There are also many UE3 games that can run PhysX on GPU, but after some tweaking :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajr9ovQwk5I 2011 - Hunted - The Demon's Forge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ajp9_KbSg 2015 - Life Is Strange

Technically speaking, RTX 4090 is the ultimate NVIDIA PhysX GPU; so (in teory) in order to get the best hardware accelerated experience, you should get this GPU for PhysX only!

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 15:04:

There are also many UE3 games that can run PhysX on GPU, but after some tweaking :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajr9ovQwk5I 2011 - Hunted - The Demon's Forge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ajp9_KbSg 2015 - Life Is Strange

That indicator doesn't mean the physx code is running on the GPU. Based on the game, that config option either does nothing or just disables the physics effects.

eddman wrote on 2025-07-19, 16:06:

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 15:04:

There are also many UE3 games that can run PhysX on GPU, but after some tweaking :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajr9ovQwk5I 2011 - Hunted - The Demon's Forge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Ajp9_KbSg 2015 - Life Is Strange

That indicator doesn't mean the physx code is running on the GPU. Based on the game, that config option either does nothing or just disables the physics effects.

The NVIDIA PhysX indicator is reliable!
Some officially NVIDIA PhysX GPU accelerated, get GPU acceleration only if PhysX is set to high, please see Cryostasis.
The option on the config file speaks clearly : bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport= true or false; false means use dedicated hardware, if on the NVIDIA control panel is set a GPU, it will run on GPU otherwise you're free to set CPU;
true means software support , and software support means CPU ONLY!
If this option increase performance or change visual graphic quality, is the ACTUAL question.
To establish once and for all, the answer, we must run some test on a dual gpu configuration, both NVIDIA and at least one PhysX hardware acceleration compatible; and see if a dedicated PhysX GPU would increase in usage.
Obviously this just for science 😀
PS
old games were used to ask if you would run software mode or hardware accelerated, and guess what? Software was intended to run CPU only...

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-04-01, 09:46:

To be fair, they are probably focusing with PhysX to the professional market rather than gaming. The professional market loves proprietary crap and accurate physics simulation is more important there then in gaming.

The only professional products that used PhysX were programs for animation and game-making and it was almost always done with Nvidia GPU and not PPU, with PhysX support beginning to land in programs right around the time Nvidia bought Ageia and increasing rapidly, as Nvidia GPUs evolved into the early 2010s and the company pushed CUDA hard. Even without PhysX, Nvidia was already pushing physics stuff in CUDA-enabled professional applications that were used in science and industry.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

The NVIDIA PhysX indicator is reliable!

The indicator only shows that the game is calling the GPU, but it does not necessarily mean the code is actually executed on it.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

Some officially NVIDIA PhysX GPU accelerated, get GPU acceleration only if PhysX is set to high, please see Cryostasis.

Because in such games that setting is specifically coded to run on the GPU. Cryostasis is not a CPU-only game.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

The option on the config file speaks clearly : bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport= true or false; false means use dedicated hardware, if on the NVIDIA control panel is set a GPU, it will run on GPU otherwise you're free to set CPU;

It doesn't. Even if you try to force it to use dedicated hardware, if there is no GPU specific effect in the game code, it will not run on the GPU, regardless of what you set in the control panel. One example is Xcom 2, where setting that option to false simply disables the physics effects.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

If this option increase performance or change visual graphic quality, is the ACTUAL question.
To establish once and for all, the answer, we must run some test on a dual gpu configuration, both NVIDIA and at least one PhysX hardware acceleration compatible; and see if a dedicated PhysX GPU would increase in usage.

So if you haven't properly tested this, why are you claiming with such certainty that it works? If your only reasoning is the nvidia physx indicator, that's not enough. There are many posts on the internet where people have used that unreal engine option and it didn't work.
I'm not saying there's no game out there that can't be forced to have its physx code run on the GPU, but it requires proper testing to determine that, and I haven't seen it yet.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

old games were used to ask if you would run software mode or hardware accelerated, and guess what? Software was intended to run CPU only...

