Tom's Hardware tests RTX 5060 PhysX trick

A graphics card from 2026 is not supposed to need a helper card from the same era just to run 2009-era smoke and paper debris correctly. But that’s basically the situation Nvidia created when RTX 50-series GPUs lost hardware acceleration for older 32-bit PhysX paths in a bunch of classic PC games. Tom’s Hardware decided to test the obvious enthusiast workaround — let an RTX 5090 draw the game, and stick an RTX 5060 in the system just to crunch PhysX. The result is real, but narrower than the gimmick makes it sound. (tomshardware.com) ### What’s the actual trick? The trick is old-school Nvidia control panel stuff. You install a second GeForce card, set that card as the dedicated PhysX processor, and leave the main GPU to do rendering. That is not SLI, and it does not combine raster power. It just splits one very specific job away from the main card — the particle-heavy cloth, fog, paper, smoke, and debris effects that some older games offloaded to CUDA-powered PhysX. (forums.tomshardware.com) ### Why does RTX 50 need this at all? Because the problem is not raw GPU horsepower. The RTX 5090 is absurdly fast in modern games, but RTX 50-series cards dropped support for 32-bit CUDA applications, and a lot of classic GPU PhysX content depends on exactly that older stack. So in affected games, the fancy effects either fall back to the CPU or run badly enough th(forums.tomshardware.com) first place. (pcgamesn.com) ### Didn’t Nvidia already fix this? Kind of — but only kind of. In December 2025, Nvidia’s 591.44 driver restored PhysX acceleration for a whitelist of nine older games on RTX 50 cards, including Batman: Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Origins, Borderlands 2, Mafia II, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Mirror’s Edge, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and Alice: Madness Returns. That made the sto(pcgamesn.com)egacy PhysX edge case disappear, and it kept the whole topic alive for tinkerers. (techpowerup.com) ### So what did Tom’s Hardware test? Tom’s Hardware focused on Batman Arkham games and used the RTX 5060 as the dedicated PhysX card next to an RTX 5090. The point was not to prove that dual GPUs are back — they are not. The point was to see whether a cheap-ish Blackwell card could still serve as a sidecar accelerator for the narrow set of (techpowerup.com)h 32-bit PhysX support. (tomshardware.com) ### What changed in performance? The eye-catching result was not a giant average-FPS revolution across everything. It was better frametimes and stronger lows in the worst PhysX-heavy scenes. Tom’s Hardware highlighted about a 15% average uplift in Batman: Arkham Knight with the secondary RTX 5060, and the bigger win came when effects got messy — the exact moments that usually make these old showcases feel broken on newer hardw(tomshardware.com)where dedicated PhysX cards turned borderline-unplayable scenes into triple-digit frame rates in games like Mirror’s Edge and Mafia II. (msn.com) ### Is this a good idea for normal people? Not really. You need a second PCIe slot, enough power headroom, case space, patience, and a very specific taste in old Nvidia showcase games. Most PC players should just use the driver fixes where they exist, lower PhysX settings, or accept that this is legacy middleware acting like legacy middleware. The dedicated-card route makes sense only if you already own the hardware or care enough about these games to build around them. (techpowerup.com) ### What’s the bottom line? The fun part is that the hack works. The less fun part is what that says about the ecosystem. A flagship RTX 5090 can still benefit from a sidekick card for ancient effects middleware — not because it lacks power, but because compatibility got weird. Tom’s Hardware didn’t revive multi-GPU gaming. It showed that one very specific dual-GPU trick still has a pulse.