Portal with RTX

It's weird, and maybe I missed something, but I've been reading and hearing things about "how this is possible because of Nvidia's Light Speed studios", but not how Valve and Nvidia teamed up to present it. Maybe there's nothing in it, but it's kind of weird. Like Nvidia created it whether anyone wanted it or not. :D Probably nothing, and who knows, maybe they worked on it together, but all the things I keep reading, only talk about Nvidia's part in it. I didn't watch the keynote, so it's entirely possible I've missed something.

Also, it looks good, and I think it will be cool. ;)
 
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Portal’s free ray-tracing DLC will release on December 8th

Portal, the first-person puzzle game that spawned a thousand memes, is getting a glow-up on December 8th, courtesy of a free piece of DLC...Portal with RTX was originally announced alongside Nvidia’s new RTX 4080 and 4090 graphics cards and adds ray-tracing support along with remade hi-res textures and models to the game...the result is much more realistic lighting and reflections, making the 15-year-old title look almost brand new...

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/29...ase-date-ray-tracing-lighting-textures-remake

 
Just wondering, what type of framerates do modern GPUs get in Portal with no RT@4k?
 
RT has that big of a hit on performance even with a 15 year old game?...or is this just typical Nvidia marketing trying to sell more 4000 series GPU's?

Portal.png
 
hey look , yet another game that slows down to 15 fps on medium rt at 720p. when I enable rt o my1060!

of course, the 3050 is still 50 bucks above msrp, one year after launch; its going to be 2025 before I can pick up a cheap used rt card from everyone favorite neighborhood mining agent ( even with stake, they must still be making money, because months later, there have been no massive selloffs)!
 
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RT has that big of a hit on performance even with a 15 year old game?...or is this just typical Nvidia marketing trying to sell more 4000 series GPU's?

RT has a massive performance impact, particularly depending on how much is ray traced. Quake 2 RTX struggles to keep 60fps on my 3090. Right now we are in the "just barely enough" phase of hardware when it comes to ray traced games. It can handle it in realtime, but barely, and then only with things to help speed it up. Ray tracing is very intensive, particularly with more pixels. That's why despite being an old idea it has never become a thing and why when you saw RT demos back in the day they were always abysmally low resolution.

It is kinda like when programmable shaders first came out for GPUs in the GeForce 3 days. Yes they COULD do it... kinda, but not very well. You had to use it sparingly or it would tank FPS. As cards got better and more shader hardware, it could be used more and more.

Ray tracing is also one of the areas where the 4000 series gained the most over the 3000 series.
 
Its decent. Worth playing at least once. Portal 2 was not memorable for me though.
This is encouraging for Portal RTX, since I thought Portal 2 was awesome but I never played the first.
 
This is encouraging for Portal RTX, since I thought Portal 2 was awesome but I never played the first.
A big part of the appeal of the original was it was a novel experience, so if you played the 2nd already it isn't going to be that exciting.

I liked the first but the second wasn't as much fun, but it had coop which was cool.
 
RT has a massive performance impact, particularly depending on how much is ray traced. Quake 2 RTX struggles to keep 60fps on my 3090. Right now we are in the "just barely enough" phase of hardware when it comes to ray traced games. It can handle it in realtime, but barely, and then only with things to help speed it up. Ray tracing is very intensive, particularly with more pixels. That's why despite being an old idea it has never become a thing and why when you saw RT demos back in the day they were always abysmally low resolution.

It is kinda like when programmable shaders first came out for GPUs in the GeForce 3 days. Yes they COULD do it... kinda, but not very well. You had to use it sparingly or it would tank FPS. As cards got better and more shader hardware, it could be used more and more.

Ray tracing is also one of the areas where the 4000 series gained the most over the 3000 series.

I played Quake RTX before with a 3080 Ti and the only way to get it to reach 60fps was with dynamic resolution scaling, global illumination on medium and reflection/refraction depth at 4. I tested the game with the 4090 and not only did I get a 2x fps boost, it did so at native resolution and with all the path tracing settings turned up to the max.

On topic:

I bought Portal really cheap when it was on sale just to test the upcoming RTX mod. I actually never played it before so might as well see for myself what it's all about.
 
