That's what raytracing is bro

What if the computer simulated rays without any optimisation work / shortcuts

It's sort of the whole point, that's why they're releasing this to modders

NVIDIA are trying to create an ecosystem of extremely difficult to run titles with brute forced lighting so they can sell you the next generation of hardware.

That why the minimum is 3060

Yes, but look, in my country(BR) the next generation equals more of one year of work, so not giving good optimization is bad in the context here. If there is no inclusion for gamers due to the limitation of the brand itself, it is even worse.

that's what all your friends meant when they said you will regret buying that 3050

But it's ridiculous to think that you need so much power to run a 15yo game with mostly empty rooms and flat walls with RTX on. I honestly haven't played any newer RTX enabled games yet. Are they all so slow with RTX on? This tech is not worth the performance drop for me. I prefer good AA and high FPS over excessive eyecandy. I mean, it's shiny, bright and the buttons are transparent, I don't see a big deal.

Yeah but gamers need to understand that this is intended for graphical showcase for people who bought 4080 and 4090, to make them buy new cards and also RTX remix tool which modders can use to beautify old games. This is not for people with old gen cards but to show them how incapable their cards are with new RTX effects.

Originally posted by ZakTheEvil:

But it's ridiculous to think that you need so much power to run a 15yo game with mostly empty rooms and flat walls with RTX on. I honestly haven't played any newer RTX enabled games yet. Are they all so slow with RTX on? This tech is not worth the performance drop for me. I prefer good AA and high FPS over excessive eyecandy. I mean, it's shiny, bright and the buttons are transparent, I don't see a big deal.

thats quite literally the point of this release, play the original then you can run it at 10x the performance. This is a tech demo for RTX Remix

@ZakTheEvil Exactly

Originally posted by ZakTheEvil:

But it's ridiculous to think that you need so much power to run a 15yo game with mostly empty rooms and flat walls with RTX on. I honestly haven't played any newer RTX enabled games yet. Are they all so slow with RTX on? This tech is not worth the performance drop for me. I prefer good AA and high FPS over excessive eyecandy. I mean, it's shiny, bright and the buttons are transparent, I don't see a big deal.

Well, this is a non official implementation and this tech just a hack.
As for the rest of games, depending on what the RTX features are, I get between 20-40 FPS less with it enabled on a 3070.

Originally posted by jackman071:

for people who bought 4080 and 4090, to make them buy new cards

That doesn't compute. They already bought the latest cards.

The speed penalty for RTX is enormous, beyond reasonable. I can run original Portal maxed on on an RTX3080 at 300FPS. If I max out Portal RTX I get 30FPS. This is grotesque. If they think I'm gonna run out and upgrade my 3080 to 4090 because of this, they're living a fantasy world.

Originally posted by ZakTheEvil:

But it's ridiculous to think that you need so much power to run a 15yo game with mostly empty rooms and flat walls with RTX on. I honestly haven't played any newer RTX enabled games yet. Are they all so slow with RTX on? This tech is not worth the performance drop for me. I prefer good AA and high FPS over excessive eyecandy. I mean, it's shiny, bright and the buttons are transparent, I don't see a big deal.

This is fully ray-traced (ALL ray tracing features), no shortcuts. In real time. People should really stop being so surprised.

Most other games only have ray-traced shadows, ray-traced reflections, sometimes both and maybe if you're lucky only ray-traced GI. Portal RTX is ALL of it at once, akin to lighting of a CGI movie, despite having to go through a huge amount of denoising to get there.

This is no different from the Quake RTX that also runs terribly only your PC.

Originally posted by DBW:

Originally posted by ZakTheEvil:

But it's ridiculous to think that you need so much power to run a 15yo game with mostly empty rooms and flat walls with RTX on. I honestly haven't played any newer RTX enabled games yet. Are they all so slow with RTX on? This tech is not worth the performance drop for me. I prefer good AA and high FPS over excessive eyecandy. I mean, it's shiny, bright and the buttons are transparent, I don't see a big deal.

thats quite literally the point of this release, play the original then you can run it at 10x the performance. This is a tech demo for RTX Remix

This is not a good idea, both due to the viability of the price of this hardware and the relative quantity purchased. It would be easier to further optimize this game to run on the 3000 series and above, especially since RTX is only now getting better in price here. Not only 4080 and 4090 are sold. This is certainly a marketing ploy because it's ridiculous for a 15 year old game on a modern graphics engine to push the computer so hard, but that doesn't mean it's a good move.

This DLC is LITERALLY a tech demo for graphics, pushing the limits of what high-end cards can do. If it ran exceptionally well on your low-end 3050, then it is not pushing the limits of what the RTX tech can do. The game itself (Portal) is highly-optimized and will run on anything.

The system requirements literally say that you need at MINIMUM a 3060.

Originally posted by ZakTheEvil:

Originally posted by jackman071:

for people who bought 4080 and 4090, to make them buy new cards

That doesn't compute. They already bought the latest cards.

The speed penalty for RTX is enormous, beyond reasonable. I can run original Portal maxed on on an RTX3080 at 300FPS. If I max out Portal RTX I get 30FPS. This is grotesque. If they think I'm gonna run out and upgrade my 3080 to 4090 because of this, they're living a fantasy world.

This is not likely going to get a bunch of people to run out to upgrade to a 4090 or 4080. But it does show off what those cards and other future RTX cards can do. It is an advertisement for NVIDIA's highest-end cards and the technology that those only those cards can run well.

If your rig can't play it well or if you're not satisfied with the framerate, NVIDIA will not care. It is a free DLC to a paid game that will show off their tech.

As others have said: It is a tech demo.
Not even a 4090 can run this smoothly on 4k without DLSS AND Framegeneration on.

It shows how NVidia Remix can update old games with much improved textures and raytracing. And it is doing a great job at showcasing that. NVidia themselves said we are AT LEAST 10 years away from full RTed games being playable and that was what? 4 years ago?

Looks like we are on track and DLSS can fake the experience pretty well now.
A low budget GPU certainly has no reason to even try and run stuff that won't be mainstream for another 2-3 GPU generations.