Only those games that have dedicated CPU and GPU modes. Those physx games that do not offer a specific GPU mode, seemingly run on the CPU, regardless of that bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport config.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2025-07-19, 18:36:

The only professional products that used PhysX were programs for animation and game-making and it was almost always done with Nvidia GPU and not PPU, with PhysX support beginning to land in programs right around the time Nvidia bought Ageia and increasing rapidly, as Nvidia GPUs evolved into the early 2010s and the company pushed CUDA hard. Even without PhysX, Nvidia was already pushing physics stuff in CUDA-enabled professional applications that were used in science and industry.

It seems since physx 5 (and mainly as part of omniverse), nvidia is focusing on non-game related applications, industrial, robotic, etc. I don't know if there is any game out there that uses version 5.

eddman wrote on 2025-07-19, 19:29:

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2025-07-19, 18:36:

The only professional products that used PhysX were programs for animation and game-making and it was almost always done with Nvidia GPU and not PPU, with PhysX support beginning to land in programs right around the time Nvidia bought Ageia and increasing rapidly, as Nvidia GPUs evolved into the early 2010s and the company pushed CUDA hard. Even without PhysX, Nvidia was already pushing physics stuff in CUDA-enabled professional applications that were used in science and industry.

It seems since physx 5 (and mainly as part of omniverse), nvidia is focusing on non-game related applications, industrial, robotic, etc. I don't know if there is any game out there that uses version 5.

Stellar Blade has PhysX : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx-AUMsqI-I
I'm not sure about which version has been used, but it is still used nowadays.

eddman wrote on 2025-07-19, 19:08:

The indicator only shows that the game is calling the GPU, but it does not necessarily mean the code is actually executed on it. […]
Show full quote

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

The NVIDIA PhysX indicator is reliable!

The indicator only shows that the game is calling the GPU, but it does not necessarily mean the code is actually executed on it.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

Some officially NVIDIA PhysX GPU accelerated, get GPU acceleration only if PhysX is set to high, please see Cryostasis.

Because in such games that setting is specifically coded to run on the GPU. Cryostasis is not a CPU-only game.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

The option on the config file speaks clearly : bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport= true or false; false means use dedicated hardware, if on the NVIDIA control panel is set a GPU, it will run on GPU otherwise you're free to set CPU;

It doesn't. Even if you try to force it to use dedicated hardware, if there is no GPU specific effect in the game code, it will not run on the GPU, regardless of what you set in the control panel. One example is Xcom 2, where setting that option to false simply disables the physics effects.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 17:25:

If this option increase performance or change visual graphic quality, is the ACTUAL question.
To establish once and for all, the answer, we must run some test on a dual gpu configuration, both NVIDIA and at least one PhysX hardware acceleration compatible; and see if a dedicated PhysX GPU would increase in usage.

So if you haven't properly tested this, why are you claiming with such certainty that it works? If your only reasoning is the nvidia physx indicator, that's not enough. There are many posts on the internet where people have used that unreal engine option and it didn't work.
I'm not saying there's no game out there that can't be forced to have its physx code run on the GPU, but it requires proper testing to determine that, and I haven't seen it yet.

I beg up your pardon but, what bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport should be used for?
Why when bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport is put to false, GPU is detected by the PhysX indicator, if there is no actual GPU implementation?
I will test dual gpu setup, when i find proper hardware.
Do you know about any other strange case like Xcom 2?

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 20:11:

Stellar Blade has PhysX : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx-AUMsqI-I
I'm not sure about which version has been used, but it is still used nowadays.

Any UE4 game that uses the default physics engine is using phsyx, so that's not surprising. Stellar Blade isn't the only new one.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 20:19:

what bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport should be used for?

Nothing? There are hundreds of settings in engine config files. That doesn't mean all of them are supposed to be doing something in a given game. Developers do not always implement every feature an engine offers.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 20:19:

Why when bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport is put to false, GPU is detected by the PhysX indicator, if there is no actual GPU implementation?

You need to ask nvidia's driver team.

In any case, this is going off-topic. If you want to have a focused physx discussion, better to create a thread in Milliways.

eddman wrote on 2025-07-19, 21:16:

Any UE4 game that uses the default physics engine is using phsyx, so that's not surprising. Stellar Blade isn't the only new one […]
Show full quote

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 20:11:

Stellar Blade has PhysX : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx-AUMsqI-I
I'm not sure about which version has been used, but it is still used nowadays.

