Portal with RTX

[Dirt Chip]

and if Nvidia didn't push their anti-competition agenda that we see an example of in this review.

All is faire in global capitalistic market. NV just play by the rules, as so do AMD.
They differ only by the stand point of each other (market share, financial strength, tech advantages) at the moment, so each one behave slightly different in order to max their profit.
Don`t wrong to think that AMD is any better in it`s core.

 

[AusWolf]

I bet Portal with RTX look way better than just running the old game at 16K 60FPS.

After playing through plenty of shallow current-day RPGs, I kinda want to to play remastered old games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion with RTX

Well, there's no RTX here, but this might be worth waiting for.

All is faire in global capitalistic market. NV just play by the rules, as so do AMD.
They differ only by the stand point of each other (market share and financial strength) at the moment, so each one behave slightly different in order to max their profit.
Don`t wrong to think that AMD is any better in it`s core.

I don't have to be an AMD fan in order to hate Nvidia's business practices - the world isn't black and white. Though, if you really want to think of any corporation as evil, then AMD is certainly the lesser one.

 

[Bwaze]

Making fun of AMD cards, while Nvidia's flagship unil a month ago, a card with 24GB of VRAM that had a MSRP of $2000 only musters 49 FPS in 1080p?

And I don't think porting old games with simple graphics to "fully ray-trace" them works well as a tech demo.

Sure, lighting, shadows look good (where it isn't broken by some material or geometry problems). But most of the textures look plain wrong - worse than original more than a decade old game, broken by the half-arsed effort put into this.

It would be in my opinion much better to develop some sort of minimalistic NEW game that doesn't use too much geometry and isn't too complex for ray-tracing capable cards of today. Some puzzle game in a small room? Simple shooter with Tron-like abstract graphics? There are many possibilities.

The problem is, if you look at the Steam survey, what graphics cards do you aim for? Most common ray-tracing capable card is RTX 2060 at 4.6%. Which can't do any ray-tracing at all. RTX 3060 has 3.5% share, RTX 3070 has 2.4%, RTX 3080 is already at 1.8% - as far as developers are considered, those are insignificant numbers - who is going to buy the game?

 

[AusWolf]

It would be in my opinion much better to develop some sort of minimalistic NEW game that doesn't use too much geometry and isn't too complex for ray-tracing capable cards of today. Some puzzle game in a small room? Simple shooter with Tron-like abstract graphics? There are many possibilities.

Done. It's an excellent game, by the way.

 

[Dirt Chip]

I don't have to be an AMD fan in order to hate Nvidia's business practices - the world isn't black and white. Though, if you really want to think of any corporation as evil, then AMD is certainly the lesser one.

You are right, but NV didn`t make the rules- they just play along. They actually must, if they want to keep in the long term. So do AMD.
The "evil" is a much more elusive entity, not any one or two company's. Not even "the market" itself is the "evil" . But that go's way off-topic.
AMD seems like the "lesser evil" at the moment, just because they still aren't strong as NV.
Supporting AMD on the basis of hating NV is the golden road of crowning AMD as the new "evil".

But I can truly understand why from in a short term look (and most of our life today based on short term decisions ,mostly by young people) someone might think it is better "support" AMD. It just that if you stick long enough you will see it backlash at you.

 

[Bwaze]

Done.

It's not really in the same league as "fully ray-traced" old game conversions like Quake and now Portal.

"Deliver Us to The Moon now supports Ray-Traced Opaque Reflections, Ray-Traced Transparent Reflections and Ray-Traced Shadows."

 

[AusWolf]

You are right, but NV didn`t make the rules- they just play along. They actually must, if they want to keep in the long term. So do AMD.
The "evil" is a much more elusive entity, not any one or two company's. Not even "the market" itself is the "evil" . But that go's way off-topic.
AMD is the lesser one at the moment, just because they still aren't strong as NV.
Supporting AMD on the basis of hating NV is the golden road of crowning AMD as the new "evil".

But I can truly understand why from in a short term look (and most of our life today based on short term decisions ,mostly by young people) someone might think it is better "support" AMD. It just that if you stick long enough you will see it backlash at you.

I don't support any company, and I agree - no company is inherently evil. All I'm saying is that AMD makes their technologies openly available while Nvidia tries to keep everything closed and only able to run properly on their own hardware as much as possible. You can say it's part of the game, but I don't want to be part of that game because I see no winning in it - only monopoly and ever increasing prices.

It's not really in the same league as "fully ray-traced" old game conversions like Quake and now Portal.

"Deliver Us to The Moon now supports Ray-Traced Opaque Reflections, Ray-Traced Transparent Reflections and Ray-Traced Shadows."

