[Solved] Games crashes with Nvidia Physx / Gameworks smoke and fog enabled (PhysX3Gpu_x64.dll / APEX_Particles_x64.dll)

Overview

TLDR : use older driver (456.55) to fix Physx crashes

Crashes with Nvidia Physx / Gameworks smoke and fog

Recent Nvidia drivers makes Batman Arkham Knight crashes when gameworks interactive smoke and fog is enabled (something with filename not found, PhysX3Gpu_x64.dll , APEX_Particles_x64.dll , APEX_TurbulenceFS_x64.dll …).

You could still play the game with the latest driver and this setting turned off but I wanted to experience the smoke physx since it looks really good :

After some heavy digging, I found that the 456.55 is the last stable driver where the game can run with all gameworks settings enabled, including the interactive smoke and fog.

How to fix it ?

• Download the 456.55 driver : [link]
• Uninstall your current driver from the windows control panel or Display Driver Uninstaller (the windows control panel method was sufficient for me) => Reboot
• After reboot, wait for Windows to install its own driver (the screen should flicker and nvidia control panel should become available again) then install the downloaded 456.55 driver (reboot if asked)

To test if everything works, use the benchmark test from the options menu. Every physx related things are used in this benchmark so you should see if it works.

I have installed the 456.55 driver but it still crashes, what do I do ?

If you’ve installed the 456.55 driver (you can check it in Geforce Experience or Nvidia Control Panel > Help > System informations) and you did a reboot but still experiences issues, look at this thread : “MASTER FIXES FOR BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT”