PhysX hobbled on the CPU by x87 code
 

Now, David Kanter at RealWorld Technologies has added a new twist to the story by analyzing the execution of several PhysX games using Intel's VTune profiling tool. Kanter discovered that when GPU acceleration is disabled and PhysX calculations are being handled by the CPU, the vast majority of the code being executed uses x87 floating-point math instructions rather than SSE.


http://techreport.com/discussions.x/19216

Is anyone really surprised by this?

Techies wouldn't be, but I still see plenty of average people buying low-end NVIDIA hardware for PhysX purposes, even in new PCs.