Portal RTX Review: The Path-Traced Retro Revolution Begins!

[@djspacewhale]

Portal RTX is unbelievably impressive, but the side-by-side shots really hammer home to me how strong Portal's art direction already was. the original artists did such a great job, it holds up really well to my eye at least

[@willm5032]

Throw in the story of its creation and it really shows just how impressive Portal is imo

[@amphibeingmcshpongletron5026]

At the time, I remember being SO impressed with the whole Orange Box. I got it for the 360, and I was so impressed that once I got what passed for a "gaming computer" in 2008, I bought it again for PC. It was such an amazing value with amazing games. They all still hold up, but I'd love to see more half-life games get ray tracing...I'd also like a GPU that's actually capable of running it well. I have an RX 6950 XT, and while it's very impressive for rasterization and can hold it's own with a 3090/3090ti without RTX, sometimes even beating both in a good amount of games, it's often beat by a 3070ti in actual ray tracing. I can't justify purchasing a $1000+ GPU just for RTX at this point.

[@cadcad-jm3pf]

It's not really an apples to apples comparison when the RTX is basically a remaster with higher resolution textures and models. If it was down to RTX alone, the difference would be barely noticeable, as it always is with ray tracing.

[@gorgolyt]

@@cadcad-jm3pf Simply false. All I can suggest is that you actually watch the video, understand it, and use your eyes.

[@suzyb7718]

It's visually impressive, but to me it feels a bit like using some Photoshop AI to turn the Mona Lisa into photo quality; the original is a masterpiece, while this is just a novelty.

[@evilspoons]

It's absolutely nuts how this runs in real-time, much less at 60 fps. I cannot overstate how difficult all this lighting is to do - I am used to rendering out global illumination type scenes in Blender at a rate of minutes per frame, to hell with churning out 60 per second with low enough latency that you can interact with it.

[@Csumbi]

Nvidia Remix actually gives me hope that we can get classic game remasters as they should be, as in meaningful graphical upgrades in geometry, textures, lighting and nothing else.

[@EliteMonkeyzz]

I wait the most for return to castle Wolfenstein 2001 truly a masterpiece that still holds up in terms of gameplay

[@Totenglocke42]

Right? It's infuriating to get a remake that completely changes the gameplay when all fans wanted was better graphics.

[@johnclark926]

@@EliteMonkeyzz I’ve checked to see if this is possible, and I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that Return to Castle Wolfenstein uses OpenGL 1.1 or Glide 2 as its graphics API, whereas RTX Remix is only compatible with DirectX8 & 9 games. The good news is that in a Q&A hosted on Nexus Mods, one of the developers of RTX Remix expressed interest of adding OpenGL compatibility in the future, though their current focus is on DirectX. Given enough time, Return to Castle Wolfenstein (as well as games made on the GoldSrc engine) will be compatible.

[@jericoba]

@@Totenglocke42 Fans want different things. I welcome remakes, but remasters can be amazing too, so let's hope there are more remasters of old games in the future.

[@jericoba]

As they should be, yes. As they _should have been_ when they were made, without the past's limited technologies and various cutbacks.

[@pixels_per_inch]

Surprised this isn't covered in the video but I managed to get it running much better on older cards by going into the developer settings and turning off both Opacity Micromap and Shader Execution Reordering since it reduces performance on hardware that don't support it. There are also a bunch of settings that are unnecessarily high like reflection bounce and sample counts which are set to 10 and 7 by default, lowering all of them down improved performance by around 2x without compromising too much on the visual quality. I can't remember the rest so I'll update this comment when I get back home. *Edit:* Here are the rest of the settings: *DLSS:* Performance *Path Tracing:* *- Resolver:* Max Secondary Interactions: 1 *- PSR* Max Reflection PSR Bounce: 1 Max Transmission PSR Bounce: 3 *- Integrator:* Unordered Resolve in Indirect Rays: Disable Min Path Bounces: 0 Max Path Bounces: 2 (or any value depending on your setup) *- Opacity Micromap:* Disable *Lighting:* RIS Light Sample Count: 2 (or above depending on your hardware) *- RTXDI:* Spatial Sample Count: 1 Ray Traced Bias Correction: Disable *- ReSTIR GI:* ReSTIR GI Spatial Bias Correction: None *Volumetrics:* *- Per-Portal Volumes:* Disable *- Initial RIS Sample Count:* 2 *Denoising:* *- Separate Primary Direct/Indirect Denoiser:* Disable *- Filter Fireflies in Disocclusion:* Enable *- Enhance BSDF Detail Under DLSS:* Disable *Post-processing:* * -Bloom:* Disable (Personal preference but does cost some performance) Note: Lighting and Denoising settings are all related, you may either apply these settings or set them to default as not applying all will cause visual artifacts. I used DLSS performance with these settings and managed to increase from 35 to 65 FPS at 1080p. This was tested on a 2070 Super so your mileage may vary on other hardware. You can gain even more FPS by turning certain RTX features completely off like RTXDI and Reflections PSR (Ray Traced Reflections) though it will alter the visuals significantly.

[@paulanderson2963]

Nvidia doesn't want you to do this though. They need all those unnecessarily high settings so they can say you need their high end hardware. You are helping turn billionaires into millionaires with your thoughtless optimizations in an attempt to allow everyone and not just the wealthy to enjoy themselves.

[@Bruno_Laion]

.

[@thejackimonster9689]

I was also able to achieve quite a lot better performance with RDNA2 by tweaking settings. There are also reports by some people on Twitter going through the game with some debugging software confirming that the shaders are pretty convoluted. They are not optimized at all for AMD hardware having way too high register pressure. The most ridiculous fact is that while you would think RDNA gpus suffer from worse ray tracing performance in this remix game. The ray tracing isn't even the bottle neck but the fact that the other shaders are implemented that awful, they can't properly be parallelized. That's why you actually get better performance on Linux with RADV instead of amdgpu-pro or amdvlk while RADV provides worse ray tracing performance in all other applications. I was really surprised by this.