And that's perfectly fine, imo.

 

[ratirt]

Just dlss3 it.
There, all is good now.

No it isn't good now. If you need to DLSS it, meaning the card can't handle RT properly. And we are not talking about a low tier card here. We are talking about a top tier card from NV who is advertising for RT constantly. A card that costs $2k minimum so no, it is not just DLSS and done.
Add. I only hope it is the game itself and there is something broken here with the game and the performance will jump up after it is fixed.

 

[Bwaze]

Bwaze said:
It's not really in the same league as "fully ray-traced" old game conversions like Quake and now Portal.

"Deliver Us to The Moon now supports Ray-Traced Opaque Reflections, Ray-Traced Transparent Reflections and Ray-Traced Shadows."

And that's perfectly fine, imo.

Sure it is. Just as it is perfectly fine to turn off rayraced shadows and reflections and use rasterisation faking, and then all of a sudden you can play new games with GTX 1080 Ti.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

The performance charts show various cards with DLSS Balanced, does that help?

Yes, I understand, it's just for convenience's sake but, I can understand if you don't want to, it's why I only suggest you consider it.


Mmmmm, thinking of getting another monitor now, but, perhaps, a bigger desk first.

 

[Dirt Chip]

No it isn't good now. If you need to DLSS it, meaning the card can't handle RT properly. And we are not talking about a low tier card here. We are talking about a top tier card from NV who is advertising for RT constantly. A card that costs $2k minimum so no, it is not just DLSS and done.
Add. I only hope it is the game itself and there is something broken here with the game and the performance will jump up after it is fixed.

You are absolutely right. We are no way near close to handle real RT properly and will no be in the next 5 year of so at least so don't hold your breath...
Paying big will not change physics and\or performance as magic.
Next gen 5xxx, at 3500$+ for top tire, will also crap in their pants with real full RT on. Being expensive doesn't mean $$it.

Only smart upscaling, AI driven and strong specific hardware solution will be able to somewhat handle full RT while conceal the image compromise needing to make in order to run it at acceptable fps.

'Baked lights' are one of the best things that happened to games in term of eye candy to performance hit and it is a total pre-made "fake" maps. RT is way much more demanding so Implementing it must use trikes to be able to run somehow.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Looking forward to the nVidia's RTX 6800 or even 7800 card to play this at ~90-100FPS on 3440x1440 resolution.
No problem waiting. Hopefully the prices will return to normal in 2-3 generations, as history taught us.

 

[ratirt]

You are absolutely right. We are no way near close to handle real RT properly and will no be in the next 5 year of so at least so don't hold your breath...
Paying big will not change physics and\or performance as magic.
Next gen 5xxx, at 3500$+ for top tire, will also crap in their pants with real full RT on. Being expensive doesn't mean $$it.

Only smart upscaling, AI driven and strong specific hardware solution will be able to somewhat handle full RT while conceal the image compromise needing to make in order to run it at acceptable fps.

'Baked lights' are one of the best things that happened to games in term of eye candy to performance hit and it is a total pre-made "fake" maps. RT is way much more demanding so Implementing it must use trikes to be able to run somehow.

My take is, if you need upscaling for all cards then it is too early for the transition to RT. That is the case. DLSS should have been use to boost the FPS for lower tier cards. You can't advertise for ray tracing for Ampere or future products if there is only 1 or 2 cards from a product stack of 12 that can handle it and still have to use DLSS. Not to mention. The RT we have now in games is not even full scope of what RT really is.
Even though the DLSS is good and offers a lot it still has problems with rendering like ghosting or flickering, buzzing and other artifacts. That can be of benefit to lower tier cards in order to handle the RT but they can't anyway. Top tier cards can't handle it.

Looking forward to the nVidia's RTX 6800 or even 7800 card to play this at ~90-100FPS on 3440x1440 resolution.
No problem waiting. Hopefully the prices will return to normal in 2-3 generations, as history taught us.

I don't have a problem waiting either. RT is cool and I'm sincerely hope we will get there some day but I'm not gonna jerk-off every time I hear RT mentioned by somebody saying it is the way to go. The numbers speak for itself. We are not there and we still have long way to go.

 

[Bwaze]

Looking forward to the nVidia's RTX 6800 or even 7800 card to play this at ~90-100FPS on 3440x1440 resolution.
No problem waiting. Hopefully the prices will return to normal in 2-3 generations, as history taught us.

Prices returning to normal? But this IS normal, according to Leatherjacket and adoring fans. But will you be prepared to pay somewhere from $3600 - 6000?

