NVIDIA has just released Portal RTX on PC. Portal RTX is a fully path-traced game that will push all graphics cards to their limits. As such, it’s time now to benchmark it and see how it performs on the PC.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3800Mhz, and NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 527.37 driver. Additionally, we set both DLSS 2 and DLSS 3 to their Quality Modes. We did not use any AMD GPU as even the RX 6900XT is unable to offer an acceptable gaming performance.
Portal RTX is a GPU-bound game, even at 1080p, therefore, we did not benchmark different CPU configurations. Suffice to say, most modern-day CPUs will have no trouble at all running the game.
The game does not also feature any built-in benchmark tool. So, for our GPU benchmarks, we used the following scene/area. This area is among the most demanding ones we could find during our one-hour playthrough. In this scene, we have surface reflections, glass reflections, water reflections, refractions, ambient occlusion, global illumination, shadows, and more.
The only GPU that is able to run the game smoothly at native 1080p is the RTX4090. Both our RTX2080Ti and RTX3080 were simply unable to provide a smooth gaming experience. Hell, with DLSS 2 Quality, our RTX3080 could not achieve constant 60fps at 1080p.
It’s crystal clear from these benchmarks that Portal RTX is best played with an RTX4090 and DLSS 3. DLSS 3 Quality works wonderfully in this game, and we highly recommend using it. With DLSS 3 Quality, we were able to get 60fps at 4K.
Now I know that some of you may feel disappointed by these results. However, were are talking about a fully path-traced game. Path tracing is extremely expensive, plain and simple.
Before closing, here is a comparison video between the original and the RTX versions of Portal. This video showcases how transformative path tracing can actually be.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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