[@NavJack27gaming]

oh interesting! on my 2080 Ti the debug log shows that it supports Opacity Micromap and SER. There really isn't a RTX card from Nvidia that doesn't support those things i'd think.

[@richardtucker5938]

this made no difference at all for me, not one frame- i already checked it myself, but checked again after your comment. What hardware? Did you ensure to test and reproduce?

[@anonanon7368]

remix is such a 200iq move from nvidia now modders will do most of the work and RTX will be cemented as a must have feature

[@deaconbluezz8827]

You couldn't be more right, it's really a "everyone wins" scenario.

[@jacksondavis9442]

@@deaconbluezz8827 except for the weirdos that do nothing but shit on it for it for being related to Nvidia. Or the fools that think improving graphical fidelity equates to murdering art style

[@deaconbluezz8827]

@@jacksondavis9442 bruh I swear lmao, like, if you don't like it, don't use it? 😂

[@jacksondavis9442]

@@deaconbluezz8827 exactly

[@joeseibert1425]

Except if the hardware surveys are any indication, nobody will be able to run it lol

[@Sizifus]

I'd love to see RTX Remix done properly for Half Life 2 and Black Mesa. I wonder how haunting the Citadel or how beautiful the Xen would look in it

[@andrewwitham8493]

No love for Ravenholm? Imagine that chapter in RTX!

[@beardalaxy]

I haven't played Black Mesa yet but I would love to see it with ray tracing.

[@T1tusCr0w]

1st things I thought, HL 1&2 and Portal 2 would be amazing. I’m getting a whole new rig with a 4090 in about March. So I’m definitely playing through this.

[@rowingaway]

I'm sure Xen would look beautiful, but I don't think I'll ever play that borefest again. It was even worse than the original Xen.

[@blvckskull7954]

@@andrewwitham8493 we don't go there anymore 💀

[@FutureAlien]

It's the mark of a true classic game when you have people working on modernizing it for high-end hardware (Portal with RTX) and also demaking it for old machines (Portal 64) at the same time!

[@lucascarracedo7421]

Definitely a classic! But they also chose Portal because at it's core it's a collection of boxes, which means really simple geometry to deal with. Also, not many textures and assets to deal with overall.

[@HeelPower200]

And a mark of valve being annoyingly lazy.

[@MadsterV]

cool for a test run. Hoping they do Portal 2, as I'm planning to go over it again soon.

[@BerryNice1996]

Just shows how well designed portal is as a game

[@stanleybochenek1862]

i want ufos

[@Andrew-wb2zq]

What’s interesting to me is that a lot of the visible lights in these games weren’t necessarily built for function. So actually relying on them to light a room can make the room like wildly different than intended!

[@jericoba]

Speaking of 'intended', the developers were very much restricted by the tech of the time. I bet they would have made the lighting in the game much more visually appealing, even the functionally leading lights. I'm glad we're past that.

[@Floodsye]

Still better than the original AND definitely better than fully realistic lighting. Hope devs steer clear of this realism crusade some gamers are on.

[@getsideways7257]

@@Floodsye What exactly is wrong with realism? Maybe they need to turn every movie into a cartoon as well?

[@jonRock]

@@jericoba That's an extremely good point.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

​@@Floodsye the most popular game right now, and the only commercial one with all the fancy unreal engine 5 stuff turned on already, is Fortnite. I think we're ok on the "every game is just trying to look realistic" front.

[@drBROner]

The DLSS 3 VSYNC stutter you were hoping to show definitely comes through in the video, Alex 👍 Thanks for another extremely thorough PC settings video and technical review.

[@dougr8646]

Huh I haven't noticed it ever and I use dlss 4

[@dougr8646]

3*

[@Drip7914]

There no stutter tho lol. It runs perfectly imo

[@RiasatSalminSami]

Yeah it was horrendus.

[@iurigrang]

@@dougr8646 have you seen it in the video though?

[@RobertFromEarth]

With or without RTX, Portal is just a fantastic game. When I played the RTX version, I didn't realize how much different it was from the base game. Those side to side comparisons are just amazing. I wonder how much effort it took to make Portal RTX and if many games will follow.

[@TheWiredWolf]

I opened the original portal game by mistake thinking it was the RTX version, I walked around thinking wow this is definitely an old game. After opening the RTX version the difference is mind blowing, thank God for DLSS cause otherwise I would be running it at 10 fps

[@Openmindallthetime143]

Yep yep yep yep

[@brandon_nope]

If you're curious Steam Deck gets 1 fps in this game

[@funbrute31]

No surprised. It has AMD hardware after all

[@VV-js4vd]

Every frame a painting

[@filipealves6602]

@@funbrute31 don't be a hater, it has a 4-core APU, why would AMD waste precious die space when it's far more important to focus on rasterization on an APU?!

[@funbrute31]

@@filipealves6602 following your logic, the Deck shouldn't Even include RT hardware. Why waste die space when the performance Will be subpar anyways

[@rdmz135]

@@funbrute31 RT hardware is inherent to the RDNA 2's hybrid cores. There are no dedicated RT cores like on Nvidia.

[@DadBeard87]

I still remember talking to myself that I can't wait to get the kind of graphics like they were in prerendered scenes back in the day. Now we are here and even further.

[@giannis_tar]

The thing is, pre-rendered graphics keep getting better and better too

[@giannis_tar]

@@TTOOS I feel the same too. And eventually the CGI difference will get smaller and smaller due to diminishing returns

[@machinefannatic99]

Path tracing is just one thing we are close but not there yet, some prerendered films don’t even use pathtracing and still look advanced than any ray traced game out there. Video memory and physics are still a problem

[@DadBeard87]

@@machinefannatic99 You know what's the next holy grail? Zero clipping. This will make a massive difference.

[@XGames-94]

Haven't we been here since 2013? Have you seen how good infamous second son looks even to this day?

[@wausjackbauer128]

Would love to see RTX Remix for the BioShock games

[@BlackParade01]

Bioshock RTX is coming according to the Nvidia leak!

[@virenrana6459]

@Thug Hunter Didn't expect to meet psychonauts fan here

[@CaptainKenway]

@@BlackParade01 The Nvidia "leak" also mentioned RTX remasters of Mirror's Edge and Arkham Knight. Putting everything else aside, Arkham Knight is a DX11 title that's very obviously incompatible with RTX Remix, which only supports DX8 and DX9 (before even getting into fixed function vs programmable shaders, which rules out tons of games people are asking for). Of course, there are other ways to remaster a game without using this tool, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

[@skaterkolesch]

@@CaptainKenway Even is the leak isnt true, i think in the end, the current version of rtx remix is its first. I think nvidia will go into the direction of enabling newer games without fixed pipeline, even if it means completeoly rewritting its code and working mechanisms.

[@BlackParade01]

@@CaptainKenway the Nvidia leak has been right about basically everything else so I would definitely hold my breath for it. Because there's a high chance that it will happen.

[@TAP7a]

The Source engine is truly a legend of gaming history, this tech is extremely cool for modernising it. Would love to play Ravenholm with path tracing.

[@prman9984]

Arkham Asylum and Arkham City would be so cool with this kind of material replacement and lighting only from real sources.

[@XDLugia]

@@prman9984 Bruh I want Alan Wake with this tech!

[@MadsterV]

@@XDLugia would be neat, considering Alan Wake's volumetrics kickstarted what is now GPU path tracing

[@fearingalma1550]

Check 3/2kliksphilip channel, he hacked in HL2 maps to Portal RTX to test the effect

[@licensetoshred]

You can, add the HL2 map to Portal 2 Remix ;)

[@gamz]

It's mind blowing that we're seeing these path traced versions of games already.

[@MarkLangdahl]

It's been like 5 years since rtx was introduced. I'd say it's about bloody time...

[@ha-nocri9923]

Ofc, nVidia is paying for it, like they did for tessellation before.

[@Fztrm]

Exciting times!

[@Drip7914]

Have u seen what max Payne and swat 4 look like with the rtx remix files? Looks insane and the textures haven’t even been mapped correctly yet so expect it look even better when the Ai upscaling officially releases.

[@Drip7914]

@@ha-nocri9923 cope harder lol

[@cameronpavelic500]

Would love to see Left 4 Dead 2 using RTX Remix. The lighting in that game was great for its time, and still looks good in some areas. Game is still incredibly popular to this day, so hopefully that’s something we’ll see in the near future.

[@simlife445]

it looks great the same reason the 2001 x box looks great on the orgial spinter cell tiny enviromonts 4080p milliions apon million less then 2k... at low frames per second every second with blurry grahics even when the game launchs... unless u are super poor

[@RobCabreraCh]

I remember way back in the day, that there was a mod for Skyrim that made all of the lights to be more realistic. It changed the feel completely, because the torches, candles, and windows were the only light sources. I absolutely loved it! Now that ray tracing is a thing, I am so excited to see a game do the same thing but even better!

[@DarkMatterVisible]

Didn't realize this was path-traced. The specs make a lot of sense now. Current gen is still really lacking for ray-traced tech, but next gen is going to be incredible, just toss in a light and the scene comes alive.

[@mommaduck79]

I’m pretty sure that it’s still hybrid rendering though haha. It’s definitely an important milestone and I love where this kind of stuff is taking us - but it’s definitely not 100% path-tracing in real time if that’s what you thought. But I will say they’ve managed to incredibly expand how much and how well path tracing is utilised.

[@kcmsterpce]

I can't believe it's been FIFTEEN YEARS since I played Portal. I always meant to play through it again. So, now seems like the right time!

[@vidsurfer5630]

I had my second playthrough (first playthrough was back in 2007) early this year to celebrate its fifteenth anniversary, and to celebrate 15 years of being with steam. After I finished it, I got in the mood to have a second playthrough of portal 2.

[@Trippy72Spore]

Great Video! I watched it while waiting for the download. Was worried I wouldn't be able to max out the settings on my 3080TI mobile laptop card, but I could (just). At 1080p resolution, I got 30-45FPS with performance DLSS (540p rendering), and a smooth 65+ FPS with max performance DLSS (360p rendering). I've always been amazed at DLSS, but I've never seen it work so well in any other game - 360p is rubbish (basically old VHS tape quality), but I had trouble telling the difference between 360p up-scaling and 1080p native! I figure it's because technical limitations of the day meant Portal looks "samey" across the game - there's not many textures or other visuals for DLSS to learn. Still, it's amazingly impressive...

[@elforeign]

Doom 2003 really needs RTX, that game design and upscaled AI assets + path traced lighting i'm sure would look fantastic.

[@simongravel7407]

Soft shadows and indirect lighting in Doom 3 at last!

[@alfiehicks1]

No. Stencil shadows are almost the entire visual identity of Doom 3. If raytracing was implemented in a purely realistic way - as it has been done here - it would just make that game look mediocre. Not to mention the fact that bounce lighting would almost certainly make the game a lot brighter, which would arguably mess with the aesthetic even more.

[@elforeign]

@@alfiehicks1 I think there's enough variance in the game where it would mostly be a great benefit. Especially if the roughness of textures is taken into consideration, there's a lot of levels with low lighting rough textures/rocky terrain where it would look great. Also, the amounts of particle effects in the game could really utilize actual light characteristics being modeled. There's certainly a good argument to be made that some things may suffer, and we see some of those issues mentioned just in this video, such as texture choices. It would still be great to see Doom 3 with RTX effects.

[@staples6]

I love that you put music from the original Half Life game in your video around the 7 minute mark. I think it’s the music that comes on when you get the HEV suit for the first time

[@veknio]

Yep, it's called Klaxon Beat, awesome stuff!

[@GameZocker222]

It got me fired up so quickly haha

[@ledooni]

The darker scenes kinda look like what I'm expecting from Control 2. Remedy already did a fantastic job in the first one and I cannot wait to see what they'll do in the sequel as well as Alan Wake 2!

[@josh0156]

I'm glad that you took the time to show that with some tweaking even a humble RTX 2060 Super can play this game without a huge sacrifice in visual quality. Also, I love that you pointed out how they massively scaled up the complexity of the game's geometry to illustrate how the path-tracing is performing well. I gotta say that given how RTXDI looks in this game I can't wait to see it in the upcoming Cyberpunk RT Overdrive update.

[@DanStormVO]

Same here, seeing the initial benchmarks for the 2060 Super made me not want to even try the RTX update, but seeing that it can actually manage 60fps with tweaked settings is great.

[@PalladinPoker]

2060 SUPER: playable with minor tweaking 6950 XT: completely unplayable slideshow at min settings 7900 XTX: not much better than 6950 XT ARC A770: can't even boot Yup, this is another publicity stunt to sell Lovelace cards.

[@Cless_Aurion]

@@PalladinPoker uhh... No, any nvidia card for the last 5 years. If amd cards had any real raytacing chops to work with, they would be able to play it, since they don't, they don't.

[@PalladinPoker]

@@Cless_Aurion In literally any other game the XTX is 3090 Ti level in RT. This is the only game like this.

[@churblefurbles]

@@PalladinPoker Fake RT, the most minimal effects which is why old consoles have it, this is full path tracing.

[@GeritzMusic]

I never thought I'd see the day when the question for if your computer is high spec became, "But can it run Portal?"

[@LovelessDogg1]

Looks good, but it never seems to fail that almost every time I see an RTX showcase of sorts it always makes things either too bright or too shiny/clean, taking away the mood and atmosphere of the original. I won't knock the effort, though. It still looks great.

[@you2be839]

It looks great, but I most definitely won't buy an RTX 4090 to play a 2007 path traced game... or any other old game for that matter, although I presume it's Nvidia's wet dream if people started purchasing 4090s to play path traced DX9 games! lol

[@darkl3ad3r]

You can fix the frame generation stutter. It was horrible at first on my 4090 but then I was told to try using the Portal console ~ to enable an in game fps limiter. It works perfect now. I set it to 70 fps and let frame generation take me up just under 144hz with Gsync and vsync. Looks and feels incredible. Even going down to 60 fps (30 real) feels okay. Highly recommended.

[@alexadelaide]

This whole video has that whole “THIS IS DVD--THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WATCH DVD” energy

[@conmanjones]

Great video Alex. Thanks for covering it. The remix revolution is going to be nuts

[@ckinsin]

Im super proud of the guys working on this. there's a lot of thought going into the programming. well done to them. they didnt have to do it but it's amazing. cheers to you guys.

[@leviharris6944]

Thanks Alex, now patiently awaiting your optimzed settings for Witcher 3 -- but i suspect there are some bugs there because tweaking/lowering settings actually tanks the framerate on my build (3070, 32GB RAM, 10700k)

[@ococoseco]

People don’t appreciate how absolutely mind blowing it is to have this exist already. Just six years ago - not 10, not 20 - SIX! rendering just ONE frame of this on the best consumer GPU in the planet would take MINUTES. Minutes!!!!! And now it takes sixteen MILLISECONDS. This is literally the same underlying tech that’s used in Hollywood movies - literally. No cheats this time, no “but at real time quality settings”, just clever hardware and software engineering. Four times bounce GI is accepted in the industry as a level where after that there are several diminishing returns. Upsamplers and denoisers are already being used in CG production as well. So this is almost as Hollywood as real time graphics can get.

[@fullauto86]

I actually didnt know the specifics of path tracing, these videos are informative in the best way.

[@darryl_young]

Great video, Alex. Thanks for all the awesome content this year. Enjoy your time off!

[@Taurui]

This is such an absolute masterpiece of a game, it is awesome to see it getting some love and (possibly) some new players to experience it!

[@NavJack27gaming]

I CANNOT WAIT FOR REMIX! We're going to have to start making lists of games that have fixed function fallback modes and how to access them. Hopefully REMIX can work on a broader set though. There are so many early early pixel shader games that would be beautiful to put REMIX into. I've been dropping PORTAL RTX REMIX DLLs and files into any game i can get working that i suspect of being pre pixel shader.

[@kosmosyche]

Half-Life 2 is such an obvious first choice for me. I mean it's also a Valve game on the same engine as Portal, so it's a no-brainer, it should be done.

[@shinyhappyrem8728]

The Thief games come to mind...

[@rudrasingh6354]

@@kosmosyche Yeah if not anything else we can atleast expect a community made Half Life 2 RTX mod. I really wish Nvidia are able to make Remix support pixel shader games one day. All the way upto DX11. Would be magical. Id love to see remasters of Tomb Raider Legend-Anniversary-Underworld. One of my favourite game trilogies. I am sure the older core design TR games will work with remix as they are really old and are defintely fixed function, even though on steam they are updated to DX9 but when they released they were like DX3/4/5.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

​@@rudrasingh6354 the main blocker for that would be that lights vanish into shader uniform blocks without fixed function. You would also have some problems mapping textures (how the uv attributes are used to sample a texture is entirely programmable, and can be mixed and matched between multiple textures), but there you can probably make some "good enough" guesses to make things recognizable. Realistically, to work well, it would need to be able to intercept and reuse large parts of the original shaders by pattern matching, and that's including a human being in the loop. It sounds somewhat possible, but a significant step up from this work, which is already very impressive!

[@theninjamaster67]

@@rudrasingh6354 The OG Tomb Raider games on Steam run through DOS Box which is why the community had to make their own launcher which allows for retexturing and a higher native resolution among other nice tweaks like adding the Unfinished Business expansion.

[@TheWiredWolf]

"This is a triumph". Love it, I'm amazed by how good this game looks now, and not surprised about the hardware requirements to run it after explaining what path tracing is, I love to hear all the details from Alex and their team. So excited for the future of this tech on older games.

[@nickwallette6201]

To go from playing games in CGA to _dropping in_ support for real-time ray-tracing in one lifetime is simply incredible. I'm at a genuine loss for words. This is breath-taking.

[@ggali09]

12:01 I want to meet the person who was offended by the floor texture and just pick their brain for a bit, see what’s going on in their life.

[@TheWiredWolf]

This was a triumph I'm making a note here; "Huge success" It's hard to overstate My satisfaction

[@ChimpFlipperJr]

The Spiderman lighting diagram with the Spiderman Pointing meme made me laugh, good job Alex

[@MetalJody1990]

For me, what fixed the mouse look stutters was the Raw Input setting in the original game options. Cleared up all the stutters. I played thru the whole game on an RTX 3050, mixed settings, performance dlss, and got fps somewhere between 26-38. Runs pretty smooth on a vrr display. Playing thru the game was a blast. It looks incredible.

[@ebridgewater]

00:42 I love that Alex correctly puts the newer and/or improved footage on the right when comparing, unlike when John makes his videos.

[@Aristowi]

We need this treatment to more titles of that generation. Imagine Arkham Asylum with those textures and reflections, so many different surfaces and the game still looks and plays amazing, that would be astonishing.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

Unfortunately this tech only works on fixed function rendering games (because remix can tell what it's "supposed" to look like, where lights are, etc.) Arkham Asylum was released in 09, two years after Portal, which was one of the last stragglers in fixed function rendering still being supported.

[@prman9984]

Actually, you can copy the .exe to BatmanAC.exe and then use Alt-F3 to turn on NVidia's filtering, which includes RTSS (screen space ray tracing). Just played it that way. Looks pretty amazing.

[@missbianca4096]

I know it cant be done with RTX remix but i really really hope Portal 2 gets an path traced remaster. I played it again after beating Portal RTX and its such an amazing game with so many moments that could look incredible with path tracing

[@mechanicalmonk2020]

Alex trying to give me a nostalgia heart attack with all those Half Life OST songs

[@Stef3m]

Half-Life with RTX looks amazing

[@asm_canucks]

It's crazy how the lighting feels just right.

[@Healcraft]

its not that crazy, more work probably went into this than the original game

[@getsideways7257]

Not until it finally supports HDR...

[@prman9984]

Not really, since the light finally is right.

[@Crowbar]

@@Healcraft you have no idea what game development is then

[@Healcraft]

@@Crowbar modern triple a games have teams of like 1000+ people, portal was made by 10 ppl over 2 years

[@neondead2.0.15]

it will be all good if RTX version of Portal had same style and esthetic as the original. It designed to look like there something wrong, not this bright. Why they even disable blue filter that makes chambers look like old hospital that brings creepy feelings.

[@gonckzilla628]

Thank you DF for providing optimized settings for most games, I really really appreciate it and hope you'll continue to provide those 🥺

[@SITSIndustries]

0:30 Alex: "It is an absolute triumph." Alex: *makes a note here: "huge success"*

[@theworddoner]

Time to play portal again. Thanks to everyone involved. Remixing games like this is amazing!

[@MajoraZ]

This may sound odd, but i'd really love to see you guys run Benchmarks of games running on ultra with RTX, WITHOUT DLSS, at lower resolutions/framreates, like 1080p/60fps: I can't speak for other people, but I'm personally quite happy still at 1080p and 60fps in most titles, but like getting the maximum visual fidelity out of that resolution and performance, and as I understand it, and as as Portal RTX seemingly demonstrates, RTX/Ultra settings without DLSS can prove pretty challenging even at 1080/60, and even if you wanted to use DLSS, my understanding is that it doesn't function well going from a sub 1080p resolution up to 1080p

[@Hidacal]

Those benchamarks would be almost completely useless. If you're happy on 1080p, presumably your hardware is low to mid end at most. Which is ok, but you're missing the point of just how massively demanding full RTX is. Turning it off i get ~40 fps on a 4080 which is many steps above a 1080p card. That's on 1440p, but still. I have no idea for what stupid reason you wouldnt enable DLSS on a card that supports it, but if you have one that doesnt, this full RTX stuff is just completely beyond your hardware. The AMD showcase in this video shows that pretty clearly.

[@MajoraZ]

@@Hidacal I thought I explained the use case pretty well? I'm satisfied by 1080p/60FPS, but I want maximum visual fidelity within whatever resolution I have. Yes, I COULD use a higher resolution display, but even high end hardware can struggle to run certain games at 60fps with RTX at ultra at 4k, even with DLSS, let alone without DLSS. So i'd rather not bother sending the GPU power rendering at a higher resolution, and would rather put it towards rendering a 1080p image with zero compromises and with RTX and max settings.

[@blacklistnr1]

Can we please also appreciate the simplicity of matte rasterized objects? While great eye candy, I find RTX very visually distracting. This is Windows Vista all over again. What once was a a defined blob of color on the screen, now lights up half of the screen with its color, making it hard(er) to visually track objects and use peripheral vision. In a "woah" scene of the game that's cool, but If I want to focus on a puzzle I prefer a simple look, no fancy water, no particles, no refraction and no color bleeding(glows, emissive effects, lens flares etc.)

[@jacksondavis9442]

Well it's certainly not Windows Vista. This inevitably the future of real-time rendering. It is the most accurate method of simulating light in a virtual space (as it directly simulates the real world properties of light rays), and as it has been used by VFX and animation studios for decades now I don't think that's going to change. Once the performance cost of RT is no longer a concern, I see little reason for devs not use it. At least aside from stylized games. Baking lighting is far more expensive and time consuming than just being able to place a light source in an environment and have simulation do the rest. Even if the majority gamers somehow come to the conclusion that it's worse than rasterization, it will be too precious a tool to game devs to not eventually replace raster as the primary method.

