NVIDIA has provided us with a review code for the fully path-traced version of Portal, Portal RTX. And, since the green team has lifted its embargo, we can finally share our initial thoughts.
In order to capture the following screenshots (and test the game), we used an NVIDIA RTX 4090 Founders Endition. We paired the RTX4090 with an Intel i9 9900K, and 16GB of DDR4 at 3800Mhz. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 526.86 driver. And as always, we set DLSS 3 to its Quality Mode.
For starters, Portal with RTX uses a ray tracing technique known as path tracing or full ray tracing. This technique unifies all lighting effects, such as shadows, reflections, refractions and more, into a single ray tracing algorithm.
Below you can find the key features that Portal RTX supports:
- NVIDIA RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI) allows for countless direct light sources, regardless of their size, to cast path-traced light and shadows.
- NVIDIA Reservoir Spatio-Temporal Importance Resampling Global Illumination (ReSTIR GI) enhances indirect light, enabling it to bathe a scene and illuminate dark corners that are not lit directly. And it also works smarter than previous ray-traced global illumination techniques, improving the efficiency of our ray tracing denoiser.
- NVIDIA Real-Time Denoisers (NRD) is a new spatio-temporal ray tracing denoising library that assists in converting raw ray-traced output in real-time, with superior performance and quality. Portal with RTX, RTX Remix, and other new ray-traced games and game updates leverage NRD for maximum quality and performance.
- NVIDIA DLSS 3 – DLSS is a revolutionary breakthrough in neural graphics that massively boosts performance. Powered by fourth generation Tensor Cores and new Optical Flow Accelerator on GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, DLSS 3 uses AI to generate additional high-quality frames with great image quality and responsiveness.
For those unaware, it takes a lot of GPU power to run a fully path-traced title. So, with that in mind, we are happy to report that the NVIDIA RTX4090 can run Portal RTX with constant 60fps at 4K with DLSS 3 Quality.
We’ll be sharing our native 4K vs DLSS 3 Quality vs DLSS 2 Quality benchmarks later this week. Until then, enjoy the following screenshots!
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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