2020, RTX 3080 - $700
2022, RTX 4080 - $1200 <- WE ARE HERE
2024, RTX 5080 - $2040
2026, RTX 6080 - $3468
2028, RTX 7080 - $5896
2030, RTX 8080 - $10022
2032, RTX 9080 - $17038
2034, GTX 1080 - $28965

 

[birdie]

Erm... no. It's more like...

"Physically correct lighting according to people who can't or just don't want to afford the latest shiniest GeForce card is a gimmick because it adds little immersion compared to the performance hit it inflicts on everything except for said latest shiniest GeForce cards."

This is exactly how 3D games should be lit if the performance penalty with any remotely affordable GPU wasn't so great, and if Nvidia didn't push their anti-competition agenda that we see an example of in this review.


You're right, not "proper". But it looked real because of what you said.

DXR/Vulkan RT are both open standards. I'm not sure what "anti-competition agenda" is when applied to NVIDIA. DLSS is proprietary, that's for sure but it's not however required to play games with real time ray tracing. There's FSR and XeSS as well. Does DLSS look/work better? It still is. Could NVIDIA make it open source? Probably but that's how they want to differentiate themselves. Does NVIDIA prevent game developers from adding FSR to games with DLSS? No, period. So, again, the anti-competitive angle becomes quite moot.

Is NVIDIA guilty of their RTRT implementation running circles around AMD? Hell, no. Intel, with their first implementation of RTRT was as fast as NVIDIA's second gen RTX Ampere cards and Intel's GPU division is not even remotely comparable to AMD's. Intel started roughly three years ago, while AMD has more than a two decade headstart.

 

[Prima.Vera]

I think they used portals? So not "proper" ?

Edit: portal in this game-dev context means they render the whole (visible) game world a second time in the mirror, mirrored, separated by an invisible wall

Actually first Unreal game made in UE1 had the same reflections. Were "fake" but nobody cares in the end, as it achieved the desired effect.

 

[BSim500]

Man there are some salty takes on RT in this thread.

At the other end of the spectrum to "salt throwers" is "placebo pricetag" where someone just bought themselves a new $2,000 toy and is determined to "see 1000% improvements" whether they're actually there or not. Example - in the first screenshot the piston on the left in the original is shiny and oiled. The RTX "upgrade" looks like a bone-dry slab of titanium. Guess which is "more realistic" based on, you know, what real-life pistons actually look like? In the second screenshot, the nearest ceiling vent looks better lit in RTX vs off, and yet the other more distant circular floor illumination now looks worse in being incredibly blurry & jagged vs the lit textured floor it's "upgrading". Turn on DLSS and it turns into "I smeared my monitor with Vaseline" that's far uglier and more distracting than the original.

So in these two screenshots alone there are plenty of unrealistic / ugly looking aspects with even the RTX version here, at which point the question "What's the point in losing +80% of FPS if half this stuff is 'one step forward, one step back' vs what it looked like 15 years ago?" turns out to be less "salt" and more "common sense"...

 

[AusWolf]

DXR/Vulkan RT are both open standards. I'm not sure what "anti-competition agenda" is when applied to NVIDIA. DLSS is proprietary, that's for sure but it's not however required to play games with real time ray tracing. There's FSR and XeSS as well. Does DLSS look/work better? It still is. Could NVIDIA make it open source? Probably but that's how they want to differentiate themselves. Does NVIDIA prevent game developers from adding FSR to games with DLSS? No, period. So, again, the anti-competitive angle becomes quite moot.

I still want an analysis on why this tech demo khm... game runs like ass on a 6900 XT. I doubt that it's just the nature of RT, otherwise we would see the same effect in other games, too.

As for DLSS/FSR/XeSS, I don't care about such technologies, especially not when we're talking about top-end graphics cards. Adding RT to make the game look better, then adding some upscaling to make it look worse doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, it's helpful on a lower-end card, like a 3050, but why it's a selling point on the 40-series is beyond me.

Is NVIDIA guilty of their RTRT implementation running circles around AMD? Hell, no. Intel, with their first implementation of RTRT was as fast as NVIDIA's second gen RTX Ampere cards and Intel's GPU division is not even remotely comparable to AMD's. Intel started roughly three years ago, while AMD has more than a two decade headstart.

That's a good point, but I'd like to see Portal RTX tests with the A770 to see if it's valid here.

 

[Dirt Chip]

You can't advertise for ray tracing for Ampere or future products if there is only 1 or 2 cards from a product stack of 12 that can handle it and still have to use DLSS.