[@gnydsmelt2215]

Portal RTX was awesome! I could only run it between 25-40 fps most of the time tho on my 3060ti 8gb. Was a nice experience though!

[@pixels_per_inch]

I managed to get it running even better by going into the developer options (surprised it's not cover in this video) and changing a load of settings that are unnecessary high like turning down reflections bounce to 2 from the default 32. Plus disabling Opacity Micromap and shader execution reordering if you're not using the 40 series since it reduces performance by around 10 - 20%.

[@gnydsmelt2215]

@@thughunter1503 Yes I could aim for performance and gain a smooth 60+ fps with a more blurried image. I wanted to experience it in higher quality though so I aimed for a quality playthrough this time!

[@Drip7914]

Honestly 40 fps is perfectly playable in a slow game like this. Unless your one of those unlucky few who see anything below 60 as a slideshow.

[@skzeeman007]

That cant be a nice experience.

[@McGregor43]

Changing DLSS from Auto to Performance gave me 60FPS.

[@Anviification]

3:28 lool Great video from Alex as always.

[@nimbulan2020]

The 3080 should be closer to 3x as fast as the 6800 XT I think. I finally found someone who tested pathtracing on a 7900 XTX and he said it's about twice as fast as his prior 6950 XT in Minecraft RTX and Quake 2 RTX. My 3080 is still noticeably faster in Quake 2 RTX when matching his settings. In any case regarding the broken performance, I saw someone on Twitter who ran an AMD graphics debugging tool on the game and showed that it seems to be using an extremely high number of vector math operations and maxing out the vector registers on the GPU. A single shader that used no RT operations was taking nearly 100ms to execute per frame. He didn't want to investigate further to figure out why that's the case though.

[@Stef3m]

Could be also a driver issue, in such case I wonder if they will ever want to fix it

[@nimbulan2020]

@@Stef3m I couldn't speculate on how much AMD might be able to improve performance with drivers. My suspicion is that it's either the GI or denoising algorithm that's using so much vector math, since it was designed for the vector processing capabilities of nVidia's tensor cores which AMD has no equivalent of in their gaming GPUs currently. I expect Intel's GPUs will hold up much better, once Intel/Lightspeed fixes it failing to launch, since those do have similar hardware capabilities.

[@nimbulan2020]

​@@blitzwing1 Well I just found another video this same guy posted of the game on his old 6950 XT and it looks to be running only about 25% slower than his 7900 XTX test so 2x as fast definitely doesn't sound right. He's hitting 90 fps at ~75% resolution scale (dynamic res framerate target) at 1440p with medium-ish settings on the 6950 XT, and 120 fps with the 7900 XT. My 3080 hits 120 fps with those same settings at about 83% resolution scale. All just quick tests of the first couple rooms in the game. Regarding Portal, you're getting 14 fps at 1440p native? Because people can't even manage that on Windows at far lower resolutions. I saw a debugging report on Twitter indicating a bottleneck with vector math operations, but we'll have to wait and see. My 3080 gets 20 fps at 1440p native ultra for what it's worth, on the menu.

[@nimbulan2020]

@@blitzwing1 Yeah the vector math bottleneck seems to result in the GPU being badly underutilized. I'm not sure if that's something that can be fixed with drivers, an optimization issue with RTX Remix's shaders, or if this sort of pathtracing system really does require something like nVidia's tensor cores to process in a reasonable amount of time. Someone far more knowledgeable than me about 3D graphics programming will have to answer those questions.

[@greje656]

extremely well put together video.

[@AndyDo]

Path traced Portal has shown me that Portal is just an excellent game no matter how you play it. Everything is a bonus on top of a game that is just one of the best that's ever existed.

[@er7hos]

All-time classic, and Portal 2 might be even better

[@jjforcebreaker]

Fantastic work as always, thanks Alex!

[@NinF37]

Still hoping Remix works on things like Dolphin, would be absolutely wild

[@PARANDROID]

The editing of this video is also a Triumph!

[@TheNamesJER]

This is incredible! The only flaw with it is now I also need Portal 2 and the Half-Life series with RTX.

[@Stef3m]

There are modders already looking at it

[@rudrasingh6354]

Half life 2 is definetly possible, Portal 1 is very close to Half Life 2 so much so that you can drop maps in to portal and rtx remix still works, without the new fancy textures. Portal 2 is a dx11 game as far as I know and isnt fixed function. I hope they manage to make it work with Remix because Portal 2 deserves the same treatment and other pixel shader games too.

[@DavidRutten]

I vividly remember being blown away by reflection maps in midtown madness...

[@PickeringSamuel]

I loaded this up to check out one or two levels and ended up playing for 2 hours. I was mesmerised. Not only by how incredible the lighting was, but also by how excellent the game actually is, in of itself.

[@anonony9081]

It's such a well-paced game. Other games may have taken hours to get you to the point where you had both portal guns but valve did a masterful job of teaching us how portals worked and getting us right into the action and solving difficult puzzles without drawing it out too far

[@beatkuettel]

It really is an excellent game. But then came Portal 2 and raised the bar yet again.

[@cozyboy3129]

Omg, thanks for this guide. Could not get this game to run properly at 60fps previously. Now I can get around 60 - 80+ fps with the optimised high settings on a i5 10400f + rtx 3060ti. On certain heavier lvl , I'll just switch between low and high optimised setting. Brilliant✌👍👍👍

[@manny655321]

Turok RTX when

[@DigitalFoundry]

Yes please

[@meurer13daniel]

Arkham Asylum RTX when

[@proy3]

@@meurer13daniel ...And now I need to change my shorts. Good God that would be sexy.

[@ozy311]

Amazing video again, Alex!