Any UE4 game that uses the default physics engine is using phsyx, so that's not surprising. Stellar Blade isn't the only new one.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 20:19:

what bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport should be used for?

Nothing? There are hundreds of settings in engine config files. That doesn't mean all of them are supposed to be doing something in a given game. Developers do not always implement every feature an engine offers.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-19, 20:19:

Why when bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport is put to false, GPU is detected by the PhysX indicator, if there is no actual GPU implementation?

You need to ask nvidia's driver team.

In any case, this is going off-topic. If you want to have a focused physx discussion, better to create a thread in Milliways.

Thank you!

eddman wrote on 2025-07-18, 22:06:

I haven't personally checked, but AFAIK their hardware-accelerated physx mode would not run on the GPU, regardless of the software being installed, so you still need a PPU for that.

What that legacy driver does is to simply make the games work, even the CPU-only titles, because back then games didn't ship with any physx dll files, so you needed to install it.

Exactly: it has not been checked, which officially leaves the question open. Logically, on the other hand, it makes no sense for a game to refuse to run without PhysX DLL files (regardless of whether PhysX is actually being used). But please do not think I am making it a big deal; GRAW 1 is the only game on my list of interest affected by this (and according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InTZ6MhgzeE is hardly a worthwhile difference; from what I gather it shines more relative to the system on Xbox 360 anyway).

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-21, 19:18:

Exactly: it has not been checked, which officially leaves the question open. Logically, on the other hand, it makes no sense for a game to refuse to run without PhysX DLL files (regardless of whether PhysX is actually being used).

It's not illogical. There are many games that have external dependencies that would fail to load in their absence, e.g. C++ redistributables. Some physx games do not come with the DLL files included and rely on the system software.

To clarify, physx is a whole physics engine that has both CPU and GPU modules. At this point thousands of games use CPU physx (which doesn't rely on the GPU at all) for physics calculations. GPU physics is a different thing and only a handful of games have it as an optional feature.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-21, 19:18:

But please do not think I am making it a big deal; GRAW 1 is the only game on my list of interest affected by this (and according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InTZ6MhgzeE is hardly a worthwhile difference; from what I gather it shines more relative to the system on Xbox 360 anyway).

I checked GRAW and Cellfactor. The former is an odd one; it does launch without any physx software installed, but doesn't seem to have any included physx DLLs. Maybe the physx code is embedded in the game code itself, or perhaps the game uses a different physics engine for the base calculations and the physx engine is used only for the extra effects? (EDIT: Yea, it uses Havok as the main physics engine. https://web.archive.org/web/20060509090312/ht … ?searchid=10096, Back cover: https://cdn.mobygames.com/covers/4209077-tom- … -back-cover.jpg)

In any case, with both the legacy physx software and the latest one installed, the extra effects are still missing. It seems the PPU card is still needed.

As for Cellfactor, it doesn't have any included physx DLLs. Without the legacy physx installed, it throws an error and fails to launch. It works after installing it, but the hardware-accelerated physx stuff do not work and the game asks for the PPU.

eddman wrote on 2025-07-22, 00:53:

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-21, 19:18:

Some physx games do not come with the DLL files included and rely on the system software.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-07-21, 19:18:

Would you be so kind to make any example,please?

eddman wrote on 2025-07-22, 00:53:

perhaps the game uses a different physics engine for the base calculations and the physx engine is used only for the extra effects?

Most likely, since (unlike its prequels) it was designed as a multiplatform game from the beginning. The early days of PhysX were something of a mess since form was still being found. Video footage I have seen of those "extra effects" show some of them to be arguably ridiculous, a break in suspension of disbelief from the time Tom Clancy games were still supposed to be grittingly realistic.

If anyone's curious, the PhysX effects in GRAW1 on a real Ageia card can be seen in this video from Digital Foundry.

They also compare the PC release with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 versions.

UWM8 wrote on 2025-07-22, 07:25:

Would you be so kind to make any example,please?

I already mentioned Cellfactor as one of them. A few other examples are Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Medal of Honor: Airborne and Helldorado. I haven't specifically checked that many physx games with the physx software not installed.