Yes, you can. Why not?
Because not all cards can run all RT games as your liking?
Because in some games not even top dogs do well?
Because you have some software-hardware bugs to sort out?
Portal RTX is an edge example, not the common one.
This is no reason to shut down RT for all, instead it is a good reason not to shop only by it and I agree that paying more than 10-15% extra for it is not a good deal. But that 10-15% percentage is subjective and will vary a lot from person to person. Some will pay 100% extra as it is clear to see from NV balance. Some will not pay 0.1% more, some will not go for it even if it will be the cheaper option. All is good.

RT is a nice bonus in some games to play with, nothing more but also nothing less.
I see no reason to boycott it as not few find pleasure with it.
Some actually need and utilize the RT and Tensor capabilities for non-gaming cases.

My take is, if you need upscaling for all cards then it is too early for the transition to RT. That is the case. DLSS should have been use to boost the FPS for lower tier cards.

Only with this game. Many games do well with some sort of RT, also on AMD cards.
I agree that DLSS will be better if it will work without RT.
I think we already have it or (something similar from NV): DLAA.
FSR2 is a wonderful thing, I think new NV cards also support it.

 

[AhmadMZ99]

not sure if i will play portal again because RT... the comparison images looks the game's textures is completely different, I'll take a shot at Thursday

 

[Frick]

Nice, RTX make Portal into a futuristic looking game like it should be.
Hopefully they will do Portal 2 RTX too

Oh yeah that would look ace. Those light bridges are really nive looking...

 

[Dirt Chip]

As for DLSS/FSR/XeSS, I don't care about such technologies, especially not when we're talking about top-end graphics cards. Adding RT to make the game look better, then adding some upscaling to make it look worse doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, it's helpful on a lower-end card, like a 3050, but why it's a selling point on the 40-series is beyond me.

You loss little to very little visuals in most games but gain a lot of FPS which contribute much more to playability.
If you already above 100fps without DLSS/FSR/XeSS than OK, but the small compromise of them easily pay off if you want 144+HZ/4K ultra settings on top AAA games or both and don`t have the 1000+$ for top GPU`s.

For the most part, DLSS/FSR/XeSS is one of the best things that happen to gaming recently when you factor the global market behavior and not only by what use to be in the past.

 

[wolf]

For the most part, DLSS/FSR/XeSS is one of the best things that happen to gaming recently when you factor the global market behavior and not only by what use to be in the past.

I don't get the stubborn refusal to embrace them in any capacity, outside of I suppose 1080p 60hz or less sort of thing where they're not all that useful, but even 1080p144 dlss and FSR have their place for a lot of people.

They're absolutely one of the best things to happen in recent years for gamers and I personally am fascinated by them, and find using FSR 2.0 or DLSS quality modes at 4k preferable to native in virtually every single instance. I found them very compelling at 1440p too.

Also, thanks tho those who quoted my salty sentence didn't need y'all to double down on points we've heard 100 times, but such is the nature of forums I suppose haha. Enjoy everyone.

 

[ratirt]

Yes, you can. Why not?

I thought I explained why not if you dont get it then it's on you. You could give an argument instead you imply because 'NV is doing it'? so it is ok?

Because not all cards can run all RT games as your liking?

Not run the way I like? There is a standard for running games which is consider sufficient. Do you know what the standard says? Are you ok with running a game with 30FPS at 4k for instance because that is what you get with the 4090. Even below that. On the other side same person that cheers for RT and low frames will tell how used he is a 144hz and refuses to play games if getting a 100FPS min or 144FPS min is not happening.
Sure DLSS but it is not perfect especially DLLS3 with all the shimmering, ghosting and artifacts.
NV brings RT but it does not work so DLSS to make it work on expensive top dogs bumping price since new invention and people are ok with it.

RT is not a game changer at this point and consider all aspects of a product it brings way higher prices and DLSS versions that only work with specific cards. DLSS 2 is probably going to be abandoned since NV has to focus on DLSS 3 at this point. Those who purchased the 3000 series cards are left behind unless they use FSR. Yet they have paid for those features.
You may be ok with it or not. As of me, I'm not OK and I think that is clear so praising RT for what it is and what it currently offers rubs on shill

 

[Dirt Chip]

Also, thanks tho those who quoted my salty sentence didn't need y'all to double down on points we've heard 100 times, but such is the nature of forums I suppose haha. Enjoy everyone.

Salt is very much important substance for your body, but having too much of it will make your stomach seek and clutter your body.
See my avatar pic, it`s from the world lowest place ('The Dead-Sea') where you have the saltiest water in the world. The sea floor is a layer of 1-3 meter thick crystalized hard salt.