[@concinnus]

I guess Quake RTX couldn't be the start of the revolution because it was too time-intensive, while this is more general and automated? Anyway, Steam reviewers should be required to watch this video before leaving a negative review for performance. J/k, but Valve should have smart auto-settings at least.

[@erroldtumaque3430]

I got more impressed the more I watched. So many subtle things captured that make it look so realistic

[@NikHem343]

I find there is an interesting discussion hidden in the fact that the old graphics make the game much more readable

[@HarhaMedia]

I think it's incredible that the high-end cards can do real-time high resolution path tracing now without grain or flickering artifacts. Path tracing is iterative, I've written multiple toy path tracers by myself and used only the CPU, without intelligent filtering like in these games, complex scenes may require thousands of samples per pixel to get rid of most of the noise.

[@fh5kskalf]

Yeah, the Nvidia Remix tech is mind-blowing! Portal RTX is one of the best looking games I've ever played, and it's not even a "real" game where the developers had access to the source code.

[@StooMonster]

Agree, this games looks lit (pun intended) on RTX cards.

[@lawyerlawyer1215]

Yeah it’s amazing. It’s amazing how hard fanboys lie to themselves. I can’t tell you the amount of AMD fanboy I’ve seen saying that this version looks worse than the original 😂😂 Even with the new Witcher 3 next gen patch I’m seeing comments saying that it looked better before ray tracing The coping is real 😂

[@rdmz135]

@@lawyerlawyer1215 They arent fanboys, they are nostalgia freaks. Who thinks anything that alters the oldschool feel is sacrilege.

[@lawyerlawyer1215]

@@rdmz135 I say fanboys , because every time I see one of this comments and I click on the profile , they’ve been commenting “Ngreedia is shit” on some other channel 😂

[@CaptainKenway]

@@lawyerlawyer1215 Thank god we have completely objective and reasonable people such as yourself trying to start childish brand wars bullshit in the comments section.

[@AniRayn]

0:50 - I'm making a note here: huge success.

[@patrickang7739]

We need this in ALL NEW games.

[@Uri_Nrv]

You will need to wait several GPU's generations for that.

[@Blackbirdone11]

Even in portal with the most simple room visuals you can imagine, the fps is close to zero and still limited to 4 bounces. And we dont talk about 4k. If the gpus can double the cores every 2 years we still need around 10 years to get what we need for realtime path tracing on 4k. Dlss is not "real" its cheated imho it dont really count. Running that stuff on cyberpunk? Impossible.

[@6Twisted]

The light coming through the portal really sells it. Can't wait for path traced vanilla WoW with high res assets.

[@parabolee]

Incredible work as usual. Your optimised settings should be an industry standard option in game!

[@richard-davies]

Or use a 4090 with DLSS quality at ultra 4K and use frame generation and average 75fps+ for better image quality. I certainly had no issues with DLSS 3 rubber banding/stuttering.

[@SaviorInTheSun]

I envy anyone who gets to enjoy this amazing game for the first time, with all of these amazing improvements.

[@winonesoon9771]

That was me I just never got around to playing it back in the day ha.... So got to play it with my 3080ti which Jesus this game is dam demanding but then again I was doing 4k at like 60 to 80 fps. But yeah fun game

[@rh4009]

So this is what happens when you take a perfectly running game and turn it into an advertisement for your GPU hardware.

[@Fztrm]

So excited for more path traced games!

[@SkillipEvolver]

Fantastic detail and passion as always Alex but take a breath man! 😄 Honestly though, cracking video DF ! 👏 We really are at a very very interesting time in my opinion. Not to repeat what you've already said Alex but yeah, we are looking at essentially 'real' looking re-articulations of what we already interpreted and settled in to our minds as 'the standard' and, the experience of that already cutting edge and defining period (the original release). It's fantastic. I love the way this now looks.

[@TheHugeWTF]

Would love to see how Nvidia Remix works with a game like Mirror's Edge. This kind of sterile, high contrast graphics style seems to be a great candidate for path tracing, just like we see here with Portal.

[@eversonalmeida9866]

Very well remembered. These 2 games are unique in their own ways, as Mirror's Edge is an overlooked gem.

[@theninjamaster67]

@@eversonalmeida9866 I blame EA for Mirrors Edge being overlooked they didn't advertise it when it came out and even once it got a good sized cult following they went and made the sequel bland bland bland.

[@spikeyfied]

EA would charge at least 4.99 for this Upgrade. So would Bethesda and Ubisoft 😂

[@eversonalmeida9866]

@@spikeyfied I don't think Valve would charge for it, but i'm under the assumption that nvidia invested a lot in this project as a big avertising for RTX 40 series.

[@konga382]

Mirror's Edge won't be compatible with RTX Remix. Games need to use a fixed function rendering pipeline to be compatible.

[@HauntedAbysss]

Here I am thinking that Nvidia remix was a joke because I thought I was just an overlay system. Find out it actually replaces a core part of the rendering process blows my mind... Brand new magic

[@pglagowski]

I played through the whole thing on my 3080 at 4K with Ultra-performance DLSS and I had a ton of weird graphical bugs. At distance, the test chamber signs would become a blurry mess. In every elevator, as well, the signage about the door was noisy. I didn't bother lowering settings since that Remix menu is way too small, but I had around 50-60 FPS at all times in Ultra-performance.

[@kraajkase]

I mean, it's upscaling from 720p all the way up to 4K. Of course there would be visual problems.

[@wiegraf9009]

I had that signage problem in Control as well, weird.

[@prman9984]

With a 3090, it was literally a split-second after getting off the elevator and then it was perfect. 60 fps the whole time on Ultra-performance. Amazed at how good DLSS 3 upscaling is. Didn't even look blurry 720p => 4K.

[@mllecamill3]

God, I love Pathtracing and I can't wait till we get more games with it. Cyberpunk with pathtracing was already mindblowing and I am looking forward to Black Myth Wukong.

[@zidan40o0]

This is exactly the sort of technology we needed. Something that brings the 4090 down to its knees. So in the next ten years or so we can say "but can it run Portal RTX?"