RT has a massive performance impact, particularly depending on how much is ray traced...

yes but the vast majority of games only use select RT features such as reflections or ambient occlusion, shadows etc...the really demanding games like Metro Exodus, Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077 use RT global illumination or are path traced but those are few and far between...seems like Portal uses full ray-tracing
 
I bought Portal really cheap when it was on sale just to test the upcoming RTX mod. I actually never played it before so might as well see for myself what it's all about.
It's a fun puzzle game with a surprisingly good story. The second one, Portal 2, is even better. Puzzles are just as good in both, the story and atmosphere are just a step up in 2.
 
It's a fun puzzle game with a surprisingly good story. The second one, Portal 2, is even better. Puzzles are just as good in both, the story and atmosphere are just a step up in 2.
Nice! I bought the Portal 1&2 bundle from steam. Looking forward to playing them.
 
Nice! I bought the Portal 1&2 bundle from steam. Looking forward to playing them.
If you like puzzle games, I think you'll enjoy them. Valve put a LOT of time into playtesting the puzzles so they don't leave you out in the cold working them out (they have a behind the scenes mode where they explain a lot of that). If it was just the puzzles, it'd be a good game, however the story is both very funny/silly and compelling at the same time. The second game then just heightens the story and atmosphere even more.
 
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Not sure if I remember numbers like that on a non modded game
 
31fps with a 3090 at 4K maxed with DLSS balanced... ouch.
Ya... Full out RT hits hard. We are still a ways off from it really being feasible. I think most games that use it for the near future will do hybrid rasterization with some RT added on because of it. When you go hard, as this appears to, it just smokes even high end GPUs.

I'm excited though. While there isn't a ton of it, it has been used to great effect to enhance some games. Control and Resident Evil Village are two I've played that really get another level of awesome when RT is turned on.
 
Yeah path tracing is still tough but a 4090 can do it at 60fps almost 1440p and 30fps 4k that's impressive how far we've come in 4 years since RTX 2000
 
Yeah path tracing is still tough but a 4090 can do it at 60fps almost 1440p and 30fps 4k that's impressive how far we've come in 4 years since RTX 2000
They've thrown a lot of silicon at it. That's why the 4090 is such a toasty beast. Rasterization and general shading did get an uplift as well for sure, but not near as big as the RT uplift. nVidia is betting big on ray tracing as the way forward and the thing to move new GPUs. We'll see how it goes. The biggest problem, I imagine, will be the consoles since they have older AMD hardware which is not good at RT at all. That means even if PCs start to have the majority of cards be good at RT, there will still need to be a rasterization path for the consoles.
 
Yikes. That's a hard sell. I wonder if there are different levels of RT instead of just "kill your system" and "off"
 
Yikes. That's a hard sell. I wonder if there are different levels of RT instead of just "kill your system" and "off"
Seriously what’s even the point if you need a 4090 to kind of run it at 4K. The performance hit is just not even close to worth it.
 
Seriously what’s even the point if you need a 4090 to kind of run it at 4K. The performance hit is just not even close to worth it.
You're complaining that a free mod to a game most people already own is pushing graphics that hard?

Yes, only the latest top-end GPU can achieve the frames needed at a higher resolution. Who would have thunk.
 
Seriously what’s even the point if you need a 4090 to kind of run it at 4K. The performance hit is just not even close to worth it.
The point? Sell more overpriced 4080s and 4090s of course.
 
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Seriously what’s even the point if you need a 4090 to kind of run it at 4K. The performance hit is just not even close to worth it.
I feel the same can be said about running at 4K instead.

Yikes. That's a hard sell. I wonder if there are different levels of RT instead of just "kill your system" and "off"
Yes they offer some like max ray bounce, light bounce, volumetric or not, it can run on a 3060 at 45-55fps at 1080p with DLSS on lower setting, does not seem to be runnable on a 6800xt too.
 
You're complaining that a free mod to a game most people already own is pushing graphics that hard?

Yes, only the latest top-end GPU can achieve the frames needed at a higher resolution. Who would have thunk.
First of all no one’s complaining, second, I’m just talking about RT in general. I’ll still happily boot it up and see how it looks.
 
Installed this and attempted to play on 2080. After playing with RTX Remix to get something reasonably playable, I have come to the conclusion they should "unlaunch" it and re-launch as "Portal with RTX for Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090" because that is where you might have a chance at a good experience.
it ran with the 2080, but was not enjoyable, IMO.
 
Installed this and attempted to play on 2080. After playing with RTX Remix to get something reasonably playable, I have come to the conclusion they should "unlaunch" it and re-launch as "Portal with RTX for Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090" because that is where you might have a chance at a good experience.
it ran with the 2080, but was not enjoyable, IMO.
Is that with the newest driver?
 
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