. It's like the most popular one after Havok, although it's waning AFAIK.
 
Ananasas

Ananasas

Member
Jul 11, 2018
2,154
I don't think there are any new engines that support PhysX by default, it's a dead tech
 
Tendo

Tendo

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,833
I know that the original release of black flag will stutter and play like junk if you don't turn off physx smoke clouds or something.
 
Jazzem

Jazzem

Member
Feb 2, 2018
2,817
Tendo said:
I know that the original release of black flag will stutter and play like junk if you don't turn off physx smoke clouds or something.
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Unfortunately I tend to associate Physx with settings you're highly advised to turn off 😅 Likely unfairly though it's a shame there are a few examples, like AC4's and of course Arkham Knight's
 
mhayze

mhayze

Member
Nov 18, 2017
560
Did some searching for games that are actually using it Wikipedia says Warframe and Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, so semi recent I guess.
 
XR.

XR.

Member
Nov 22, 2018
6,967
I never enable it due to it cutting the framerate in half, but I've never considered not installing the drivers. Maybe I should consider a new way of life.
 
Älg

Älg

Banned
May 13, 2018
3,178
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PhysX just a generic physics engine like any other? The hardware accelerated stuff like smoke and cloth was marketed a lot in the late 2000's, but that was just PR.

AFAIK PhysX is the default physics engine for UE4.
 
Tendo

Tendo

Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,833
Jazzem said:
Unfortunately I tend to associate Physx with settings you're highly advised to turn off 😅 Likely unfairly though it's a shame there are a few examples, like AC4's and of course Arkham Knight's
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I loved seeing the effects, but always ended up turning them off. "oh a smoke bomb went off, time to go from 60fps to 17."
 

Deleted member 49611

Nov 14, 2018
5,052
everytime i install a new driver i question myself if i should be installing physx. so far it doesn't seem to do any harm having it installed so i just tick the box. maybe one day i'll feel brave enough to not install it.
 
Condwiramurs

Condwiramurs

Member
Nov 10, 2020
1,422
NecroMorrius said:
Does nobody remember the very brief window where PhysX ran on a separate card called a PPU? Heh, PPU.
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jup haha
physx_asus_p1_isofront.jpg


Tendo said:
I loved seeing the effects, but always ended up turning them off. "oh a smoke bomb went off, time to go from 60fps to 17."
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well at least that spirit is kept alive with raytracing lol
 
ZeroHunter

ZeroHunter

Member
Aug 6, 2020
907
I just keep it installed since I'd rather have it and not need it than have to go and install it for the odd older game here and there. Besides, a cursory google search shows that it only takes up <100MB of space which is basically nothing nowadays.
 
Netherscourge

Netherscourge

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,761
When I see a new update for GeForce, I just hit express install.

I don't know what the hell it's installing. All I want is DLSS to be supported for my games and I'm happy.

I don't even know what PhysX does. I just assume it's something under the hood that's important and let the driver program do whatever.
 
nanhacott

nanhacott

Technical artist
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
461
Almost every single Unreal title you've played in the last decade has used it. It's not some random "feature" for specific effects anymore, it became Unreal's default physics engine.

It's only being replaced in UE5 because Epic decided to invest in making their own, though it's not at parity yet, so we'll probably see a bunch of UE5 titles still using PhysX. Fortnite used PhysX until very recently.
 
JahIthBer

JahIthBer

Member
Jan 27, 2018
10,736
Sure why not, i hope the legacy drivers stay around. It's nice to go back to older games like Batman and Mirrors Edge with Physx. Lords of the Fallen (2014) had some nice Physx too.
 
Icarian

Icarian

Member
May 9, 2018
6,110
As far as I know, it comes in the same package as the drivers, even if you don't install Geforce Experience you'll most likely have it installed unless you purposely uninstall it or manually choose to not install it.
 
dgrdsv

dgrdsv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,755
chaobreaker said:
GeForce Experience packs it (And HD Audio drivers) with every graphics driver update to this day but I see no point in installing it.
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The point is in having PhysX API on your system for games which use it. If you only play the latest games then you may remove it - I believe that 3.x+ versions are bundled with the games (AW2 is the latest example) and don't need a system level driver anymore.
 
Wesker

Wesker

Member
Aug 3, 2020
2,142
Don't know. I use it in old games but I don't think it comes with the driver any more?
At least I don't see it when installing the new graphics drivers, as I always do a custom installation without the GeForce "Experience".
 
dgrdsv

dgrdsv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,755
nanhacott said:
Almost every single Unreal title you've played in the last decade has used it. It's not some random "feature" for specific effects anymore, it became Unreal's default physics engine.
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Yes but these don't really need the 2.8.x system API since they are using v3.x and the DLLs for that are packed with the game's distribution, like DLSS for example.
 
Fawz

Fawz

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,787
Montreal
If Nvidia extended PhysX support to all the Consoles we'd see more wide-spread adoption of the very good tech. Instead most leverage alternate solutions like Havok Physics
 
BSherrod

BSherrod

Member
Oct 27, 2017
750
I use a NVCleaninstall to install bloatless drivers and I still chose to install PhysX because why not?
 
Stibbs

Stibbs

Member
Feb 8, 2023
3,699
The 518
As someone who's only now getting into PC gaming the idea of a separate physics card almost being a thing we would all need is kinda funny
 
RivalGT

RivalGT

Member
Dec 13, 2017
6,916
Didn't the Witcher 3 have, it ran off the cpu. It lost lost interest after that.

I remember benchmarking with a dedicated GPU for physics only and getting better performance, but it's honestly not that practical since 99% of games didn't use it. Also in a lot of cases if you used an older card for physics you could actually get worse performance.

3D Vision is the more interesting one since that got removed from the driver a few years ago, it would have been nice to have natively in the driver since 3D gaming works amazingly well with VR headsets.
 
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