[@Z3t487]

Do you think the RTX 9090 released in late 2032 will be enough for 8K max settings at 60 FPS in Portal RTX?

[@mrpiratefox4497]

So this basically says "you wasted $1600 and still cant run a game properly"

[@boom1759]

Does it run Crysis RTX

[@Miskatonik]

So all RTX 4090 buyers can find some solace with the outrageous price inflation buyer's remorse? 😂We don't NEED these whatsoever, it's stupidly demanding for such a simple, yet wonderful, game. It's just some eye candy than can be easily optimized, but Nvidia is desperately trying to justify their prices over AMDs with these RT remasters.

[@starbez]

@@Z3t487 RTX 9090 for 5k

[@siphillis]

Counting down the days between now and when we have an RTX Remix of "Deus Ex".

[@jinx20001]

RTX remix is shaping up to be something else, if modders can mod games in good time we could be in for a wild ride of remastered games. its one of the biggest pulls of the 40 series, we really cant pretend these features are gimmicks anymore, its here to stay and the potential for new and old games is staggering.

[@Ozzianman]

And since Nvidia has proven this is viable, someone will eventually provide a GPU independent version to allow for remastering games like this. Might take a while, but it will happend.

[@rudrasingh6354]

@@Ozzianman The mods RTX Remix outputs can work on non nvidia gpus, you just need an rtx card to use remix. But since they used DXVK to translate d3d8/9 calls to vulkan, if the other gpu makers or even dedicated modders wish, they can create a similar tool to it, would be years of work though. I wonder how they added USD capture and replacement. But what we really need is support for open gl (fixed function and pixel shader) and pixel shader DirectX. Imagine the possibilties.

[@117johnpar]

Its unfortunate that raytracing has become such a broad bulletpoint feature when in so many big games it really can barely be considered raytracing. Actual object aware light pathtracing games look amazing, Stuff like Forza and Spiderman with their RT, Barely noticeable.

[@Wylie288]

If its traced with a ray. Its ray tracing. RT isn't just about lighting.

[@EmblemParade]

OMG, I want to replay it in RTX right now. :) One of my favorite games of all time. Can we get RTX for Portal 2, too?

[@turconnipotente]

We want StarCraft: Brood War with RTX!

[@EonHSD]

I never even realized all the wall panels that don’t let you place portals were supposed to be metal until now. I thought they were rubber or something lol

[@mv2e19]

I thought they were moon rock

[@enneff]

@@mv2e19 As we learned from Portal 2, you can place a portal on moon rock :-)

[@mv2e19]

@@enneff oh I misread the original comment. I thought he was talking about walls that you CAN place portals on

[@JeremyHansenblue2kid3]

Thank you for addressing the performance I think I was one of the first to realize that you could press alt X as many people on steam were thinking the settings are broken on ART X3080I getting about 70 FPS with my optimized settings but I hear a lot of people say that they are getting Close to 10 Which is ridiculous because I don't think people understand how difficult it is to render pathtracing

[@sleeplessindefatigable6385]

To be fair, I think people don't understand how difficult it is to render path traced games because all of it just gets lumped under "rtx". If joe average goes out and buys, say, a hypothetical RTX 4060 or a 7700XT without going as far into the weeds as you or I, then it's unlikely that Joe Average is even going to know that there's a difference between "ray traced" and "path traced". I reckon most people see options that say "ray tracing" and just do a quick and dirty divide-by-four to get the ray tracing vs rasterised performance numbers, without understanding that in this case, the entire rasterisation portion of their GPU is sitting around twiddling its thumbs, while the RT hardware sweats.

[@Okusar]

@@sleeplessindefatigable6385 There's definitely a lot of confusion around that. I see a lot of people in the Steam forums accusing Portall RTX of being horribly unoptimized because they can get 70 FPS or whatever in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition on their RTX 3060 but only get 15 FPS in an old Source engine game from 2007. In reality Metro Enhanced is still 90% rasterization mixed with a few raytraced effects at a lower level of precision, whereas the visuals in Portal RTX are produced entirely via raytracing. The two are not really comparable, even though both are advertised as "RTX enhanced" editions.

[@Wobbothe3rd]

​@@sleeplessindefatigable6385 there isnt any real difference between path tracing and ray tracing, they mean the same thing, Alex is wrong. A path is mathematically the same thing as a ray.

[@AutoAbsolute]

Im getting over 100 fps with a 4080 - this is truely a great demo of the card and the potential for this technology

[@cryc0s]

What resolution? 4k?

[@Hidacal]

@@cryc0s I get ~90 on a 4080 on 1440p with dlss and everything on ultra

[@prman9984]

@@cryc0s Definitely not. 1080p maybe. On my 3090 with a 7950X, I struggled to get 60-80 fps at DLSS Ultra-Performance.

[@konga382]

Every frame rate achieved with Frame Generation needs an asterisk next to it. Yes, that's what your frame rate counter says, but it's not the same.

[@AutoAbsolute]

@@cryc0s yeah 4k with everything switched on

[@waltergsarts]

Greetings from Colombia, South America. GPU: ZOTAC OC RTX 2060

[@selfsaboteursounds5273]

oh god, Portal is considered a retro game now. I'm fucking old

[@Wooksley]

Wouldn’t put it past Nvidia to deliberately break RTX remix for other GPU brands. They are a horrible anti-consumer corporation with monopolistic ambitions after all. They make good cards though, so I still bought a 4080.

[@Tomiply]

12:22 What, really? And I know so many people who replay it yearly, and I play it like every other year myself. The graphics kept you from replaying it? Huh, wow. Great analysis though.

[@TheReaper1]

This is absolutely stunning

[@felkmane]

Honestly, on a 3080 at 1440p, all I needed to do was enable DLSS. I left everything else at the default ultra settings. That caused it to jump from 20-30fps all the way to a solid 60 with no visible fidelity loss.