AMD Radeon GPUs Can Now Run NVIDIA PhysX Games With Up to 3x Better Performance

AMD Radeon GPU users can now run some older NVIDIA PhysX games with a major performance boost through ZLUDA v6, which adds support for 32-bit PhysX on non-NVIDIA GPUs. The update helps older PhysX-heavy titles run at playable frame rates without needing a separate NVIDIA GPU for PhysX processing.

ZLUDA is an open-source library designed to bring CUDA support to non-NVIDIA GPUs, and its latest release expands that work with PhysX, Windows ML, and texture support. The PhysX support is still based on an unfinished pull request, but it already shows strong results in select games.

AMD Radeon GPUs Get Playable PhysX Performance

The biggest example comes from Mafia II, where an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT system reportedly jumped from 26.2 FPS without ZLUDA PhysX to 80.2 FPS with ZLUDA PhysX enabled. That makes the game far more playable while also allowing AMD users to see extra PhysX effects such as debris and flames.

This matters because older PhysX titles often needed NVIDIA hardware to run these effects properly, while users with AMD GPUs either lost performance or had to use a second NVIDIA GPU. ZLUDA changes that setup by allowing the main AMD GPU to handle the workload.

ZLUDA Still Has Some Issues

The current support is not perfect, as users can still face fluid simulation glitches and Steam game loading problems. However, since ZLUDA remains open-source, developers and users can test, edit, and improve support across more PhysX games.

The developer has also added better Windows ML support and texture handling, which helps the project move beyond its earlier Linux-focused work. Future updates will arrive less often, but ZLUDA v6 already gives AMD Radeon users a useful way to revisit older PhysX games with much better performance.